Labours of love
Some people just won’t take no for an answer. Sophie Campbell talks to three remarkable individuals who were absolutely determined to see their ambitions fulfilled. Portraits by Mark Read
Lt Cdr Roy Francis RN (87) - Owner/founder of the Wells & Walsingham Light Railway
Roy started his naval career at the age of 15 on HMS Conway and spent the war at sea. He was torpedoed and sunk on HMS Edinburgh and guarded the Atlantic convoys on HMS Waveney. After his navy years, he built the Beach Railway at Wells-next-the-Sea, North Norfolk, and started the WWLR on four miles of old Great Eastern Railway track in 1979. It opened in 1982 and he divides his time between living in the signal box and at home with his wife, Marie.
“As a small boy my parents took me on holiday to Kent, near the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. I spent my whole holiday watching the trains, and I said to my father, ‘When I grow up I’m going to be an engine driver.’ ‘Oh no you’re not!’ he said; next thing I knew I was in a sailor suit.
“I was on some wonderful ships during the war, but I was quite nervy after Edinburgh. I did the Atlantic convoys for a while, spent three years in America and Hong Kong, then my department closed and I got £180 and six months’ notice without pay. I wasn’t going on the dole. I was a night watchman, then I ran a boatyard, then Marie and I bought a cottage on the Norfolk marshes and I built a 71⁄4 gauge steam railway in the garden and friends came for rides. Someone gave me a locomotive he didn’t want, a 101⁄4 gauge, so I became a showman at the summer fairs and took it around on a Bedford truck, along with the track.
“The council saw I was doing it and asked if I would build a railway at Wells, because people had to walk about a mile from the town centre to the beach and caravan park. Well, we sat on the sea wall and watched everyone struggling along with their children and thought it would work. It did, but in 1977 it was washed away in the floods. I had to start again.
“Then Marie saw an ad for male models at Norwich School of Art for 50p an hour. The bloke said, ‘You don’t mind taking your clothes off, do you?’ I did it for seven years in the end. I was quite famous. Once you’ve stripped off in front of 32 teenagers, you can do anything. The students were wonderful; they helped me rebuild Wells and when I decided to build a separate four-mile railway to Walsingham in 1979, I paid them £30 each a week to help.
“The old Great Eastern track bed was there, except for one cutting filled with rubbish. I got that cleared and borrowed £100,000 from the bank and a friend built me a steam locomotive and four carriages, again 101⁄4in gauge. Then the Railway Inspector turned up. ‘You realise you’ve put a level-crossing across a public road?’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did it one Sunday afternoon.’ Of course, I hadn’t asked permission – it was a farm track. He had to laugh.
“In the end I had to get an Act of Parliament to reopen the old railway. I had to lease land from five different landlords and write a whole fileful of letters to the Ministry of Transport. They were awful. They demolished all the rail bridges to Fakenham, so I couldn’t go any further. But they’d sold the Walsingham bridge to the council, who leased it to me, so I managed to build four miles of track anyway.
“I stopped driving when I was 80. I thought, if I have a crash they’ll ask, ‘How old was the driver?’ It’s hard work, too; you put coal in the fire and water in the boiler. I live in the signal box, which is 100 years old. I have a bed, a desk, a cooker and heaters for the winter. Marie is a naval wife so she’s used to me being away for long periods of time. I think she’s quite proud that I’ve done all this without anyone particular to help me. My son’s into it, too, he’s got a steam museum.
“I don’t know what it is about trains. I just love two parallel bits of steel, the steam, the locomotives, all of it.”
For railway, see wellswalsinghamrailway.co.uk.
Steam museum: oldenginehouse.users.btopenworld.com
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