Rocks by Rail

Rocks by Rail stands on a former Midland Railway branch in Rutland, a county of rolling farmland in the East Midlands. The site once formed part of Cottesmore Iron Ore Mines Sidings, where ironstone was loaded for the main line to Melton Mowbray and Oakham. A concrete tipping dock and locomotive shed from Woolsthorpe quarries survive exactly as they were in the 1950s and early 1960s. Visitors can walk past massive excavators like the Ransomes & Rapier dragline Sundew and smaller quarry machines still in their original colours. The museum occupies nearly nine acres and keeps the track layout of a working ironstone tramway. The collection centres on industrial locomotives and wagons that once served local quarries. Steam types include Hawthorn Leslie’s 1936 “Singapore,” a wartime dockyard engine now honoured as a war memorial. Andrew Barclay’s 1927 “Sir Thomas Royden” and Peckett’s 1912 “Uppingham” stand alongside Yorkshire Engine diesels such as the Janus class 0-6-0DE “DE5.” Diesel fleet members like Rolls-Royce’s “Betty” and “Jean” are regularly started for visitors. Brake vans restored as passenger coaches run on a 0.75-mile loop, giving rides through the open-air site. Inside the Simon Layfield Exhibition Centre three roads display more locomotives and artefacts. Outside, the quarry viewing area shows a reproduced ‘first cut’ face where iron ore was extracted. A Euclid dump truck and a 22RB Ruston-Bucyrus face shovel sit beside the cab of the giant Sundew excavator. The site’s exchange sidings once linked three private quarry railways, and a few last surviving ironstone hopper wagons remain on display. Every piece tells how ironstone moved from pit to steelworks in the age of steam and diesel.