THERE was an outcry last week when it was suggested that the tracks of Poole Park’s railway might have to be torn up.

Poole council later said it would not be necessary to remove the tracks after all, while it invites potential operators to put in their tenders.

The strength of feeling shows just how much affection the railway inspires in locals and holiday visitors alike.

It’s ironic, then, that when the railway opened in 1949, the then-mayor objected, while one nearby resident claimed it would ruin the park.

The founder of Poole Park Railway was George Vimpany, who had been operating a railway at Southsea since 1933, later adding others at Stokes Bay and Bognor Regis.

Poole’s councillors were keen to develop the town’s tourist industry after World War Two and welcomed Mr Vimpany’s proposal to move the Southsea trains to Poole.

As recorded in Keith Guy’s book Poole Park Railway: The First Fifty Years 1949-99, Whitecliff and Sandbanks recs were considered as possible locations. Poole council felt it should invite other operators to submit their proposals for a railway but it was Mr Vimpany’s company, Southern Miniature Railways, that won the tender.

The decision came despite objections from one resident of nearby Orchard Avenue, who wrote to the Echo claiming to speak for “a vast number of the residents of the borough”.

The resident claimed building the railway would be an act of vandalism and that a funfair would surely follow, with all “the hideous cacophony associated therewith”.

Laying of the 10-and-a-quarter inch track started in late 1948. The line ran for around half a mile, circling the larger freshwater lake. Building the line required a licence from the Ministry of Supply because of restrictions still in place after the war.

A bridge for was built between the two sections of lake, replacing a footbridge which had been destroyed by a German bomb during the war. Poole council supplied ballast and built the station and engine shed.

The first passengers climbed aboard on Saturday, April 9, 1949, with locomotive 1001, Vanguard, at the head of the train, driven by Mr Vimpany.

The mayor, who was not there for the opening, had been the only member of the council’s parks committee to vote against setting up the railway.

A ride cost a shilling for an adult and sixpence for a child.

It was an immediate success. Trains ran until 9pm in summer and it was not unusual for people to wait up to an hour for a ride.

Petty vandalism was an occasional problem from the earliest days. The town clerk believed that pupils of Poole Grammar School, then sited just outside the park, were among the culprits, and duly wrote to the headmaster. Another letter complained that pupils sometimes hung onto the railway carriages while cycling alongside.

In 1960, a diesel engine, D7000 was built, with the chassis and body made at the park’s engine shed and the gearbox and engine fittings at Longfleet Engineering Works.

Poole gained a turntable after another Mr Vimpany’s Bognor railway closed in 1957 to allow for a Butlin's holiday camp.

Steam trains were no longer in daily use after 1965, but occasional weekend steam events continued until 1970. In 1969, passenger numbers reached an amazing 180,000.

In 1975, a legal officer at the Civic Centre spotted a previously unheeded clause in the original licences. It turned out the operator was obliged to enclose the railway track with a 3ft fence. The condition had never been enforced and the legal department said it should be.

However, the council’s chief amenities officer objected, saying a fence would cut off all public access to the lake and interfere with the natural habitat of the water fowl. The council’s amenities and recreation committee agreed and said the clause should be left out of future licences. After all, the operator was indemnified in case of accident anyway.

Passenger numbers were falling in the late 1970s and in 1979, the business was transferred to the partnership of Geoff Tapper and Brian Merrifield. Around the same time, Joe Entwhistle, familiar to thousands as engine-driver, retired.

Mr Tapper left the partnership in 1990 but Mr Merrifield continued developing the railway, replacing a lengthy stretch of the track and building a store at the back of the engine shed. He also bought a steam engine, Arthur, for occasional use.

At the end of the 1980s, a draft council report on the future of the park recommended closing the railway to make way for a new road, but the idea was dropped.

The railway played a part in the Two Ronnies’ adventure By the Sea, transmitted on Good Friday, 1982. The sequence featured Ronnie Barker crammed into in a tiny railway carriage with a woman as large of frame as him. The standard 2ft wide carriages could not accommodate them, so Geoff Tapper built a carriage 2ft wide at each end but 3ft in the middle.

Another comedian to make use of the railway was Alexei Sayle, who was seen on the train in his Alexei Sayle’s Stuff series in the early 1990s.

Since 2005, the railway has been operated by Chris Bullen, who boosted its popularity with events including a Santa grotto with live reindeer. The Santa days ran for 10 years until Poole council decided to let nearby restaurant the Ark run a grotto instead, sending Mr Bullen’s event to Upton Country Park.

In March 2015, a carriage overturned and a boy was taken to hospital as a precaution. Poole council closed the railway for five weeks while it waited for a report by a specialist engineer, which concluded malicious damage had been the most likely cause.

With its future under debate once again, one thing is clear. Generations of Poole people couldn't imagine the park without its railway.