Town's old railway is new museum

By Joe Pignatiello
BBC Northampton

Years of hard work has gone into restoring the old railway building

Rushden was one of the passenger branch lines cut in the Beeching report, but the building remains to this day housing a historic transport museum.

In 1976 The Rushden Historic Transport Society was formed to preserve the station for future generations.

They were faced with a derelict building and a platform full of scrap and rubbish.

After years of hard work, Rushden Railway Station is now a historic transport museum.

Walking past the perfectly restored red brick building, coated in old enamel signs, you can still almost smell the steam and hear the iron giants thundering by.

The Rushden Historic Transport Society says its aim is to re-open the Midland Railway branch line, which ran between Wellingborough and Higham Ferrers.

At the moment, a quarter mile of the line has been re-laid at Rushden Station and is used for demonstration runs on certain weekends.

Plans in the pipeline include extending the track a further three quarters of a mile towards Higham and reinstating the rail bridge over the A6 - now that the road has been de-trunked - enabling one mile of line to be laid towards Wellingborough.