The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East and West Sussex, England. It uses steam trains which operate between Sheffield Park and Kingscote, with an intermediate station at Horsted Keynes. After more than 50 years of separation, a resumed connection to the UK's rail network, to a UK terminus station north of Kingscote, in East Grinstead, is expected to open in March 2013.
The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers. It has the largest collection (over 30) of steam locomotives in the UK after the National Railway Museum (NRM) (though the Midland Railway, Butterley, owns more locomotives after the collection overall). The Bluebell also has a collection of almost 150 carriages and wagons, most of them pre-war, unrivalled in the south of England. A project is well under way to recreate a long-lost type of locomotive (a London, Brighton and South Coast Railway H2 Class Atlantic) from a few surviving parts.
The Bluebell Railway was the first preserved standard gauge steam-operated passenger railway in the world to operate a public service, running its first train on 7 August 1960, less than three years after the line from East Grinstead to Lewes had been closed by British Railways. The Bluebell Railway also preserved a number of steam locomotives even before the cessation of steam service on British mainline railways in 1968.
2007 marked the railway's 125th anniversary. 2009 marked the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society's 50th anniversary. 2010 marked the Bluebell's 50th anniversary of running services. To mark the event, the railway held a gala over 6–8 August 2010 with all available home engines and two visitor engines.
Read more about Bluebell Railway: History, Past Present and Future, Appearances in Media, Films and Television, Including Advertisements, The Old Line Towards Lewes, Rolling Stock, Twinning
Famous quotes containing the word railway:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)