History of the East Anglian Railway Museum

Below is a breif history of the Museum, for more details on the Society and its rolling stock please consult out Guide and Stock Books.
Formation of the Stour Valley Railway Preservation Society

The Stour Valley Railway Preservation Society was formed on September 24th 1968, with the object of preserving all or part of the recently closed Sudbury to Shelford line. The stretch of line finally selected as being most suitable for this purpose was that from Sudbury to Long Melford, a distance of some three miles. Due to lack of funding this rather ambitious project was unsuccessful, and the line was lost.

The headquarters of the SVRPS was established at Chappel and Wakes Colne Station in December 1969.  A lease was obtained from British Rail on the redundant goods yard, goods shed, signal box and station buildings. The members were faced with a daunting task. The site was derelict and without electricity, and the track had been dismantled in preparation for removal.

Despite all this, the first public steaming took place less than a hundred days later.
The only operational loco 0-6-0ST ‘Gunby’ carried passengers in a contractor’s weighing van over a third of a mile of re-laid track. In the following months a miscellany of rolling stock and locos arrived, the most important being the class S.15 loco No. 30841.

The buildings were quickly restored; the goods shed being used as a workshop and part of the station buildings being taken over as a book and gift shop, then and now a major source of funding.

Next Page - The 1980s and the transformation into a Museum