A fantastic day at the Rocks by Rail Museum!

When you work in something like a museum you always hope that you will get guests visiting and that they will have a great time. Bank holidays are always a time when you expect more people to visit but sometimes due to the weather, other events or just the cost of living going up you don't end up with as many visitors as you hoped for. Fortunately, for what ever reasons, the Museum had its best day since it re-opened after the Pandemic! Fantastic!

I was greeted to this sight this morning as I arrived.

All ready to give steam powered break van rides down the line and this is what it is like inside the brake van.

Today you could see right into the locomotive to see the crew driving it and get a look at the controls.

Half a mile down the line you get to the end of the ride before returning to the station.

There was also shunting going on with the diesel locos using a selection of wagons including the classic 16 ton mineral wagon and the standard hopper wagons..

The drag line digger was working at the top part of the museum but unfortunately I did not get the chance to go and see it - one of the problems of being a volunteer - you never get to see all of what your guests do!

We also had a couple of classic road vehicles on display.

This is a rare petrol powered Massey Ferguson tractor immaculately restore by one of our young volunteers and driven by hm to the Museum this morning.

There was also this beutiful Austin 7 from the era when motoring was an adventure!

So just how successful a day was it? Well for a small volunteer run museum the cafe sold out of just about everything having cooked over 80 bacon cobs and poured hundreds of drinks and cut in-numerable pieces of cake - oh and don't forget the ice-creams as well!

In this day and age to get a family of 2 adults and 3 children admission into an operating day with free brake van rides and lots of things to see including working steam engines for £25 has to be great value. Add to that you can probably feed the family in the cafe for another £25 and it makes it a great value family day out. Talking to people to find out their views on the Museum  is part of what I do and it is fantastic to hear people saying they have had a great time and will come back again. Hopefully 2023 will be an even better season than 2022 is turning out to be.