Chappel and Wakes Colne Station - geograph

The East Anglian Railway Museum is located at

Chappel and Wakes Colne railway station Chappel & Wakes Colne railway station is on the Gainsborough Line, a branch to off the Great Eastern Main Line, in the East of England, serving the village of Wakes Colne and the neighbouring Chappel. It is down the line from and measured ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England, which is situated on the former

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

branch line from

Marks Tey Marks Tey is a large village and electoral ward in Essex, England; it is located six miles west of Colchester. Facilities Marks Tey is one of a group of villages called the Teys, also including Great Tey and Little Tey. Its main features includ ...

to Sudbury. Services on the

Sudbury Branch Line The Gainsborough line is the current marketing name of the Sudbury branch line, a railway branch line off the Great Eastern Main Line in the east of England, that links in Essex with in Suffolk. It is in length and single-track throughou ...

are operated by

Abellio Greater Anglia Greater Anglia (legal name Abellio East Anglia Limited) is a train operating company in Great Britain owned as a joint venture by Abellio, the international arm of the state-owned Dutch national rail operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen, and the J ...

. The museum has a wide collection of locomotives and rolling stock, some of which are fully restored, three are converted into Thomas, Percy and Toby replicas while others are undergoing repair and restoration. The Restoration Shed was built in 1983–4, before which most work had to take place in the Goods Shed or in the open. On event days, steam or diesel train rides are operated over a short demonstration track. The museum also plays host to two popular annual events: the Winter Beer Festival held in late February / early March (Timing depends on UK School Holidays), and the Summer

Beer Festival A beer festival is an event at which a variety of beers are available for purchase. There may be a theme, for instance beers from a particular area, or a particular brewing style such as winter ales. Asia * Singapore holds an annual Beer Festiva ...

held each September. During the festivals, additional late-evening trains on the

allow festival-goers to return home by train subject to provision by the train operation companies. There are no moving exhibits during the festivals, although train carriages are usually open to sit in and drink, with one wagon doubling up as The Shunters Arms at the summer festival. In addition many other event days happen during the year, such as Classic Car rallies, Forties and Fifties day events, SteamPunk fairs, Model Railway events, Plays and musical performances and the ever popular "Days out with Thomas" events featuring Thomas The Tank Engine.

Museum history

Formation of the society

The museum was originally formed as the Stour Valley Railway Preservation Society on 24 September 1968. The SVRPS was established at Chappel & Wakes Colne Station in December 1969 after a lease was obtained from British Rail to use the vacant goods yard and railway buildings, including the station building. The first public steam day took place three months later. The goods shed and station buildings were quickly restored; with a workshop being set up in the goods shed to enable maintenance and restoration work to be undertaken on the rolling stock.

The birth of the museum

The Stour Valley Railway Preservation Society was renamed to The East Anglian Railway Museum in 1986 to confirm its focus on representing railway history of the Eastern Counties rather than just operating trains. The museum gained charitable status in 1991 (Registered Charity No. 1001579) and became a Registered Museum in 1995. Since 2005, the museum has had a greater emphasis on interpretation and display facilities, a large variety of events take place each year to raise funds to support the museum's activities.

Steam locomotives

The museum has a collection of industrial steam locomotives, in various states of repair.

Operational

* Bagnall 0-4-0 ST outside cylinder Works No. 2542 "Jubilee" built in 1936 for the

Bowaters Paper Railway The Bowaters Paper Railway was a narrow gauge industrial railway running from Sittingbourne to Ridham Dock on The Swale in the county of Kent. It had the distinction of being the last steam-operated industrial narrow gauge railway in Britain wh ...

. ::Returned to traffic in April 2007 after an 18 month overhaul and now used regularly on steam services. ::Painted bright green and received some cosmetic changes to be

Percy the Small Engine This article is about the characters that have appeared in the books of ''The Railway Series'' by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry and Christopher Awdry. Unless otherwise stated on this page, the technical notes come from actual notes laid out by Wilbert ...

from

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends ''Thomas & Friends'' (originally known as ''Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends'' and later ''Thomas & Friends: Big World! Big Adventures!'') is a British children's television series that aired across 24 series from 1984 to 2021. Based on ''The ...

. * Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST outside cylinder Works No. 1047 "Storefield" built in 1905. ::Returned to traffic in 1999 after a rebuild. Withdrawn from service in 2005 and a further overhaul was completed in August 2015. ::Painted lined light brown. * RSH

0-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. This was the most common wheel arrangemen ...

ST inside cylinder No. 54 "Pen Green" built in 1941. (Works No. 7031) ::Entered service on 21 March 2008 following conversion into a form of

Thomas the Tank Engine Thomas the Tank Engine is an anthropomorphised fictional tank locomotive in the British ''Railway Series'' books by Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher, published from 1945. He became the most popular and famous character in the series, a ...

. Overhauled in Spring 2017, boiler ticket expires in 2027.

Under overhaul

* W.G. Bagnall 0-6-0ST outside cylinder Works No. 2670 '' Lamport No.3''. ::Built in 1942. Arrived at the East Anglian Railway Museum in March 2013 from the Battlefield Line Railway. Painted dark green, lined-out in red and yellow. This locomotive is currently undergoing overhaul. The locomotive will need new boiler tubes and a new firebox. * London North Eastern Railway class N7 0-6-2T inside cylinder No. 7999 (BR No. 69621) "A J Hill " Built in 1924, ::Returned to Service in 2005 after many years of sterling work on both preserved railways and the main line. Boiler ticket expired in April 2015. Currently undergoing overhaul, boiler removed from the frames August 2020.

Awaiting overhaul or on Static Display

Peckett and Sons Peckett and Sons was a locomotive manufacturer at the Atlas Locomotive Works on Deep Pit Road between Fishponds and St. George, Bristol, England. Fox, Walker and Company The company began trading in 1864 at the Atlas Engine Works, St. George, ...

0-4-0ST outside cylinder Works No. 2039 "Jeffrey". ::Built in 1943. Currently on static display outside the museum entrance, painted black, lined-out in red and white.

Diesel Locomotives

The museum has a collection of industrial diesel locomotives.

Operational

* Drewry 0-4-0 War Department no. D72229. :: Operational and on hire from Andrew Briddon Locos due to class 04 overhaul. Painted in Army Green and now a regular on shunting and some passenger duties. * Andrew Barclay 0-4-0 Works No.333 "John Peel". ::Operational but only used occasionally due to lack of electric start. Painted blue. * John Fowler 0-4-0 DH Works No. 4220039 7 "Toby". ::Converted cosmetically to look like

Toby Toby is a popular, usually male, name in many English speaking countries. The name is from the Middle English vernacular form of Tobias. Tobias itself is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew טוביה ''Toviah'', which translates to ''Good i ...

for Day out with Thomas events. Painted in brown and grey. *

British Rail Class 04 The British Rail Class 04 is a 0-6-0 diesel-mechanical shunting locomotive class, built between 1952 and 1962 and was the basis for the later Class 03 built in the British Railways workshops. History The prototype locomotive was built in ...

0-6-0 DM D2279. ::Overhaul completed in 2018 and returned to the EARM the same year. Painted in BR Brunswick green.

Under Restoration

Simplex In geometry, a simplex (plural: simplexes or simplices) is a generalization of the notion of a triangle or tetrahedron to arbitrary dimensions. The simplex is so-named because it represents the simplest possible polytope in any given dimension. ...

0-4-0 No. 2029. ::Undergoing heavy restoration. Painted black.

Diesel multiple units

Two Class 101 DMU cars are in operation at the museum. The units are owned by Diesel Unit Preservation Associates Ltd. DUPA own one other Class 101 unit (E51505 at Ecclesbourne Valley Railway) and two Class 108 units (E50599 at Ecclesbourne Valley Railway and M56223 at Llangollen Railway). Car number E56358 is painted in BR Blue with full yellow ends while E51213 is painted in BR Blue Grey with full yellow ends. Both cars have had their original pattern

tungsten lighting An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxidat ...

reinstated. No. E56358 and No. E51213 were regular performers on the Marks Tey to Sudbury Line until 1993 when all 1st generation units were withdrawn in East Anglia and were transferred to Manchester, both withdrawn from service in 2001, then stored at MOD Shoeburyness before being purchased in 2003. They represented the Class 101 DMU class at Railcar50. The unit is mainly used on Day Out With Thomas Events where it runs as Daisy The Diesel Multiple Unit. *

British Rail Class 101 The British Rail Classes 101 and 102 diesel mechanical multiple units were built by Metro-Cammell at Washwood Heath in Birmingham, England from 1956 to 1959, following construction of a series of prototype units. These classes proved to be som ...

DMBS No. E51213 Operational. Built in 1958. *

DTC No. E56358 Operational. Built in 1959.

Electric multiple units

British Rail Class 306 unit 017 was transferred to the museum in mid-2011 for a four-year loan period from the National Railway Museum. The unit left the museum in October 2018. In 2021, the museum acquired a driving vehicle from

British Rail Class 317 The British Rail Class 317 is an electric multiple unit (EMU) passenger train constructed by British Rail Engineering Limited in two batches, 48 sets being produced in 1981–82 and 24 sets in 1985–87. They were the first of several classes ...

unit 317345. It was donated by

Angel Trains Angel Trains is a British rolling stock company (ROSCO). Together with Eversholt Rail Group and Porterbrook, it is one of the three original ROSCOs. Angel Trains was established in March 1994 as part of the privatisation of British Rail. In ...

Concert by Blur

On 13 June 2009,

alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...

band Blur performed a concert at the museum, where they had performed their first concert in 1988. As in 1988, the band played to around 150 people in a goods shed. This concert was their first since 2001 and the first show of their 2009 mini-tour, which was followed by the band headlining at the

Glastonbury Festival Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemp ...

and performing two concerts in

Hyde Park Hyde Park may refer to: Places England * Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London * Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds * Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield * Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester Austra ...

. In November 2009, a

plaque Plaque may refer to: Commemorations or awards * Commemorative plaque, a plate or tablet fixed to a wall to mark an event, person, etc. * Memorial Plaque (medallion), issued to next-of-kin of dead British military personnel after World War I * Pla ...

was erected on the East Anglian Railway Museum by

PRS for Music PRS for Music Limited (formerly The MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited) is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes ...

. The

Heritage Award The PRS for Music Heritage Award is a ceremonial plaque installed in a public place to commemorate a link between a famous musician or music band and the location they performed their first live gig. The UK-wide plaque is awarded and funded by ...

was a celebration of Blur and the location of their first live performance.Plaque-Life - Blur Given Inaugural PRS Music Heritage Award
25 November 2009 ''www.allgigs.co.uk'', accessed 6 November 2020

References

External links

East Anglian Railway Museum website.Chappel Beer Festival Website.Events at The East Anglian Railway Museum website.
{{authority control Heritage railways in Essex Railway museums in England Museums in Essex