Midland Railway Centre

We are heading toward the summer months when we all start to think of going out to play. Like most people we have our favourite places to visit and often these are places that we may choose to visit regularly. We consider ourselves lucky because we live within an hours drive of The Midland Railway station at Butterley. I think the first thing I ought to explain is where Butterley is, if you are on the M1 then you will need to come off at Junction 28, it is on the B6179 one mile north of Ripley town centre and if you have SatNav then put in the postcode DE5 3QZ. Obviously with a name like The Midland railway centre the focus is on steam engines and a ...  Read the complete review

We went to the Midland Railway Centre in Jan 2009 and can't say that we found it all that enjoyable or remotely good value for money. We paid just under £30 for two adults and two children. After paying we found that there were no steam trains in operation, just a diesel. I'm sure it was an old and venerable diesel - that could be why it still had its original graffiti - but to most of us a diesel is a diesel and is the kind of train you'd normally take from one town to another and is nothing special. The lack of steam was a big disappointment. We took the train to the museum site- the timetable is based around steam trains, but diesel is much more efficient so ...  Read the complete review

Midland Railway Station is set on the outskirts of the Derbyshire town of Ripley in a village named Butterley and is host to a wide variety of steam and diesel engines. Butterley Station was actually demolished following the closure of the Railway, and the station house that is now there was moved stone by stone from Whitwell in North Derbyshire. The remainder of the buildings and the tracks have been built since the Midland Railway trust set up in 1973. The station house not only hosts the original ticket office, but also a gift shop, where a host of items can be bought, they specialize in Thomas the tank engine goods, but a good range of hornby ...  Read the complete review

My husband is a steam railway enthusuiast, the rest of us our less enthusiastic about steam engines, nevertheless we all had a good day out at the Midland Railway Centre. This opinion does not contain a lot of detailed info on locomotives, signal boxes etc. as I don't really understand it all, just a mums view of the place. Although listed as an attraction in Ripley the stations are actually at Butterley and Swanwick Junction. We parked at Butterley where there is a free car park, which is actually a large field belonging to the local angling club. There is also a car park at Swanwick Junction, but although we drove through Swanwick we didn't see any ...  Read the complete review