The asparagus line!

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HAMPSHIRE has its Watercress Line. The GWR’s Cheddar Valley branch was the Strawberry Line. Now North Yorkshire has an Asparagus Line!

If a WR Class 42 Warship was booked to haul real freight near Pickering, thoughts might immediately turn to a hired-in locomotive running a photographic charter on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Above: The Kent & East Sussex Railway ran hop-pickers’ specials in the steam era. Now the Cedarbarn miniature railway offers crop pickers’ specials. CEDARBARN

For the Cedarbarn Farm Shop & Cafe’s 7¼in gauge miniature railway not only carries visitors over its 650-yard line – but also transports the harvested crops!

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At present, the sole motive power is a Phoenix Locos battery-electric Warship which is recharged inside the line’s Redgate Tunnel. The immaculately-presented Warship normally hauls a rake of sit-on coaches – the ‘Flying Yorkshireman’ train – from a replica Victorian station next to the venue’s entrance on the A170 Thornton Road just east of Pickering.

However, the line, which was four years at the planning stage, also has a freight wagon on which crops grown in the fields through which it runs are brought to the shop.

Read more in Issue 230 of HR – on sale now!

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