RNAD Broughton Moor

RNAD Broughton Moor is a decommissioned Royal Naval Armaments Depot located between Great Broughton and Broughton Moor in the County of Cumbria, England.

The depot was opened in 1939 on the site of Buckhill Colliery (opened 1873, closed 1932; the colliery's spoil heap remains a prominent feature of the site to this day). In 1944 the site was expanded from 800 to 1050 acres.

The depot continued to be used by the Ministry of Defence until 1963, at which point it was leased to the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1977 it was used by the United States Navy for storage of armaments for its North Atlantic Squadron (the weapons were flown out of the site by helicopters shuttling back and forth over a number of days to a USN Cargo Ship lying offshore and away from the town's harbour of Workington); and from 1981 Broughton Moor was formally adopted as a NATO storage site.

The site was decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, finally closing on 31st December 1992.

The site had a 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge railway. Locomotives from this railway are preserved on the Almond Valley and Whipsnade railways. In 1970 the locomotives in use at Broughton Moor consisted of:

The site was connected to the main line via a 5 miles (8.0 km) branch line to Siddick Junction, north of Workington railway station and utilised a headshunt at Northside to change direction northbound on to the Cumbrian Coast Line. The branch closed on 4 June 1992, being the last part of the Cleator and Workington Junction Railway in operation.

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