Amberley Museum Railway
| Amberley Museum Railway | |
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 Polar Bear steam locomotive
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 Amberley Working Museum route
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| Route length: | 0.5 km |
| Gauge : | 610 mm ( 2 foot track ) |
The Amberley Museum and Heritage Center Railway is a museum - narrow-gauge railway with a track width of 610 mm (2 feet ) in Amberley Museum & Heritage Center in Amberley , West Sussex .
history
Previous use
The Pepper & Sons lime quarry used to be on the site. There was a standard gauge industrial track that branched off at Amberley Station from the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway . The quarry had several locomotives, e.g. B. Marshall and Aveling & Porter steam locomotives and a Hibberd Planet gasoline locomotive. After the quarry was shut down, the tracks were scrapped.
Start time
The museum opened in the late 1970s. The first locomotive was a Hibberd Simplex diesel locomotive from the City of Chichester Sewage Works in Apuldram in 1980 . In 1982, the nearby Thakeham Tiles company donated its entire railroad, including Hudson-Hunslet steam locomotives, several wagons and rails, because a new conveyor belt had been installed in the factory. The foundation was made on the premise that all of the railway material would be removed in a single weekend, which is what happened.
In 1982 the complete collection of the Brockham Museum in Surrey , which had recently been closed, was acquired. This made it possible to offer passenger transport on the museum railway.
Brockham Collection
The Brockham Museum was founded in 1960 when the Dorking Greystone Lime Co. in Betchworth , Surrey ceased rail operations and its managing director Major Taylerson started the Fletcher-Jennings 'Townsend Hook' locomotive with a gauge of 972 mm (3 feet 2¼ inches) sold the London Area Group of the Narrow Gauge Railway Society , which they exhibited initially on the Bluebell Railway and from 1962 in a quarry in Brockham .
The two Orenstein & Koppel diesel locomotives from Betchworth were acquired in 1962: No. 6 'Monty' and No. 7, which was renamed 'The Major' in honor of Major Taylerson.
The Brockham Museum Trust was independent of the Narrow Gauge Railway Society , which owned the 'Townsend Hook' and 'Peter' ( Bagnall No. 2067) locomotives until the early 2000s .
In 1967 the present flagship of the museum was acquired, the 1905 built Bagnall 2-4-0T No. 1781 'Polar Bear' of the Groudle Glen Railway . It is said that the Brockham Trust had offered both 'Polar Bear' and its sister locomotive 'Sea Lion' with all wagons for £ 50, but could not raise that amount at the time, and instead only 'Polar Bear' and two Car acquired along with many spare parts by the Sea Lion, which was taken out of service in 1939 to keep Polar Bear running.
passenger traffic
The narrow-gauge railway tracks were laid from 1982 to 1984. Passenger traffic was started with the steam locomotive 'Polar Bear' and the Hudson-Hunslet diesel locomotives' No. 3097 'and' Blue Star 'until the Motor Rail Simplex 60S prototype' No. 11001 'was acquired. In the mid-1980s, the 0-4-0WT - Decauville steam locomotive 'Barbouilleur' went into operation. In 1993 'Peter' was added. Townsend Hook had to be taken out of service in 1995 because it could not be repaired at Eastleigh College .
extension
The collection was expanded considerably in the 2000s: an exhibition hall partially financed by lottery money was opened in 2003 and a new remise for the passenger steam trains and battery locomotives in 2005.
The 4-6-0PT -Baldwin Brigadelok No. 778 'Lion' was sold to the Leighton Buzzard Railway because it was too big for the tight radii in Amberley. The 0-4-0ST -Bagnall steam locomotive No. 2091 'Wendy' was acquired by the Hampshire Narrow Gauge Trust in 2006.
The track was extended in 2007 to the newly built Cragside station. In 2008 the diesel-hydraulic Hunslet locomotive No. 12 'with the manufacturer serial number 8969 put into operation again. In 2009, 0-4-0ST Quarry Hunslet No. 542 'Cloister' was acquired by the Hampshire Narrow Gauge Railway Society, where it remained until the summer of 2012.
Todays use
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The gala weekend is held on the second weekend in July. The Industrial Trains Days usually take place in April and October.
Rail vehicles
The rolling stock consists of a mixture of steam, diesel and battery locomotives as well as various lorries and wagons with a gauge of 457 mm (18 inches ) to 1600 mm (5 feet 3 inches). There are 45 locomotives , 8 of them with steam, 29 with combustion engines and 4 with batteries and 80 wagons. The vehicles are mainly from the Brockham collection, which was relocated to Amberley in 1982. The rolling stock of the Dorking Greystone Lime Company and the Groudle Glen Railway on the Isle of Man are a specialty of the collection. Of the eight steam locomotives, two are currently operational and three are being overhauled.
| Surname | serial number | Type | Gauge | Manufacturer | Construction year | Previous use | status | Remarks | image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polar bear | 1781 | 2-4-0T | 610 mm (2 feet) | Bagnall flat share | 1905 | Groudle Glen Railway | Operational (May 2015) | Next boiler inspection: 2023. Air brake. |
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| Peter | 2067 | 0-4-0ST | 610 mm (2 feet) 3 feet (914 mm) by 1919 |
Bagnall flat share | 1917 | Cliffe Hill Quarry Co. | Operational (May 2015) | Next boiler test: 2019. Air brake. |
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| Barbouilleur | 1126 | 0-4-0WT | 600 mm 610 mm (2 foot) nominal track width |
Decauville | 1947 | L'enterprise Gagneraud | Static exhibition | Privately owned. Should be overhauled. Air brake. |
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| Scaldwell | 1316 | 0-6-0ST | 914 mm (3 feet) | Peckett | 1913 | Scaldwell Ironstone Quarries, Northants | Should be cosmetically restored |
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| Townsend Hook | 172L | 0-4-0T | 972 mm (3 feet 2¼ inches) | Fletcher Jennings | 1880 | Dorking Greystone & Lime Co Ltd, Betchworth | Currently being cosmetically restored |
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| 23 | 23L | 0-4-0T | 559 mm (1 ft 10 in) | Wm. Spence | 1920 | Guinness Brewery , Dublin | Static exhibition |
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Movie and TV
The narrow-gauge railway was used in the 1985 filming of the film James Bond 007 - In the Face of Death , using the storage tunnel as a mine entrance. The locomotives 'HE3097' and 'Blue Star' as well as some wagons were then taken to Pinewood Studios to shoot interior shots in the mine tunnel. Many of the tilting lorries still have the ' Zorin green' color scheme.
In 2010, four of the Hudson flat cars were used at Pinewood Studios for the film Captain America: The First Avenger .
Web links
- Amberley Museum & Heritage Center (on Wikipedia)
- Amberley Railway (official English language website)
- Amberley Museum (official English language website)
Individual evidence
- ^ Amberley Chalk Pits Museum: Industrial Railways of the South-East . Middleton Press, Midhurst 1984, ISBN 0-906520-09-6 .
- ^ Ian Dean: Industrial Narrow Gauge Railways . Shire Publications, Princes Risborough 1984, ISBN 0-85263-752-7 .
- ↑ Gerry Cork: The Amberley Museum Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Collection . Amberley Museum, 2001.
- ^ Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Collection. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 3, 2007 ; Retrieved May 13, 2007 .
- ^ Mark Smithers: The Railway Treasures of Amberley . In: Railway World . tape 57 , no. 664 , September 1995, p. 33-35 .
- ^ DH Smith: Brockham Metamorphosis - at the Chalk Pits Museum . In: Narrow Gauge . No. 101 , April 1983, pp. 1-6 .
- ↑ JL Townsend Townsend Hook and the Railways of the Dorking Greystone Lime Co. Ltd. . Brockham Museum, Betchworth 1980, ISBN 0-9504720-4-2 .
- ^ David H. Smith: The Groudle Glen Railway . Plateway Press, Brighton 1989, ISBN 1-871980-00-X ( formally incorrect ) .
- ^ Image from the shooting of the film James Bond 007 - In the Face of Death
Coordinates: 50 ° 54 ′ 2 ″ N , 0 ° 32 ′ 10 ″ W.