APEDALE VALLEY LIGHT RAILWAY UP AND RUNNING
The Apedale Valley Light Railway is a 2FT gauge line that is operated by Moseley Railway Trust whose aim is to ‘preserve, conserve and interpret artefacts from industrial narrow gauge railways, including locomotives and other vehicles.’
The railway is situated at Apedale Community Country Park near Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, an area rich in industrial history with an iron works and several coal mines operating in the locality during the Industrial Revolution. These were deep mines; indeed Sladderhill Colliery was the deepest mine in Britain at one time, with coal being extracted from 2,145 feet below the surface. John E Heathcote and Richard E Heathcote sank such deep shafts in the 1820s.
Of course, narrow gauge railways ruled in such industrial settings for many years, so it is fitting that the Moseley Railway Trust has resurrected this line where a large industrial narrow-gauge network operated during the area’s industrial heyday.
The railway is located next to the Apedale Heritage Centre, which houses a free museum that looks at the area’s lost industrial heritage in detail. The centre was founded in 2001 and is situated on the site of Apedale Colliery, which had closed a few years earlier in 1998. To bring home the
