The next time you're travelling by train from Downham Market, get there early enough to buy yourself a copy of the most delightful and unexpectedly affordable book it has been our pleasure to discover in many years. £4.99 buys a copy of Michael Pearson's guide to the scenic railways of Norfolk and neighbouring counties. You won't regret it, we promise you!
What you get is a 64pp full colour book that provides detailed descriptions of the history and geography of the railway lines from Cambridge to Norwich (the Brecks Line), to Kings Lynn (the Fen Line), Norwich to Sheringham (the Bittern Line), to Yarmouth and Lowestoft (the Wherry Lines) and the North Norfolk Railway.
There are copious photographs, and gazetteers of all places mentioned -- accommodation and refreshments, for example.
What attracts us most is the quality of the writing. Michael Pearson (who runs a cottage industry publishing similar books -- see website and other details below) shares the fascination that many of us hold for the Fenscape. So much so that he honeymooned in the area of this book, some 25 years ago. Today, he has revisited the area and offers a book that will entrance you and encourage you to see things you have never seen through the train windows.
You don't have to be a railway enthusiast to delight in the detail: every level crossing marked and named, every now-disused station pinpointed, and its history chronicled.
Most people in Nordelph will still remember that Watlington Station was originally Magdalen Road, that it closed, but was subsequently reopened under a new name.
But who remembers that Stow Bardolph, closed since 1963, was originally simply called 'Stow'? In 1923, when the LNER took over the line from the Great Eastern, they already had another station called Stow, 356 miles away in Midlothian.
Here's what it's got to say about the past of the Fen Line:
"Passenger trains are usually timetabled to pass on the double track section between Downham Market and Watlington, echoes of the route’s main line status in years gone by. when the journey could have been made in a buffet car express from Liverpool Street.
What price a trip now on The Fenman which used to leave Hunstanton at the unearthly hour of quarter to seven in the morning, run all stations to King’s Lynn (where it reversed) proceed to Ely (where it picked up a portion from Wisbech and March) and continue to Cambridge (where it picked up another portion from Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket) before finally arriving in London just short of ten o’clock.
Nowadays, if you’re lucky, the through journey from Hunstanton to London by public transport might shave half an hour off The Fenman's overall schedule, but it involves a change from bus to train at King’s Lynn (and a five minute walk between the respective termini of the two modes of transport) and you will not be able to partake of a hot breakfast of eggs and bacon in the buffet car on the way up to Town!"
Are you listening, WAGN?
Iron Roads to the Broads & Fens is published by Wayzgoose (www.wayzgoose.org.uk) ISBN: 0 9545383 7 4 at £4.99. Specialist books like this can be hard to find in our increasingly commercial bookshops, but Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) is an Internet solution if you don't strike lucky in Downham. Alternatively, you can contact Wayzgoose at enquiries@wayzgoose.org.uk or by telephone: 01283 71367/821472.
Further south, on the previous map (you've really got to buy this book), you learn of the wayside halt of 'Ouze Bridge', Denver Station, the junction for the Stoke Ferry branch line, that closed in 1930 but was in use for freight until the early 1980s -- and where the platforms can still be seen if you know to look out for them.
Hilgay had a station too -- but being two miles from the village, it was an obvious candidate for closure in 1963. But it was an important gateway for farmers, and every night produce would be freighted to Covent Garden.
