Man builds full size railway in his back garden

Yorkshire Post

A widow says she is continuing the legacy of her late husband by preserving a full-sized train line he built - in her back garden.  Elizabeth Shutt said her husband of 16 years, Colin, created the quarter mile line - named the 'East Wressle and Brind Railway' - in the 22-acre grounds of their home.  He went on to acquire a diesel locomotive and two pieces of rolling stock before building a 1920s-style railway station - with the help of a band of volunteers.  Elizabeth said the design engineer, who 'always had a project on the go', lovingly worked on the railway before his death in February 2016 at the age of 70.

Transcript

00:00I'm Elizabeth Shutt and we're at the East Resolent Bringe Railway. It was

00:05built by my husband Colin Shutt. He initially built a rail bus for a

00:12competition. Having built the rail bus he then decided he needed to build a

00:17railway to run it on and so we started building it in 2004 and slowly over the

00:26years we have built it to what it is now. Initially it was just him and me

00:33working on laying 10-foot panels of track and then his friends joined him

00:40and we then have been working on it since then. There have been various

00:43friends that have joined us and parted but there is a core of about five of us

00:49who work on the railway and keep it going. He took his rail bus to the

00:54Derwent Light Railway in exchange for which they gave him some rather

00:59derelict rolling stock which we've restored over the years so that we now

01:05have a Ruston engine which I bought him as a birthday present on condition that

01:11he paid for have it removed and it actually cost him more to have it

01:15removed to here than it did for me to buy it. So don't buy a Ruston.

01:21And so slowly we've restored it all, built it all. My job really is nothing to do

01:28with the railway now. I do the garden. The railway children, with the nickname we

01:34have the Friends, they'd restore and keep the railway going. We have a 1920s

01:42stroke 30s railway station. We have about a quarter of a mile of track. We have a

01:50engine shed and we have the station master's house. It is all enclosed in my

01:58garden and you can't see it very well from the road or from anywhere really

02:03unless you peep over the gate at the level crossing. So it's really the secret

02:10railway that's in the secret garden because most people that pass don't even

02:15know it's there.

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