Thetford and Watton Railway

The Thetford and Watton act was passed on 16th July 1866. The line was built from Roudham Junction on the GER line between Thetford and East Harling and opened between Thetford (using running powers over the GER) and Watton on 28th January 1869 for goods (run by the contractors) and 18th October 1869 for passengers. The Watton and Swaffham act was passed on 20th July 1869. The line from Swaffham to Watton opened for goods on 20th September 1875 and for passengers on 15th November 1875. At this time the engine shed at Watton was closed and a new one was opened at Swaffham. The Thetford and Watton Railway Co. operated the line from Watton to Swaffham with the whole sometimes known as the Thetford and Swaffham Railway. From 1876 the Thetford and Watton also operated trains between Bury St. Edmunds and Swaffham. These services were short-lived however as the GER took over the Bury St. Edmunds to Thetford line on 1^st August 1879 and on March 1st 1880, entered into a lease of the other two railways, and the seven locomotives with which the Thetford and Watton Co. had hitherto conducted the service henceforth passed into the hands of the GER. In 1897 the GER acquired the undertakings of the Thetford and Watton Railway and the Watton and Swaffham Railway. At that time it was known as the Bury, Thetford and Swaffham Branch of the Great Eastern Railway according to an 1888-1913 map. By 1922 the working timetable for the GER shows the two lines separately as Bury and Thetford and Thetford and Swaffham. Brief details of the 5 relevant Acts appear below, at the foot of the page.

Above: Copied from an original print now held by Tony Hisgett who found them while house clearing for a deceased friend “John”. Dehazed, contrast enhanced and converted to black & white from sepia by myself.

Below: Same design but detail variations, this is Oxelosund Flen Vatmanland Railway No 9, Sharp Stewart 2598/1875, one of a batch of 6 delivered to this railway. One survives in Oxelosund Museum. (Public domain media).

Above: Oxelosund Flen Vatmanland Railway No 8, Sharp Stewart 2597/1875 in use in its earlier days, this one survives in working order at the Railway Museum in Oxelosund.

I have yet to find any other early photographs but I do have the following illustrations which were published in the Locomotive Review over 100 years ago.

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Above: 2-4-0T GER 802, formerly Thetford and Watton No 1.

   Below: 2-4-0T GER 804, formerly Thetford & Watton No 4.

Above: 0-4-2 GER 807, as running between 1880 and 1886, formerly Thetford and Watton No 7 for use on Swaffham to Bury St. Edmunds trains.

Below: GER 0806, as running from 1886, formerly Thetford and Watton No 6 for use on Swaffham to Bury St. Edmunds trains. The 0 prefix means the locomotive has been transferred to a duplicate list as the numbers 800 upwards were being applied to the new Y14 class, Later LNER J-15 class. All former Thetford and Watton locomotives were so treated in 1886.

Maps from the 1888-1913 period overlaid on current (2019) maps.

Above: Thetford main-line station and the triangle with the already abandoned line added by the 1873 Act for the short-lived services between Swaffham and Bury St. Edmunds.

Below: Thetfordbridge (1876 name) station on the line to Bury St. Edmunds which was originally operated by the Thetford and Watton Railway until it was taken over by the GER in 1880 at which time they also leased the Thetford to Swaffham branch and took over the locomotives and operated the trains while The Thetford and Watton Railway retained ownership of the line from Roudham Junction to Swaffham.

Above: Roudham Junction was literally in the middle of nowhere and remained so throughout its operating life, however it was very busy during the sugar beet season and gained

two additional extended sidings in later years to accomodate all the traffic.

Below: Overall map of Watton and the surrounding area with its sizable goods yard to cater for the agricultural traffic and also coal and coke for the gas works. More sidings were added during WWII to serve the nearby airfields which also produced additional passenger traffic.

Above: A closer view of the station at Watton.

Below: Swaffham was on the Great Eastern line from Kings Lynn to Norwich via Dereham. The small engine shed was built by the Thetford and Watton Railway and after the GER take over became a stabling and servicing point until the end of steam.

The railway in the 1950s and 1960s

My introduction to this railway was in 1950 when my parents moved to a new house in Watton when I was 7 or 8. Previously I had seen trains around Wallington but only in the distance across Beddington park or as clouds of steam and noise emitted from a bridge between home and school and I read about them in comics. I had also seen trains during a family picnic beside the Southern Railway main line. In Watton I got my first clockwork model and from my parents bedroom window I could see the occasional train in the distance. When I was 10 I was told that if I passed my 11 plus exam I would get an electric train set as a reward. I duly passed and received not just the set but a season ticket to travel to and from the new school in Swaffham by train. Here I soon got to know the Claud Hamilton 4-4-0s which worked all the school trains and found that they had lots of different numbers. On non-school days we sometimes went swimming at Loch Neaton which was beside the line and while walking in the fields around our house I saw goods trains being shunted at Watton. Then after two years of steam trains I was truly hooked but suddenly the plug was pulled when one day a shiny green diesel turned up on the school train, it was my introduction to DMUs, but they had little appeal and everywhere else still had steam trains. Suddenly shopping trips to Norwich had a new meaning as instead of wandering around the shops I could wander around the station. It wasn't long before I found a better place, the bridge over the station throat was next to the engine shed and gave excellent views of all the steam action and there always seemed to be new engines to be seen. It was also next to the football ground at Carrow road and as youngsters we were allowed in free after half time. Trips to Kings Lynn by train had also been productive but I still had no camera. Eventually I got a Brownie Box camera but a lot of my early shots suffered from poor lighting but it was all I had until 1964 and was restricted to 8 pictures per film and they were expensive. Following are some of my pictures related to the Thetford and Watton Railway

Above & Below: J-15 65420 shunting its train at Watton. This freight service ran from Bury St. Edmunds to Watton calling at all stations for shunting as required in both directions, arriving at Watton mid-morning and departing about lunchtime.

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Above: J-17 0-6-0 65549 waiting to depart from Watton with the daily afternoon freight to Kings Lynn, calling at all stations for shunting as required, having arrived from Kings Lynn earlier in the afternoon.

Below: Apart from the school trains which were (almost) exclusively D-16 4-4-0 during my time the branch passenger service might be entrusted to any small locomotive available at Kings Lynn such as E-4 2-4-0, C-12 4-4-2T or N-7 0-6-2T; C-12 67374, seen here at Kings Lynn, was one of those used, though one of these was always required for the South Lynn push-pull service. On this day 67386 was performing this duty and the DMUs had already taken over all passenger duties on many branch lines.

Above: J-17 65513 shunting at Watton before returning to Bury St Edmunds.

Below: E-4 2-4-0 62785 represents another type to have regularly operated the Thetford to Swaffham passenger services from 1891 until 1955. It is seen here at Cambridge about 1959 shortly before being retired to York Museum. It is now a static exhibit at Bressingham.

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Above: D-16 62613 with decorative valances is seen at Cambridge, this echoes the design of 62577 which was my first engine on the school train.

Below: D-16 62530 has no valances but is otherwise similar to the one above. Both these variations appeared on the school trains and since I saw several every day with two crossing at Watton mornings and evenings and arriving at and departing from Swaffham morning and evening and all told I recorded 53 of the class even though the majority of those seen were withdrawn in 1955, hence I did not take any photos of them

Thetford and Watton Railway and related Acts

Some links to other pages related to this line.

http://www.historyofwatton.org.uk/wattonttages/023.htm

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/watton/index.shtml

http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF13601-Route-of-Thetford-Watton-and-Swaffham-Railway-(later-Great-Eastern)&Index=12797&RecordCount=56734&SessionID=e148e750-091a-4189-bd65-fb0989be10a9

https://www.guidebook-sweden.com/en/guidebook/destination/oxeloesunds-jaernvaegsmuseum-railway-museum-oxeloesund

Page created 22nd December 2019

Updated 18th October 2023.