Helston Branchlines Tales
- Amanda Harris
- Apr 4
- 3 min read
April 2025
No actual train journeys to share but we have been busy collecting and refining imagined tales of the Helston Branchline and creating visuals to illustrate them. We being Annamaria Murphy, Tony Crosby and me. Anna and me on stories and Tony on projections using the splendid magic lantern pictured above.
Why this Branchline? I grew up really close by during its bramble-filled, dormant phase. When I saw a call out from Trevow to create a small event for the Old Chapel in Helston, I could not resist ... To our delight we got selected.
May 1887 saw the first train carrying 50 passengers depart from Helston for Nancegollan, Praze and Gwinear. Truthall Halt was added in 1905 mainly to serve the landowner. Its main function was to transport goods such as broccoli, daffodils, rabbits and quarried stone to the main line and so to London as well as passengers. In the way of many branchlines it closed in the 1960s as road haulage and cars took over. However, in 2005 a group of volunteers from the newly formed Helston Railway Preservation Society arrived at Trevarno where with the permission of the landowner they began to build the new station and clear the new track bed. Since then they have opened and now manage 1.5 miles of railway track from Prospidnick to Truthall Halt running three carriages and a steam engine twice a week from April to November with plans to expand further.
All pictures from The Museum of Cornish Life, Helston
If you are near Helston on April 13th from 4-5.30 pm and would like hear some stories which are grounded in fact but may be mixed with a strong dose of imagination ... details are below. We'd love to see you! And if you have some of your own memories of the branchline to share, even better. There will be tea and cake.
Another plug, this time for a project I have been involved in with Anna and o-region called From The Horses Mouth. There is now a large selection of stories which have been posted on the link below collected in Penzance, Bude, Launceston, Redruth and on Scilly. To my great delight a poem of mine set in Launceston has been made into a short film which is on the youtube link below.
I am currently in Bude on a Writers Room residency organised by The Writers' Block. Led by poet and professor of poetry at Exeter University, John Wedgewood Clarke with 3 writers from across Cornwall: Jackie Taylor, Karen Howse and Holly Boyden. I have the enviable role of project coordinator who gets to join in with all the writing! We have been exploring Bude and the response of writing and poetry in this time of environmental and climate crisis. We've read some great poetry and experienced the joy of discussing it together. Visited the museum and rock formations that are millions of years old, along with the Storm Tower that has been built, demolished, rebuilt, demolished and rebuilt as the cliff collapses and retreats... To cap it all, the weather has been so bright and sunny. Each writer will be creating their own response and filmmaker Jesse Adlam will be creating short poetry films inspired by them. Great few days. Thanks to the Writers' Block team for making this happen.
Final plug ...There is a really fun family show also on in Helston this Easter called Percy Pengelly and the Wibble Wobble. More info at http://www.cousinjacks.org
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