THE FIRST RAILWAY IN NORFOLK

joemasonspage

Jan 1

The first railway in Norfolk was the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway. As the name suggests, it connected Great Yarmouth to Norwich. It received its approval when the Act of Parliament was passed in 1842. It began construction in 1843 and was finished in 1844, just 12 months later, at a cost of £20,000. The first station outside Yarmouth was the Berney Arms Halt. This isolated halt was built as the insistence of the landowner, as a condition of the sale of the land. This has been one of the least used stations in the country for years. The line then went through Reedham and Cantley, which at that time did not yet have a sugar beet factory. Next came Buckenham: although the Berney Arms station is one of least used in Norfolk, Buckenham is consistently lower in passenger numbers. Bur whereas the Berny Arms is now a request stop only, Buckenham has a regular stopping service, but of only one train in each direction per weekday. This rises to two in each direction on Sundays. Unlike Berney Arms, there is road access to Buckenham railway station. This allows visitors to access the local bird reserve and the former station buildings which are used as a recording studio. Thence you travelled on to Brundall in the direction of Norwich Station, where the train terminates. Another station was opened at Whitlingham after a few years, but it closed in 1954. In the 1920s a second station was opened at Brundall Gardens; this specifically to cater for the leisure industry. This station is still in use. It is now the last top before Norwich.

For a few months there was no onward connection from this line to the wider rail network. Then the line from London arrived in Norwich from Cambridge, but that had to terminate at Trowse station while the bridge over the river Wensum was constructed. I know that five locomotives arrived on the railway prior to its opening, but how they arrived we are not told. Surely, they came to Yarmouth by sea, but whether that was from London or Newcastle I do not know. Either would have been possible. Perhaps a look into the local press might help, although the opening of the railway predates the first publication of the Yarmouth Mercury by several years. It certainly would have handled a lot of freight, something that would have alarmed the wherry owners; but river traffic survived, at least for a time. The fast boat service that had carried passengers from Norwich to Great Yarmouth was immediately killed off by the railway however. Who would sit in an open boat for hours when in less than sixty minutes you could make the journey in comparative comfort?

The famous railway pioneer George Stephenson was elected Chairman of the Directors of the Norwich and Yarmouth Railway, with his son Robert as Chief Engineer. A fourteen-coach train (the entire available stock) left Norwich at 10.30 a.m. on April 30th 1844. A brass band accompanied the train in the open coach that was immediately behind the engine. It struck up "See the conquering hero comes" by Handel as the train pulled out of the Norwich station. When the assembled company reached Yarmouth, they were treated to a cold collation; the real feast followed their return journey (which took less than 45 minutes). This was held at the Assembly House, Norwich, and included chicken, goose, salmon, peaches, strawberries and ice cream.

From 5.30 a.m. on the following day the public were allowed to travel. There were seven trains in each direction on the first day. Norwich station continued to increase the number of destinations that it served. First came the Brando line, with its connection to London via Cambridge. This opened to Norwich station eighteen months after the Yarmouth line, in December 1845. The connection to Lowestoft branched off the Yarmouth line at Reedham in 1847, and a more direct route to London was added through Ipswich in 1851. The line from Ipswich had originally opened in 1849, but had terminate at another station, Norwich Victoria. Finally a line to Cromer was introduced in 1877. Rather unusually for Britain, all these railway lines still run into Norwich station.

JOSEPH MASON

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