15th March 2015 - Rocks by Rail15th March 2015 Mid March is a little early in the season for many preserved railways to have started running for the season so, not wishing to travel too far from home, it was an easy decision to pay a first visit to the former Rutland Railway Museum, now branded as “Rocks by Rail” for a “Stanton Iron Works Gala”. It was about a 90 minute drive from home so there was no need to leave very early as the gates opened at 10am so we aimed to arrive just after then, nearly driving straight past the place as it is quite well hidden. The entrance was through the Sundew café, tickets cost £6 each with an optional £5 each for “lineside access” and / or £5 each for a footplate ride. The latter is not really our “thing” but the “lineside access” sounded worth a go though we did need to provide our own high visibility vests, luckily there are usually some lurking in the car boot! Cottesmore15th March 2015. 0-4-0ST "Sir Thomas Royden" places some wagons for a demonstration of the Ruston Bucyrus excavator. The first thing we saw was visiting loco “Salmon” giving passenger rides with two brake vans so we decided to hop on that straight away in order to get an idea of the site and get the loco for haulage as we didn’t know if / when it would be swapped. This loco was visiting from the Royal Deeside Railway near Aberdeen and had been procured for the gala as it is a former Stanton Iron works loco. Also booked to be working were the museum’s own Andrew Barclay locos “Sir Thomas Royden” and no. 1931 but the latter was suffering from some unspecified problem and was not in steam. AB1931 at Cottesmore15th March 2015. Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST works no. 1931, built in 1927. The “running line” was laid on part of the former Midland Railway Ashwell to Cottesmore mineral line and was steeply graded though less than half a mile long with a rake of wagons stabled at the far end. “Salmon” propelled the two brake vans carefully down the hill, pausing briefly before returning noisily to the platform. We did one trip then had a look round the site which had plenty of interesting steam and diesel industrial locos, many of which were not serviceable with some being in better external condition than others. A new three-road shed to house an exhibition centre was under construction and due to open at the end of 2015 and will no doubt help with keeping at least some of the collection in good condition. "Ludwig Mond" at Cottesmore15th March 2015. GEC works no. 5578 built in 1980. Viewing of some of these locos was helped by a roped off path which was part of a “nature trail” and led to a picnic area, the start of this also provided good views of trains coming up the hill on the running line. "Salmon" at Cottesmore15th March 2015. Andrew Barclay 0-6-0ST, works no. 2139 built in 1942 visiting it's old stamping ground from the Royal Deeside Railway. After taking a photo of “Salmon” returning from its next trip with the brakevans we went to watch the “quarry demonstration” on a separate section of line. This consisted of “Sir Thomas Royden” shunting some open wagons up and down and a digger which was miming loading then with iron ore. We could quite understand the wagons not actually being loaded as trying to get the stuff out again would be an awkward job to say the least! Cottesmore15th March 2015. Ruston Bucyrus excavator in action at "Rocks by Rail" the living ironstone museum, Cottesmore. The Industrial Railway Society had chosen this weekend for a visit to the site and as we were watching from the bank on the side of the line open to the public, they appeared on the opposite side and started closely inspecting the digger and train. We had been at the museum for nearly two hours by now so it was an opportune moment to leave them to it and have a break for lunch. This ended up being a cup of tea and a muffin from the Sundew Café, the far end of which was given over to an informative display of the line and iron ore mining history of the area and included a rather nice model of a large quarry dragline which was used to excavate the ore-bearing rocks. After this we went back outside to have another ride behind “Salmon” and a chat with the friendly staff who advised us that the plan was to swap the two locos over in the near future with “Sir Thomas” taking the “freight train” stabled on the far end of the running line for a spin whilst “Salmon” took water and replaced the former on the “quarry demonstration”. “Sir Thomas” made two runs with the freight wagons then the locos swapped places which meant there was quite a large gap in the brakevan rides, not ideal in our opinion as there were now more visitors on site and a queue had built up for the train rides. "Sir Thomas Royden" at Cottesmore15th March 2015. 0-4-0ST "Sir Thomas Royden" on a demonstration freight train. Now that the IRS had moved on we made use of our “lineside permit” to walk towards the digger and get shots of the wagon loading demonstration from the opposite side, being careful to keep well clear of both the machinery and the railway tracks. "Salmon" at Cottesmore15th March 2015. 0-6-0ST "Salmon" places some wagons for loading. Watching this operation for a while gave the chance for the queue for train rides to die down so we then set off back to the station to get “Sir Thomas” for haulage, doing the trip twice to ensure that both locos had equal mileage! One last look round then we headed for home via the Stibbington Diner, just down the road from the Nene Valley Railway - no haute cuisine here, just a decent transport “caff” where tea is served in mugs and good honest food is cooked to order.
Keywords:
Rocks by Rail,
Rutland Railway Museum
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