Newsletter: Autumn 2019

Autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Romantic yes, but Keats never ran a railway!

The ECO team are always busy keeping the site tidy and cutting back the rampant undergrowth, whilst the railway team have recently been extending the narrow gauge railway track. More of that later.

Railway Museum Fundraising

Thanks to your support we reached our £5,000 target. Visitors will already have seen some of the display boards arriving, although some of the QR codes on the boards are yet to be implemented (does anybody know how to pronounce those Swedish place names?).

We now need to create:-

• New boards for the yellow wagon explaining about goods wagons during the early 20th century.
• Timber steps up to the brake van so that visitors can go inside and listen to an audio presentation voiced by a 1920s guard.
• A further set of steps up to the Mountsorrel wagon. The inside of the wagon will be set out with white sheeting and benches as it would have been during the Mountsorrel Sunday School outings.

Narrow Gauge Railway

We have recently purchased 130m of narrow gauge track, which has allowed us to modify the route of the NG railway and extend it into a large loop to the West of the railway museum. A path will run along side the track to give visitors a clear view, whilst a post and wire fence will be added to keep visitors off the track, allowing us run the NG locos on a more frequent basis.

We are also looking at the possibility of adding a (wooden) “crane” which children can use to load (polystyrene) “rocks” onto the wagons.

Train Days

There are just two train running days left this year, Sunday 29^th September and Sunday 27^th October. Keep an eye on our website and the GCR’s for details of times and cost..

Recently the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) have been asking all railways to prepare robust risk management strategies for tight clearance sections of their railways. The bridge between Nunckley and Mountsorrel falls into this category, so, for the time being, trains will stop at Nunckley and will not progress on to Mountsorrel. The bright side of this is that trains can spend a little longer at Nunckley, giving you more time to stretch your legs.

Garden Railway and Crazy Golf

These will be open every weekend up until school half-term (14^th to 18^th October), during which they will be open every day. Over the next few months we hope to start landscaping the central section of the garden railway and adding further buildings including a “working” water mill. We have also recently taken delivery of Emily and James to add to Thomas, Percy, Diesel, Annie and Clarabel.

Greeting cards and guide book

We now have a 40 page A4 guide book available for just £6. The guide covers the history of the railway and the development of the site.

We also have a selection of 8 art deco style greeting cards, showing different views from around the Heritage centre site and the branch line. The cards are left blank inside for you to write your own message and cost just £2 for the square cards (4″ x 4″) and £2.50 for the rectangular cards (4″ x 6″).

Nunckley Nature News

The sunshine certainly brought out the butterflies at Nunckley this Summer with a bumper count of 56 butterflies counted on the wing over a 15 minute period during the national Big Butterfly Count. The addition of nectar-rich garden flowers such as Verbena Bonariensis, Erysimum and Eryngium added to the wildflower feast of Bramble, Thistle and Knapweed all around the Nunckley quarry banks and proved irresistible to a variety of stunning butterflies. Even the Hummingbird Hawkmoth paid us a visit during a very hot spell. Bumble bees, dragonflies and other insects all provided a rich spectacle for appreciative visitors. Other creatures further up the food chain no doubt enjoyed the wildlife for other reasons! Well that’s ecology at work; the ‘Web of Life’ in action.

Spooky Wood Weekend

This years annual Spooky Wood event is the week after Halloween on Saturday November 2^nd and 3^rd. The change of date is to avoid clashing with the steam train running the week before. We will be adding further details to the website nearer the date.