 In
1984 construction commenced of a 2ft (60cm) gauge garden railway on a piece
of land owned by and adjacent to Little West Residential Home at Southerndown,
seven miles south-west of Bridgend. The railway was initially built using
14lb per yard rail acquired from Chalk Pits Museum in Sussex. In 1988/9
this rail was replaced with 20/25lb per yard track which had originally
been used at Butlins Minehead. In 1994 following the closure of the residential
home much of the trackwork was lifted and placed in store, but in 2001 the
remaining rail was restored to running condition. At its maximum the railway
totalled around 150 metres in length but latterly had only 40 metres of
running track. The last remnants of the railway were dismantled in September 2005 prior to sale of the site. Most of the rail went to a private railway in Gloucestershire, one set of points and a few short lengths of portable track were moved to a new town location where a token narrow-gauge railway may be built in the web-master's back garden. |
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The author is shown here (right) putting the locomotive through its paces at an Open Day at the railway. The brakeman is a young enthusiast who assisted in some of the track laying at the railway. |
The original 14lb rail was replaced by 20lb rail shortly after the arrival of this loco as the original rail was not heavy enough to cope with the weight of this locomotive. |
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  Ruston
& Hornsby 175414 built 1936. Owned by the Cilgwyn Society the locomotive
was stored and used at Little West for a few years in the early 1980s. The
wooden home-built cab fitted by a previous owner was removed shortly after
arriving at Southerndown. The locomotive is now at the National Museum of
Wales Slate Museum at Llanberis. |
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Here we see Lister Railtruck 962 and the home-built "Little Owl" outside the locomotive shed. The home-built 6-seat carriage is also shown here, built on a Hudson 4-wheel skip chassis. |
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A
photograph taken in the summer of 1985 during the construction of the
garden railway. The light weight 14lb per yard rail had been purchased
from Chalk Pits Museum a few months previously and the photos show one
of the Lister Autotrucks used to carry ballast and materials round the
site during construction.
Locomotive
"Little Owl" was constructed in 1986 using the engine and gearbox
from a 1973 Lister Autotruck and wheels from a Hudson skip. The loco was
restyled in 1988 to the form shown in the photographs. This loco remained
at Little West until 2002 when it was placed on loan to a private garden
railway in Gloucestershire.
Ruston
& Hornsby 181820 built 1936. New to the River Severn Catchment Board,
the loco spent a number of years at Toddington in Gloucestershire before
moving to Little West where is was the mainstay of the loco fleet. The
loco was sold in the mid 1990s and is now at Old Kiln Light Railway in
Hampshire and is now named "Red Dwarf"
The
final locomotive to arrive at Little West was a Lister Railtruck. No 962,
the oldest surviving example, was built in the late 1920s and sold to
Birmingham Canal Navigation Co at Brownhills wharf. The loco survived
in a Birmingham scrap yard until the 1980s until spotted by an enthusiast
and saved for preservation. The loco is now in private ownership in Staffordshire
but can occasionally be seen at Amerton Farm Railway. Lister Railtrucks
were supplied to two Brickworks in the Bridgend area, one to 