Railway Graveyard.
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The Churnet Valley Railway is a 5 1/4 mile (8.4 km) long standard gauge heritage railway based in Staffordshire.
The North Staffordshire Railway Society was formed in the 1970s and bought the old goods yard at Cheddleton Station. Workshops were created there and the first locomotives were moved there in 1977, however British Rail were still using the adjacent railway to move industrial sand from a quarry at Oakamoor. The line was finally closed in 1988 and the society began to arrange for the purchase of the stretch from Oakamoor to Leekbrook Junction.
The first trains ran on the preserved line in 1996.
The track originally ran all the way to Oakamoor a few miles south of Churnet Valley and was a double track, over the years though one of the tracks has been removed leaving only one which itself is in a bad state of disrepair.
Although Churnet Vallet itself is a heritage site and museum it does have a railway graveyard which is commonly known as Oakamoor sidings, the graveyard is where restoration and repair works are carried out on locomotives and carriages that the CVR has had donated to them, although a lot of the trains laid up here are diesel powered there are also a few rare steam engines, some dating back to 1908.
Along with the steam engines there are also a few rail cranes at the graveyard, rail crane No.10 being the biggest and quite a few Re-Railing trains and carriages from Inverness.
With the CVR relying on funding its not able to restore everything and some of the trains are way beyond repair as they have decayed so much, some are literally rusting away into the track bed itself.
There are a few excellent examples of there hard work actually in the graveyard though,including a Shunt and a fully restored Diesel locomotive bearing the name the Tamworth Castle.
Its and enjoyable little place this one, if not some what difficult to find, we nearly gave up looking for it at one point due to the fact that to actually get here you have to walk a good mile and a half down the tracks.
Our persistence did pay off though and was well worth it, seeing such a wide variety of trains was impressive, add to that the fact that very few of these places exist and are let alone accessible really did add to the experience.
It is worth noting that although this is a railway graveyard, the CVR are using it to store and repair trains and although derelict to a certain degree it is stilled used frequently.
Date : July 2008 : Location : Staffordshire : Explorers : Havoc : Jaff Fox : Saul_Son :
Lawrence
