Many years ago, way back in the mid-1980s, my brother Nigel moved to Barnstaple in north Devon. He had always been a ‘railway enthusiast’ as he termed it, or ‘trainspotter’ as I would tease him, being an annoying younger sister. Not long after moving he became involved with the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Association, set up to attempt to restore a highly picturesque narrow-gauge railway that had linked the two towns from the 1890s until closing in the 1930s. Sounds familiar? This novel is indeed based heavily on that railway, although I wanted to fictionalise the places to give me more freedom in the storytelling. I relocated my railway to Dorset because it’s my home county and its beauty is often overlooked by people keen to rush on down to Devon and Cornwall.
The real-life L&BR managed to buy their first station, Woody Bay, perched high on Exmoor with magnificent views, in the mid-1990s. I remember visiting it early on, when there was a daunting amount of work required to restore it to its former glory. I donated the first visitor book used at the station. All my family have also helped lay a bit of track there, and there’s a track-side memorial to our father that my brother built. In 2003 Woody Bay opened to the public, with trains running from 2004. A second station, Chelfham, was also acquired by the society and is being restored, but there is a long distance between this and Woody Bay, so no chance yet of linking the two, whether or not all local landowners agree to sell their sections of trackbed!
Nigel spends most of his days off doing voluntary work at either Woody Bay or Chelfham. From what seemed to his rather cynical sister back in the early 1990s as pie in the sky, a railway has been reborn and the L&BR has become a major tourist attraction in north Devon. It’s well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. I’m proud of what the society has achieved, especially my brother’s part in it.
I borrowed a lot of ideas from the L&BR when writing this novel. Nigel kept lending me books about it, and the website at https://www.lynton-rail.co.uk contains a wealth of detail and photographs. The company Manning Wardle existed, and built the locomotives used in the original L&BR. Its name lives on and is now owned by the L&BR. Much of my description of the last day of operation of the railway was taken from reports of the closure of the L&BR, including the detail of a wreath of bronze chrysanthemums, left by a businessman at Barnstaple Town station with the inscription: Perchance it is not dead, but sleepeth.