Suffolk’s only standard gauge preserved railway. Winners of 2012 Heritage Railway Association Interpretation Award, 2015 Suffolk Museum of the year and the H.R.A.’s restoration award 2021.
The Mid-Suffolk Light Railway, affectionately known as ‘The Middy’, was a classic case of a railway built too late for the great railway age. It never paid its way and was effectively broke before it opened.
It struggled on from 1904 (freight) and 1908 (passengers) to 1952 when B.R. finally closed it down, long before Beeching.
Today’s ‘Middy’ is not only a museum, but runs a regular schedule of steam trains, and has a serious programme of carriage and wagon restoration plus the long term project of restoring our own steam locomotive to full operation. Also there is in hand an ambitious plan to more than double the length of the line with the track already laid and destination station building plans approved.
We run Steam Railway days throughout the 2024 season – see web site for details and on running days you can enjoy a steam train ride along our currently 1/4 mile of track from Brockford station to Dovebrook. Our train’s genuine Victorian era Great Eastern Railway restored 4-wheel coaches are a historical experience for any passengers, especially the younger ones, to see and feel what traveling was like over 100 years ago in an Edwardian rural railway.
At Brockford there is a collection of locomotives and rolling stock, Restoration Shed, Workshop, Cafe, Bar and the MSLR museum, which is home to a collection of smaller artefacts, documents and models, which together tell the story of the building, operation and ultimate decline of the Middy.
