A trip on the Chinnor and Princes Risborough steam railway in Buckinghamshire, England

Running for around four miles through delightful Buckinghamshire countryside, the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway is a standard gauge preserved railway.

The journey starts at London Marylebone, where we picked up a train to Princes Risborough.

The steam railway runs from a bay platform (left) on the main line station.

The train was hauled by USA Class S160, numbered 6046 – the most powerful steam locomotive to have ever worked on the Chinnor branch.

Shipped in the early to mid 1940’s to South Wales and dispatched from the Great Western Railway locomotive depot at Ebbw Junction, Newport, the first 43 locomotives were transferred to the London & North Eastern Railway’s Doncaster Works for completion, and later running in over the East Coast Main Line. [—]

The journey takes you past the impressive Princes Risborough signal box which has been partly restored with a working set of levers controlling traffic into the station.

View a webcam from the signal box here.

Chinnor station.

The line was part of the former Great Western Railway branch line between Watlington and Princes Risborough. British Railways closed the line to passenger traffic in 1957.

The section between Chinnor and Princes Risborough thereafter carried a freight-only cement service until 1989, when the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway Association was formed.

The railway has hopes of extending the line to the south-west from Chinnor towards Aston Rowant near the A40, taking its total length to 6 miles (9.7 km).