Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway Timeline

The Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway was founded in 1948 as the Cleethorpes Miniature Railway.

The railway has operated every summer since 1948. It has never been longer than 2 km, but it has undergone complex changes of ownership, management, motive power, locomotives, rolling stock, gauge, length, route and stations.

This article covers the line's history up to 2015. The current railway is described in Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway.

Six forms of passenger-carrying rail transport have served Cleethorpes:

and

Like their full scale counterparts, miniature railways are subject to external forces as well as local events. Cleethorpes is primarily a seaside resort. Sometimes known as "Sheffield by Sea", Cleethorpes was promoted and served by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MSLR), the Great Central Railway (GCR) and the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in turn. The LNER then British Railways (BR) rebuilt their provision after the Second World War, with copious day and evening excursions as well as regular traffic. Up to the early 1960s it was routine on a summer Saturday evening to see every platform at Cleethorpes station filled with long trains waiting to depart and a train in every siding waiting to take their places to return to towns in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and southern Yorkshire.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s people were glad to be able to get back to having fun after the rigours of war. Cleethorpes had record numbers of visitors in the early 1950s, often with more disposable money in their pockets. Railways were an established part of life and miniature railways were seen as a familiar, wholesome, sure-fire attraction. Financially the Cleethorpes Miniature Railway (CMR) was viable and generally profitable until the second half of the 1950s.

The market then underwent a rapid evolution in the face of three tidal changes: rising incomes, rising opportunities and rising expectations. The first two went hand in glove. When going to Cleethorpes was all which could be afforded and one of the few shows in town people took it as an opportunity. When rising incomes led to cars, coaches and air travel for more people, a wider range of existing places became more accessible and new opportunities were created. This fuelled rising expectations, so Cleethorpes all too often turned from the choice to a choice to a poor choice.

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