Welcome to our dedicated page for the Swanage Railway's Museum located in the converted Goods Shed at Corfe Castle

LATEST NEWS: The Swanage Railway is now a member of the Purbeck Museums Group (PMG) which has been set up to promote the various museums within the Isle of Purbeck. Please visit the PMG website which is at www.purbeckmuseums.co.uk by following this link.

Some of the hundreds of railway artefacts on display in the Swanage Railway Museum at Corfe Castle, with the locomotive Secundus in pride of place. (see below for more details on this extraordinary locomotive)

No visit to the Swanage Railway is complete without a visit to this excellent resource. The Museum is both educational and fun for all the family, and admission is free of charge to all visitors - with voluntary donations gratefully accepted, of course.

As well as restoring the rail link between Swanage and Wareham, one of the fundamental aims of the Swanage Railway Trust is to preserve and restore for the public benefit items of historical, architectural, engineering or scientific value in connection with railways, and the museum is ideally suited to fulfilling part of this role.

A young visitor to the museum checks an old Pooley parcels weighing machine, with the historic narrow-gauge locomotive Secundus dominating the entrance to the Museum.

As can be seen in the photographs on this page, the spacious and historic Goods Shed at Corfe Castle is crammed with signs, tools and railway equipment from a bygone age.

To read a news report on the opening of Swanage Railway's Museum in August, 2000, please follow this link, and for more information on the historic narrow-gauge locomotive Secundus please follow this link. Secundus once worked in the nearby ball clay mining industry which now has its own museum at Norden, developed by the Purbeck Mineral & Mining Museum Group, part of the Swanage Railway Trust.

Swanage Railway Museum at Corfe Castle now boasts a cinema showing historic films of the Swanage Railway and the history of the surrounding area.

The Museum now boasts a fitted cinema in an extension cleverly provided in an adjoining carriage body and which shows historic films of the Swanage Railway and the history of the surrounding area. Many of these films are available by mail order from the Swanage Railway Shop.

Supplementing the history of the old Swanage Branch, the photographic displays also chart the progress made by Swanage Railway volunteers over the past 36 years in restoring the line to the first class condition enjoyed by visitors today.

The trackbed from Norden to Motala and the BR stopblock- cleared of sleepers and rail in 1972 - being cleared of undergrowth and trees by Swanage Railway volunteers in 1999 after 27 years of disuse.

The track was lifted by British Railways in January 1972 immediately following the closure of the branch, and has since been painstakingly relaid by volunteers. The Museum's displays give visitors the opportunity to trace the history of the reconstruction of the line to its current state.

The following photos show young visitors enjoying exploring the Swanage Railway Museum at Corfe Castle, which is both educational and fun for all the family and free of charge to visitors.

Young visitors enjoying exploring the new museum, which is both educational and fun for all the family and at no charge to visitors.