Mid-Suffolk Light Railway Museum

General information

September 1904 saw the first section of the MSLR opened for goods traffic and after additional engineering and safety work on the line had been carried out, it opened during September 1908 for passenger traffic as far as Laxfield, a distance of about 19 miles from Haughley. The Company was far too poor to complete the routes to Halesworth and Westerfield. Short extensions were built beyond Laxfield to Cratfield, and likewise on the Westerfield branch to a point close to Debenham, but these never carried passengers and goods traffic was sparse and ceased after a few years. The track on these short sections was lifted during the Great War .

There were ten stations - each station had a small building made externally of corrugated iron and internally of match-boarding. Locally known as the “Middy”, the main business of the railway was the carriage of agricultural traffic - cattle, sheep, barley, potatoes, from stations on the line. Coal, agricultural items and goods came down the branch.

In 1923 the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was formed to run the railways on the eastern side of the country and the MSLR was absorbed into the LNER in 1924. Traffic was buoyant in the inter-war years but, after WW2, road transport eroded the traffic away from the MSLR. Despite this, many pupils went daily to secondary schools in Stowmarket on the Middy - by the early 1950s, they were almost the only passengers. In 1951, closure was announced. There were the usual protests, but to no avail. The final train ran on Saturday 26th July 1952. Traces of the railway gradually vanished from sight as the track-bed was sold to farmers and ploughed up.

In 1990, a small group of local railway enthusiasts felt that there ought to be a permanent reminder of the line. A Museum was set up in the village of Wetheringsett, almost on the site of the former Brockford station, and our trains run over a 1/4 mile of demonstration line with original Victorian rolling stock.

Plans to extend this line are now under way, and it is hoped that work will start in the very near future.

Mid-Suffolk Light Railway is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England & Wales with Company Number 3244631 (and a Registered Charity Number 1063635)