Midland Railway Station - Butterley to Swanwick
For the bank holiday weekend and in continuation of what appears to be the Theaker family's exploration of the Midlands Industrial past, we visited the Midland Railway Station today, about two weeks after the brilliant Papplewick Pumping Station. We seem to be a family obsessed by steam at the moment.
Another bonus of the day happened to be it was on their 'Vintage Steam Weekend', hence we were pulled along by this steam powered beastie and our carriages were varying from old pullmans to old 3rd class benched compartment carriages, the ones we ended up in!
This weekend we went to Butterley where the main station is based for deaprtures, not the best part of the track as that would be Swanwick junction, because Grace's Nanny was up and we thought they'd enjoy the time out. The attraction itself is actually, free entry. What you pay for is the train rides to and from Butterley to Swanwick Junction (There is the opportunity to walk the distance too, should you not wish to pay). We went on the trains and the children, who were under 5 went free, so we only paid for 2 adults and an OAP, or more kindly an over 60! I laugh at my mother's age, sadly realising that as she ages, then so do I.
The station itself was fairly neat and tidy, with one diamond little hut that held a very large, indoor train set of about 8 tracks and filled the whole building, the length of the set must have been approximately 4 metres and 2 metres wide. When you are dealing with miniature trains, that is quite a vast size, so the display was very impressive, with roads, cars, recreated welding in a few lock up's under one of the tracks but the really star of that was they had a DR WHO tardis suspend from a rotating wire spinning around the tracks in mid air, which was great fun. It was also manned, when we viewed it, by a very stressed out train enthusiast who was struggling with the electrics to power all the trains, whose desperate pleas for help, fell on our deaf ears but he did explain he was left on his 'Jack Jones'. We left the building as he was attempting to fish a locomotive out of a tunnel!
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| Our Chariot Awaits! |
The actual journey itself wasn't one you would specifically call fantastic when you measured the scenerio against others, such as the Paignton to Kingswear Steam railway or the North Yorkshire Moors railway, who benefit from a great location and amazing scenery. This is one area that the Butterley to Swanwick struggles I think in the lack of stunning scenery, but they more than make up for it by what awaits you at Swanwick Junction. It really was a tiny little 'hidden' gem. We arrived at a good station site, as we disembarked you could see a child's play park, A Signal box you could climb up to, a re-constructed old pre-fab church for which they received an award for doing so. There was also a small cafe bar, which looked like it had been there since 1950 and hadn't been decorated since its opening day. But there was a large green space with benches for our sandwich lunch!
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| Signal Box |
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| Inside of the Pre-fab Church |
Over from the signal box and the grass area where the Museum sheds, you can see them here.
What I thought would be engine sheds turned out to be two, separate units. One housed a working Bus museum where you can look at the buses from behind a roped off area. The real surprise of the whole day, one that even I would never have considered was waiting for us in Unit 2!
Yes, it turned out to be the 'National Fork Truck Heritage Centre', if only in dreams could such a place have ever existed, but no, here in Derbyshire they have claimed to be the centre of the UK's fork lift truck world, and, do you what....It really, really was. I have never seen so many and varied styles of fork lift trucks.
I was almost dumbstruck, by a) the fact someone had even created such a place and b) seemed to have bought the worlds supply of fork lift trucks to then put into this place!
Just one row of fork lift trucks, my daughter as you can see is perusing the variety on offer!
Yet, to all intents and purposes it was a warehouse full of fork lift trucks. Truly, a most bizarre experience!
After the excitement of discovering the UK heart of the fork lift heritage world it was time to move on and return to whence we came and we embarked onto the train and were swiftly steamed back to Butterley. Both the children seemed to have a lovely time, my daughter is becoming a little train anorak as this will be her 4th steam train journey, 3 in the UK and 1 in the south of France. For the boy he loved the 'garden' miniature railway!
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