Museums in Dorset

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 26. Chapters: Historic house museums in Dorset, Swanage Railway, List of museums in Dorset, Bovington Tank Museum, Tolpuddle Martyrs, Poole Lifeboat Station, Kingston Lacy, Forde Abbey, Sherborne Castle, Shaftesbury Abbey, Athelhampton, Portland Castle, Dinosaurland Fossil Museum, Clouds Hill, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Anvil Point, Poole Museum, Priest's House Museum, Highcliffe Castle, Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, Bournemouth Aviation Museum, Lyme Regis Museum, Lulworth Castle, Portland Bill, Bennetts Water Gardens, Nothe Fort, Brewers Quay, Wolfeton House, Portland Museum, Dorset, Max Gate, Dorset County Museum, Royal Signals Museum, The Keep Military Museum, Dorset Teddy Bear Museum, The Dinosaur Museum, Wareham Town Museum, Thomas Hardy's Cottage, Fiddleford Manor. Excerpt: The Swanage Railway is a 6-mile (9.7 km) long heritage railway in the Purbeck district of Dorset, England. The railway follows the route of the Purbeck branch line between Norden railway station, Corfe Castle railway station, Harman's Cross railway station, Herston Halt railway station and Swanage. The line was re-connected to the mainline at Wareham, Dorset along a stretch of the branch line that had previously only remained open to freight traffic until 2005. Trains operate on the Swanage Railway between Swanage and Norden Park & Ride every weekend and Bank Holiday from mid-February to the end of the year, and every day of the week from April to October; with Santa Special services in December. The link between the Swanage Railway and the main line at Wareham has been used for materials deliveries, special excursions, locomotive and stock movements only- work is continuing to provide the infrastructure necessary to enable regular services via Wareham to be implemented. In April 2009 the line reopened to its first through traffic from London with occasional special services. In the future, the line could one day officially become one of a few heritage railways in the UK, to operate a whole branch line in it's original entirety. After several false starts, the branch was built by the locally promoted Swanage Railway Company. It was opened in 1885 and operated from the start by the London and South Western Railway Company. Subsequently the line became part of the Southern Railway and latterly the Southern Region of British Railways. In the 1950s the Branchline Committee identified this branch line as a possible candidate for closure. At the time such a plan was unrealistic for a branch line which carried so much seasonal holiday traffic. The closure proposal met with a great deal of opposition and was shelved. The line was not mentioned in Beeching's 1963 report 'The Reshaping of British Railways'. It is possible that it was omitted either due to political considerat