Bixhead Stone Mine

Explorer Tom Coleford's Great Western Railway Museum occupies a former railway building beside the old yard, so Tom has turned up in a cap and declared himself stationmaster. No one has granted him authority over a single train. The museum's shed, signal box and locomotives make a much better introduction to the Forest of Dean's railways. The railway yard dates from the nineteenth century, when tracks tied the Forest's industries and towns to wider markets. The museum, established by Mike Rees in 1986, preserves an 1883 goods shed and displays a restored Peckett locomotive, a working signal box, rolling stock and models. A small-scale railway adds another way to see the machinery in motion on suitable days. Stand by the goods shed and imagine the work of loading, weighing and dispatching, not just passengers waving from a platform. The railway's local purpose was practical, even when its surviving machines look splendid now. The museum's current site lists public opening on Friday and Saturday afternoons, with other group visits by arrangement. It gives its address as the old station on Railway Drive in Coleford's main car park. Check its event notice before assuming a miniature train ride is running; the museum and a running locomotive are different promises. Start with the full-size engine, then find the signal box and ask how one movement was kept safely apart from the next. Tom says his whistle was heard as far as Paddington. The museum's railway facts are more reliable than his lungs. Visit the little station with an impressively big story.