To mark the 50th anniversary of the last scheduled British Rail passenger train from Wareham to Swanage on 1st January 1972 the Swanage Railway held a three day event utilising a heritage diesel-multiple unit (DMU) running between Norden and Swanage.

A Class 117 DMU built in 1960 operated five return trains a day on Saturday 1st January 2022, Sunday 2nd January 2022 and Monday 3rd January 2022. To mark the occasion the first fifty tickets sold online for each of the three days were set at the January 1972 price of 50p per person. A special commemorative Edmondson card ticket was also produced for all ticket holders travelling on these services.

The Dorset branch line from Wareham to Swanage was opened in May 1885 and controversially closed, despite a sustained campaign for its retention by local people and councils, on the morning of Monday January 3rd 1972. Because no services ran to Swanage on a Sunday in the winter timetable the final train ran on New Year’s Day 1972, departing Wareham at 2145 and carrying 500 passengers. The final BR return service from Swanage departed at 2215 and arrived back in Wareham at 2240. The tracks between Swanage and half a mile east of Furzebrook were torn up six months later. The track from Furzebrook being retained for the export of Purbeck ball clay by train.

After four years of campaigning the Swanage Railway Society was granted a one year lease of the boarded up Swanage station in 1976 and the rebirth of the Swanage branch began culminating in reconnection to the national railway system at Worgret Junction near Wareham in 2014 thanks to an innovative signalling system linking the heritage railway with Network Rail. During the summer of 2017 the Swanage Railway ran a 60 selected day trial diesel train service to Wareham which saw four trains a day operate from Swanage and Corfe Castle. In 2020 the heritage line won a government grant of up to £50,000 from the ‘Restoring Your Railway Fund’ to pay for an updated feasibility study and business case with the aim of reinstating a train service reconnecting Swanage and Corfe Castle with the main line at Wareham and reversing the 1967 decision by British Rail to close the line following a review of unprofitable branch lines. The Swanage branch was not mentioned by Dr Richard Beeching in his ‘Reshaping of British Railways’ report which decimated much of Britain’s rail network. Dr Beeching was the first chairman of the British Railways Board – the successor to The British Transport Commission – and was hired by Ernest Marples, Conservative Transport Minister who coincidentally happened to be a road construction businessman. Beeching axed 5,500 miles of track, sacked 67,000 workers and shutdown 2,363 railway stations. This was a third of the track network and 55% of stations.