Profile Poole Park Railway

PHOTO: P Sharpe

Numerous miniature railways were established in the 1920s and ‘30s.One such line was the Southsea Miniature Railway,set up by Portsmouth City Council in 1933 to the then fashionable 9 1 / 2 " gauge.Steam haulage was a certainty in those days,and motive power came initially from a Bassett-Lowke Atlantic of 1928 vintage,named (and originally owned by) Sir Edward Nichol.A second locomotive arrived later in 1933,and the pair seem to have worked the line quietly and without major incident until the outbreak of war in 1939 forced the line,like many others,to close. In 1945,the Southsea Miniature Railway was brought back to life by Lou Hathaway from Reading,assisted by George Vimpany,a recently demobbed engineer from the Supermarine Spitfire factory at Southampton.With a number of others,the pair formed Southern Miniature Railways Ltd and began to expand,first taking over a railway in Bognor Regis,then opening a new line at Stokes Bay in Gosport,both of which were laid

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Miniature Railway 1