Steve Stubbs describes an unusual freight working which he photographed in West Sussex
The location of Chichester in West Sussex, just outside the South Downs National Park, does not immediately jump to mind when considering freight ‘hot spots’ on the railway network, particularly those in South East England. However, this location on the former Southern Region was somewhat of an oasis for rail freight, as it played host to a unique and longstanding flow that ran for many years prior to its very sudden demise.
Lavant, a small village approximately 4 miles north of Chichester, sits on rich gravel beds composed of flint material laid down during the Cretaceous geological period. Flint is an extremely hard type of rock that is vitreous (glass like) in nature and ideal as a filler material for the manufacture of concrete. Given that most sources of flint for this purpose are obtained from marine environments by dredging or vacuum extraction, land based extraction is much cheaper than using specialist sea going vessels. To this end, gravel extraction was authorised by West Sussex council in the mid 1970s with the stipulation that the extracted material was transported entirely by rail to the processing plant at Portfield (referred to in railway nomenclature as Drayton), to the east of Chichester, thus avoiding the use of unsuitable country lanes by heavy lorries and avoiding the notoriously congested Chichester ring road.
The former Chichester to Midhurst branch line was used. It had lost its passenger workings many years previously when the line closed between Lavant and Midhurst in 1957. Lavant then became the truncated end of the branch. The track was retained between Fishbourne Crossing on the outskirts of Chichester and Lavant as a single line throughout with a run round loop installed approximately one mile south of the branch line end which now terminated at the quarry loading bunker. The branch line joined the main rail network at Fishbourne crossing. This was controlled by a local mechanical signal box which also operated the swing gates for the A27 road which crossed the line at this point, prior to the building of the current dual carriageway between the towns of Havant and Chichester. Signalling on and off the branch was achieved with the characteristic Southern style disc dummy signals. Fishbourne crossing also sported a fine three arm semaphore
