Hi Mark,

Apologies for the slow reply - I've gotten very behind in moderating my blog comments - just so much spam :(

Anyhow, from what you are saying, I think you are describing the general area around what later became Line 76. The place names stood out to me because this has been the most troublesome line in my entire project!

I have a much more recent version of this project which I haven't published yet, and one of the lines that I gave a lot of attention to was Line 76. I'll email you an updated copy of my file when I'm done with this reply.

From the work I've done, this is the current comment I have about Line 76:

"This line was hurridly built by the Belgian military during WWI to supply the front along the rive Yser. After the war, in 1920, the Belgian State took over the line and opened it up to passenger and goods traffic. In the 1930s the NMBS did not want to pay to renovate the bridge over the Yser, so they closed the section between Beveren-Stavele (originally Klein Leisele) and Roesbrugge and split the line into two goods lines. I'm not sure of the exact date that this happened. The station are all listed as closing to passengers in 1934, but some sources list the date of the closure of the bridge as 1932. Perhaps the bridge was initially only closed to goods traffic, perhaps the dates on all the stations are wrong, or perhaps the date for the closure is wrong.

The two spurs, from Adinkerke (later called De Panne) to Beveren-Stavele, and from Roesbrugge to Poperinge, remained in use for goods traffic until 1942, when the occupying German forces ordered the line closed, and dismantled.

Because this part of Belgium is very flat, and because the line was built cheaply and in a hurry, there were almost no earthworks along it. This, combined with the fact that it has been gone for almost 70 years, has resulted in there being very few traces of the line in the Google Earth imagery. Hence, almost the entire alignment of the line marked here is a guess."

What became Line 76 only started in De Panne near the French border, so to get from Brugge to there parts of Line 66, Line 63, and Line 67 would have to have been included. If you started in Brugge and headed south on Line 66 you could have take Line 63 in Torhout to cut across to Kortemark, where you could have taken Line 67 all the way to DePanne, where you could take Line 76 via the front lines to Poperinge.

Much of that route still exists today, but you'd have to take a short detour via Lichtervelde because Line 63 is gone, removing the shorter direct link between Torhout & Kortemark.

As I say, I'll email on the latest version of this project to you. Hopefully it helps you put a few more of the pieces together.

Bart,