The East Anglia Transport Museum incorporates the East Suffolk Light Railway
Close to Great Yarmouth the site is packed with railway and other transport items.
The railway is run using Simplex diesels and a return trip lasts only a few minutes including a far end run around.
The two postcards available are shown above.
Well worth a visit.
The Bristol Harbour Railway operates at certain weekends through the year and uses local Avonmouth steam tank engines to transport passengers along the dockside from a city centre location to the dock of Brunel’s SS Great Britain. There is a general transport museum located in warehouses beside the line that house a variety of exhibits with a local connection.
The museum shop does have a small selection of postcards from the Star Editions range featuring Bristol.
Based at Milton of Crathes, not far from Aberdeen, the Royal Deeside Railway is a long trip for England based railway postcard collectors, but one which will be rewarded with a shop stocking eleven postcards of the line (August 2017). There is also a large range of greetings cards produced by a local artist. The relayed lines do not yet reach Banchory, but the short journey has pleasant scenery.
My recent visit to Brechin was the first time I’ve visited this railway. Why have I not gone before – it’s got so much that I love about preserved railways.
The people are really friendly, there’s steam and diesel, the two major station buildings are authentic and I had a great time. The shop at Brechin had four postcards.
Set beside the A1 north of Newcastle the Aln Valley railway has great plans. A lot has been already achieved with a loco depot and vehicle storage building already providing cover to several resident items of rolling stock. The current running line is very short but steam traction is provided most of the time.
The shop has a good selection of wares including three postcards featuring Richboro.
Second hand postcards were also to be found in a fund raising vehicle on site.
Located within a couple of miles of Dollands Moor, the Elham Valley railway centre isn’t what it first appears to be.
You find a visitor centre and a segregated railway “station”. Within the station area is a signal box and several buildings containing, a super museum, a shop, and a huge model of the channel tunnel together with construction artifacts. There’s a standard gauge tank loco on a piece of track and a miniature railway.
The visitor discovers that the site buildings are relatively recent creations, with the old line alignment crossing on an embankment through the centre of the site at right angles to the “station”. Even the petrol motor sounds from the 7 1/4″ miniature railway locomotive are artificial as it runs on a battery.
All in all well worth a visit, and they even print their own postcards. A visit in August 2017 yielded four cards but a fifth was out of stock.
Elham Valley train rides
The Bishop’s castle Railway and Transport Museum have a set of eleven postcards available. The cards are not numbered but are illustrated below:
Full details of the museum can be found on their website www.bcrailway.co.uk
This is a very impressive transport and industrial heritage museum just outside Glasgow. EMUs running through Coatbridge pass either side of the large estate occupied by this museum. There are vintage trams running from one end of the site to the other and several completely different exhibits to view. There’s a reconstructed coal mine, a street with all the houses in different decades and some fascinating engineering items. The star railway exhibit is a locally built Garratt loco outside in the rain a long way from it’s working life home in South Africa. This museum has been open for many years and has produced postcards in the past with railway content. Currently, the only postcard available is one of the Garratt. Entry is free and the facilities are very good.
This post has gained priority because it was requested by a member. The request was for a list of all postcards featuring GWR 1442 which is preserved in the Tiverton Museum in Devon. The attached listing shows five postcards but made from only three different images. When Dr Beeching closed Tiverton station in the 1960’s one of the tank engines that worked the lines from Exeter. Bampton and Tiverton Junction was mounted beside the road close to the site of the station. When the new town museum was built the loco was relocated to it’s own inside gallery where it can be visited today. The museum is only about 100 meters from the alignment of the old line to Exeter which is now a road. When I visited the museum in 2014 it was selling the Unichrome postcard.
The full listing can be seen by clicking on this link:
If you are aware of any further postcards of 1442 we’d be delighted to hear from you.
The museum only has the one loco but has a wide variety of other social history exhibits and is well worth a visit.
Isfield station is delightful and if you’ve not visited it you must add it to your “bucket list”. I visited on a Sunday lunch time in September 2015 and the station cafe was busy. The cafe occupies most of the old station building with the shop on the adjoining platform. The line only runs for about a mile but there’s national interest in seeing the line fully re-opened by Network Rail from Uckfield to Lewes to provide a London to Brighton additional route. So time may be limited to sample a ride on this authentic heritage line. I have previously visited about 30 years ago and from what I remember it has hardly altered with the exception of a new loco shed. As for postcards, the shop was selling a set of four produced by Smartart and a card by Beric Tempest which I suspect goes back some years.
I have listed all the Lavender Line postcards I’m aware of here:
Lavender Line click on link to show pictorial listing
If you are aware of other postcards produced featuring the Lavender Line please send us an image of both sides of each card please.
