New station and Cafe for Southport Lakeside Miniature Railway
The project is to construct a new train station terminal for the Lakeside Miniature Railway with a (Fish & Chip) Café and an Ice Cream Parlour on the site of the Marine Parade Station.
The railway originally consisted of a straight running line on the seaward shore of the Southport Marine Lake with a run-round loop at each end. In 1948 the line was extended northwards under Southport Pier, followed by a sharp 90-degree curve seawards into a new terminus next to and named after Marine Parade. This layout remains today with the round trip covering 1,500 yards (1.4 km).
The proposed is to erect a new terminal station with a (Fish & Chip) Café and an Ice Cream Parlour with associated landscaping in Victorian style taking its reference from the adjacent Pier.
The train terminal is to be located at the end of the railway tracks with the two shops to the north west of the site. The Cafe runs along the Southport Pier facing towards Marine Parade. The form of the Ice cream parlour respects the surroundings and takes its form from the flow of people and is shaped as a fourteensided polygon with straight sides to the southern corner. There are display windows to all sides.
The railway was built in 1911 by Miniature Railways of Great Britain Ltd using materials provided by the model engineering business Bassett-Lowke. The railway line was originally named Southport Miniature Railway, being operated by Dr Ladmore, a local dentist. Later on, Mr Griffiths Vaughan Llewelyn took the railway over and renamed it Llewelyn's Miniature Railway.
It passed from Llewelyn's hands before 1930, becoming Lakeside Miniature Railway. In 1945 the railway was sold to Harry Barlow who owned a local engineering company famous for building miniature locomotives. In 1968 John Spencer, a Pleasureland stallholder, purchased the railway and did much to improve it. In 2001 the line was sold again, this time to Don Clark and most recently being bought by Pleasureland Southport in 2016.