The Helston Railway is the heritage line sited furthest west in the country. They have now preserved a section of line about 1 1/4 mile long between Prospidnick and Truthall Halt. Services commence at Prospidnick which is a couple of miles from Helston and the line runs towards Helston. The line used to run from the GWR main line Gwinear Road – the station closing with the branch on 5 October 1964. So the line was dormant for a long time.
Prospidnick Halt was bult part of the preservation effort and there is some hope of a small extension a short distance further north at some point in the future. Access to Prospidnick is via Trevarno Farm passing through the farmyard before it opens into a slightly untidy space. The track here has a coach with a booking office and a buffet and the intention is to build a station here adjacent to the parking. At the moment having bought tickets we walk across the viaduct over the road below to Prospidnick platform from where the service train departs.
There is an intermediate station at Trevarno which was the original starting point of the heritage services but now is only a request stop and we did not stop here in either direction, I suspect there is next to no parking but some items of stock are stored here with other items needed for the railway.
Our destination is the aforementioned Truthall Halt which is an exact replica of the original GWR Halt and is 1 3/4 mile from Helston. It originally reopened in 1905 and was reopened in 2017. There have been plans for further extension but these seem unlikely at present – planned to a new terminus closer to Helston but this requires a large viaduct to be restored – some clearance of the track bed has been undertaken.
Our transport has a diesel engine at the Prospidnick end of two coaches with a driver position at the front of a former DMU vehicle at the Truthall Halt end of the train. It is a very gentle journey through the countryside between the two. There have been a couple of seasons of steam haulage in recent years but for the moment trains are being handled by “Kingswood” an Andrew Barclay locomotive from 1959, works no 446, although I am not sure if it is owned by the railway or not. A suburban coach and the dmu driving trailer make up the consist.
The journey takes about 10 minutes, then 15 minutes to change ends (and we change coach) and then ten minutes or so back. All of the volunteers around are very friendly and there are a few other passengers this morning – although not a large number. Operations are on a limited number of days in the year so we are lucky to have included a bank holiday Monday in our week away to permit travel.
It provides a vision of how preservation worked for a long time – just a short line and a quick hop there and back – even shorter than the early Bluebell I suspect. Modern preservation is hugely business driven simply through size whereas here it feels mainly down to volunteers, although I suspect that it has needed a decent source of money to achieve what is here. It will be interesting to see if the extensions can be achieved and if the steam locomotive overhaul can be completed and returned to service – big challenges for a small railway.