There are two heritage railway lines within a few miles of us, the Great Central Railway and the Battlefield Line.
The Great Central is the better one - it has better maintained stations and more steam engines. But I'd never been on the Battlefield Line before, so that's what we did yesterday.
The joy of this experience for me is not the old steam trains, nor the nicely maintained ancient railway stations. It's the old compartment carriages that I remember travelling on in the late '70s, and the Battlefield Line has a really nice first class carriage.
(https://i.ibb.co/Q7tgyFqg/battlefield001.jpg)
(https://i.ibb.co/PGG5wC28/battlefield002.jpg)
(https://i.ibb.co/35VLJfCs/battlefield003.jpg)
The Battlefield Line only has about 7km of track, between Shenton and Shackerstone. Only Shackerstone has a proper historic station. But it's lovely scenery out of the window.
Nice. The people that keep these things alive really deserve praise.
We went on the Swanage Heritage Railway a number of years ago. A short line from Swanage to Corfe Castle. The nearest one to us is the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway. We've been meaning to that one for a few years, must get around to that.
https://www.gwsr.com/
Can't beat a Heritage railway. Being as I live just down the road from where George Stephenson spent his last years it sort of seeps into you.
Whenever we took the boy on holiday we'd always go on any nearby heritage lines and being as we mostly went to Whitby that meant the North Yorkshire Moors Railway which has a good length of track between Grosmont and Pickering and now runs some services through to Whitby.
Been on others including the Swanage line and the Ffestiniog railway. Only visited the Midland Railway centre out of Derbyshire's three heritage lines, that has a good three miles of track! Also there's the Barrowhill Roundhouse which sometimes does steam galas. Also like its London namesake does gigs, saw Rick Wakeman there, he really enjoyed it.