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Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway

1,338 bytes added, 17:31, 22 November 2020
Information on Cleobury shed
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|}The '''Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway ''' (CM&DPLR) opened in 1908. It connected with the [[Wyre Forest Line | Tenbury and Bewdley Railway]] at [[Wyre Forest Line#Cleobury Mortimer | Cleobury Mortimer]]. From there the line ran northwards for 12&frac12; miles via Cleobury Town, Stottesdon and Burwarton to Ditton Priors. It became part of the Great Western Railway in 1922.
==Construction==
==Decline and closure==
Passenger numbers were never great and declined steadily after the First World War. The railway became part of the Great Western Railway on 1 January 1922 as part of the grouping under the Railway Act of 1921.<ref>[[Bibliography#Other References|Price (1995)]] p.59.</ref> As early as the 1920s some stations had effectively become request stops, and by the 1930s traffic had reduced to two ‘mixed’ trains per day. Passenger services ceased altogether in September 1938. However in 1941 the Royal Navy opened a Royal Naval Armaments Depot (RNAD) at the end of line at RNAD Ditton Priors, close to Brown Clee Hill. The line therefore remained open for both freight and military traffic, and locomotives using the line were fitted with spark arrestors.
The line became part of BR(W) under nationalisation in 1948 and continued in very limited use, sometimes with just one train per week. On 21 May 1955 the Stephenson Railway Society organised a ‘special’ from Birmingham via Kidderminster and Bewdley to Ditton Priors. Dean Goods No 2516 (now preserved at Steam in Swindon) hauled this to Cleobury Mortimer, where 0-6-0PT No 2144 (with spark arrestor) took over using CM&DPLR rolling stock. The ‘special’ travelled as far as Cleobury North Sidings, becoming the only passenger bogie-stock ever on the line.
===Coaching stock===
Six-wheeled stock was prohibited from the CM&DPLR. The original coaching stock comprised four ex-North London Railway four-wheel coaches, formerly LNRW numbers 1033, 1034. 1041 and 1043. Following grouping in 1922 these were replaced by GWR four-wheeled gas-lit coaches, two with four compartments and two longer 3-compartment brake coaches.<ref>Burton, Anthony and Scott-Morgan, John,'The Light Railways of Britain and Ireland', Moorland Press, 1985</ref><ref>Price (1995), pp. 35-36.</ref>
 
===Cleobury Mortimer sub-shed===
During the Railway's independent operation, the two Cleobury Mortimer locomotives were housed in a single-road shed at Cleobury Town. The caption of a picture in "''Branch Lines around Cleobury Mortimer''" (Mitchell and Smith, 2007) suggests this was built in 1917.<ref group="note">The Railway opened in 1908; if 1917 is correct, it is not clear what the arrangements were before that date.</ref> Simple repairs were carried out there, while major repairs were carried out at the Worcester works of the GWR.<ref>[[Bibliography|Price (1995)]] p. 33.</ref> After the Railway became part of the GWR on 1 January 1922, the shed at Cleobury became a sub-shed of [[Kidderminster Shed]]. The caption in Mitchell and Smith suggests the Cleobury shed closed in July 1938 (shortly before the end of passenger services), however other sources suggest it remained a sub-shed of Kidderminster until 1962<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Railways_shed_codes Wikipedia List of British Railways Shed Codes]</ref>.
==See also==
*[[The Severn Valley Railway under GWR/BR ownership#Map of the Route and Nearby Railways | Map of the Severn Valley Railway and Nearby Railways]]
 
==Notes==
<references group="note"/>
==References==
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