Southwold Railway Trust

11/08/2026

Running a heritage railway needs many people with many skills, could you be one of those people?
The roles available are varied from painting, keeping the undergrowth in check, wood work, metal work, engineering (light and heavy), maintenance and restoration of railway related items, talking to visitors on our open days, promoting our events and activities, serving visitors in our shop and café, raising funds, running trains with gauges from 9mm to 3 feet, distributing our quarterly magazine, attending events and shows elsewhere to promote the railway, the list is almost endless!
We hold weekly volunteer days each Wednesday where we gather at our site on Blyth Road in Southwold at about 10am, we break for lunch about 12:30 then carry on for as long as folk are able. We also meet with the same arrangements on the first Saturday of each month.
Our open days are usually held on a Sunday afternoon with visitors on site between 1pm and 4pm on about 15 days each year. We need more volunteers if we are to increase the number of days we open.
Of course, some roles can be undertaken from home, particularly if you are good with a keyboard and the internet.
Training and equipment are provided.
Please contact [email protected] or ring 01502 725422 to find out more. We look forward to meeting you.

14/06/2026

The latest episode of the Making Tracks Railway Podcast contains interviews made on the day of Blyth's first public steaming, you can access the episode here:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2enwLeendfmQmUIAODOppN

We aim to have Blyth back in steam on the following open afternoons:
2nd August, 16th August, 30th August, 20th September, 3rd October

Making Tracks Railway Podcast · Episode

27/05/2026

Monday was a day of firsts for The Trust; we steamed Blyth for the public for the first time, we operated the level crossing gates on an open day for the first time and we ran to a timetable for the first time. Many thanks to all who came to see us and also to those who made the day such a seccess.

24/02/2026

First steps today to secure our own reliable water supply for our steam locomotives - the drilling of a borehole on the western end of our land. This ended up being 15m deep and had 10m of water present, a good sign! The drillers made the hole with a steel casing then lined it with plastic pipe, the lower 2 sections of which have 0.5mm slots cut in them to allow the water to enter. Once the liner is in place, the steel casing is removed then fine gravel is poured down to fill the gap. We now await the installation of the pump and the sampling of the resulting water.

20/02/2026

A team of volunteers worked on the rear of LM319 this week. The first two photos are before and after shots - almost a spot the difference! The task was to separate the coupling / buffer from the locomotive - just 4 nuts and bolts to undo! Multiple blasts of heat, penetrating oil and some large wrenches eventually got the nuts moving. Our next task is how to safely move the very heavy buffer block into storage!

06/02/2026

Despite the recent cold weather, we continue to work on Blyth, most recently on refitting the plumbing for the injectors following the move and increased size of feed water valve. Pictures here show the annealing of one of the pipes to ease it into position and a somewhat ghoulish view of the workers given the artificial lighting.
I did get somewhat excited when purchasing some additional munsen rings (pipe clips) which were labelled Tesla UK, the irony of having a major electric vehicle company supplying parts for our steam loco would have been lovely, however it seems Tesla UK Ltd are a distributor of plumbing products and are not associated with Tesla Motors Ltd :-(

22/01/2026

Despite the cold, grey day volunteers made progress on a track display for our museum and continued to fettle the braking system on Blyth.

01/01/2026

Following a succesful grant application to The Southwold Trust for part of the cost we are now actively fund raising towards the purchase of a carriage to enable us to give Steamworks visitors a ride on our 3ft gauge railway.

Donations towards this significant project can be made via crowdfunder here:-
www.crowdfunder.co.uk/a-carriage-for-southwold-railway

Thank you

Our aim is to recreate the old Southwold Railway, which closed in 1929, so that local residents can experience the thrills of steam railways

29/11/2025

Looking forward to our first attendance at the Southwold Christmas Light Switch On organised by Light Up Southwold. We will be playing Christmas music on our barrel organ and taking bookings for our Santa Specials which take place over the next two weekends. Hope to see you there!

10/11/2025

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