Bishop's Castle Railway Museum
Bishop's Castle Railway Museum
The original plan for the route was for the line to run from the Shrewsbury and Hereford line at Craven Arms to join what eventually became the Cambrian Railway near Montgomery, with a short branch to Bishop’s Castle.
The line was built from Craven Arms (where the company had running powers over the main line as far as Stretford Bridge) to Lydham Heath, as was the branch to Bishop’s Castle, with the intention of completing the unfinished portion of the line as soon as possible. Due to the precarious financial position of the railway throughout it’s existance this never came to pass, so for the whole of it’s life the railway effectively had three termini, with all trains stopping at Lydham Heath, before running round the train to complete it’s journey to Bishop’s Castle.
The planned triangular junction at Lydham Heath was never finished, and therefore with only two sides of the triangle available, and no funds to complete the work this inconvenient method of working continued for seventy years.
The railway follows the course of the River Onny as far as Eaton Station, crossing and re-crossing the river as it passes down the valley with the Long Mynd a constant presence. At Eaton the landscape opens out, and with the Long Mynd now behind, the line swings to the South down the branch to Bishop’s castle over open countryside.
The Society's museum can be found in School Lane off the High Street Bishop’s Castle.
The exhibits in the museum have been collected from a wide range of sources. The Museum is officially “Bishop’s Castle Railway and Transport Museum” and there fore has a variety of artefacts from the Bishop’s Castle Railway, other railways in the UK and various road transport exhibits.
Many genuine Bishop’s Castle Railway artefacts can be seen from tickets and paperwork, to the fire irons used on “Carlisle”
One of the main exhibits, which arrived in 2010, is the model railway layout “Lydham Heath” created by Barry Norman, which accurately depicts in S scale the station at Lydham Heath.
