Chasewater Heritage Railway

A fantastic living museum  which preserves the locomotives that once operated internally within British industrial sites.

Chasewater Railway is  heritage railway,  close to Tamworth in the English Midlands that, uniquely in the UK, confines it's locomotive collection to industrial and shunting locomotives, rather than the main line locomotives found in most collections. This includes several colliery locomotives, as befits a heritage line based on railways which once served the local mines, but also includes locomotives from an electricity generation stations, a steel manufacturing plant, a wireworks , an asbestos cement factory and even one from an explosives factory. If  you visit more than once you are likely to see something different  as guest locomotives are often on loan from other heritage railways.

The railway has both standard gauge and narrow gauge ( 2 foot) systems and the narrow gauge system even  runs locomotives and rolling stock with a low headroom that were once used underground in the local coal mines.

The standard gauge track runs around Chasewater reservoir ( itself a historic 19th century canal feeder reservoir). Although the locomotives are all industrial machines that would not normally haul passengers almost everyone likes a ride behind a steam locomotive and  the rolling stock includes period  railway carriages which allow a choice of first or standard class (for the same price but first come, first served) and a selection of wagons and brake (or guards) vans (that are occasionally used to give passengers an experience of travelling  where the guard of a goods train would ride). 

Train ride tickets allow you to ride all day and there are some unusual touches such as period luggage, both on the station platforms and train luggage racks.

The museum has a collection of artefacts relating to both railways and the local coal mines. There are also two model railway layouts (with two different gauges), one at each of the two main stations, and the "heritage centre" houses a collection of industrial locomotives in various states of restoration with very good information boards.