page_title: Mid-Norfolk Railway
section_title: Commercial freight
hierarchical_section_title: Mid-Norfolk Railway / Present day / Network Rail connections / Commercial freight
caption_attribution_description: English: DRS Class 37 and Rail Head Treatment Train at Dereham
context_page_description: The Mid-Norfolk Railway is a 15-mile preserved standard gauge heritage railway, one of the longest in Great Britain. Preservation efforts began in 1974, but the line re-opened to passengers only in the mid-1990s as part of the "New Generation" of heritage railways.
  Regular steam and diesel services run 11 ¹⁄₂ miles through the centre of Norfolk between the market towns of Wymondham and Dereham via Yaxham, Thuxton and Kimberley Park, and occasional sightseer services continue north of Dereham passing the nearby village of Hoe, where there is no station, to the limit of the operational line at Worthing. The line is periodically used for commercial freight operations and staff instruction for mainline railway companies.
  The MNR own and operate the majority of the former Wymondham-Fakenham branch line of the Norfolk Railway. The branch opened in 1847, was closed to passengers in stages from 1964 to 1969 as part of the Beeching cuts, and was finally fully closed to goods traffic in 1989.
  The MNR is owned and operated by the Mid-Norfolk Railway Preservation Trust, and is mostly operated and staffed by volunteers.
context_section_description: Mid-Norfolk Railway facilitates commercial freight trains, using its connection with the National Rail network at Wymondham. Dereham yard has been used as a servicing depot by Direct Rail Services since 2007 and for storage of Network Rail track plant since 2008.
  The road vehicle loading ramp in Dereham yard is used by mainline train operators to load damaged rolling stock onto road vehicles. Such rolling stock usually comes at night (via the connection with the mainline at Wymondham) at slow speed (sometimes on wheelskates) from Crown Point TMD in Norwich (where no road-rail loading facilities are available) for onward road movement to specialist repair facilities around the country.
  The line has also been used to carry equipment for army units based at Robertson Barracks or undergoing training at the Stanford Training Area, most recently in March 2020. Operation of these trains involves both resident and mainline locomotives.
  Commercial works trains operated on the line between 2018 and 2019, in conjunction with the Kimberley and Hardingham storage project.  These were operated by a number of locomotives hired in for the purpose.  These included BR Standard Class 4 2-6-4T steam locomotive 80078, BR Class 03 03197 and BR Class 33 33202.
caption: DRS Class 37 and Rail Head Treatment Train at Dereham (2008)
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