Leighton Buzzard Light Railway Leighton Buzzard Light Railway The Leighton Buzzard Light Railway (LBLR) is a light railway in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, England. It operates on narrow-gauge track and is just under long. The line was built after the First World War to serve sand quarries north of the town. In the late 1960s the quarries switched to road transport and the railway was taken over by volunteers, who now run the line as a heritage railway. A bed of Lower Cretaceous sand across Bedfordshire has been quarried on a small scale for centuries. The most significant occur around Leighton Buzzard. In the
Leighton Buzzard Light Railway no longer transport sand by roads, so a private industrial railway was proposed to take the traffic. Leighton Buzzard Light Railway opened on Thursday 20 November 1919, linking the sand quarries (Double Arches at the far end of the line) with the mainline railway south of the town at Grovebury sidings. The line was built using surplus equipment from the War Department Light Railways. The railway was built to a gauge of and laid using mostly rail. The line opened using steam traction by two Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 side tank steam locomotives. These proved inappropriate for the tightly-curved line and