Almond valley light railway
Climb aboard for a journey through time
In 1993, after another mammoth effort by staff and volunteer enthusiasts, land was cleared across the site to make way for a narrow-gauge heritage railway that now navigates our extended paddock feels, allowing visitors a unique opportunity to explore the surrounding greenbelt land and paddocks through a mode of transport used extensively in the mining industry.
Once a familiar and vital part of the local landscape and burgeoning shale industry, our 2ft 6in gauge railway, covering a 500m loop distance, is now one of only a small handful of operational gauge railways of this kind in the UK. Like the shale industry that they served, light gauge railways gave way to more advanced and efficient modes of transportation, improved road infrastructure and the innovative use of pipelines to transport oil.
Worked by Barclay a diesel mechanical locomotive built by Andrew Barclay & Co in 1970, celebrates the ingenuity of our ancestors and offers a nod of respect to these quite extraordinary industrial workhorses, that enabled the industrial revolution and helped shape our region.
