The photographs in these railway photograph galleries are available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Attribution should include a link to www.nigeltout.com.
The entrance and car park for Snibston Discovery Museum, photographed shortly before closure in July 2015. On the left is the Robert Stephenson designed lifting bridge for the Leicester and Swannington Railway in Leicester. To the right is the excavator “BENNIE”.
The Robert Stephenson designed lifting bridge for the Leicester and Swannington Railway in Leicester reconstructed at the front of the museum with a typical wooden-bodied coal wagon that was displayed for many years.
“BENNIE”, a Ruston-Bucyrus 54RB diesel-powered dragline. This excavator was built in 1957 for the Eastwell Iron Ore Company. It was later acquired by Peter Bennie Ltd, who used it for dragline operations at a Leicestershire facility before donating it to the Snibston Discovery Museum in 1995. Following the closure of the Snibston Discovery Museum the 65-ton excavator was rescued in 2016, with assistance from the CPA (Construction Plant-hire Association), it was moved to the Vintage Excavator Trust at Threlkeld Quarry in the Lake District for restoration.
Diesel shunter “PITT” and coach crossing the entrance road to the Snibston Discovery Museum and heading back to the the main site. The rails stretched, to the left, a couple of hundred yards to the north of the museum which lies behind and to the right of the camera.
Looking north along the railway platform used occasionally for the short train rides through the Snibston site. The main museum building is on the left and the closed gates of the level crossing in the previous photograph can be seen in the distance.
The activity area outside the main museum building. The railway in the previous photograph lies beyond the fence on the right. There is a 360 degree panorama photograph of this area.
Turning round and looking southwards outside the main museum building. The railway heads through the site just the other side of the fence, overlooked by the signal box which was relocated here from the level crossing on the main road through Coalville. In the centre is one of the two shafts of Snibston Colliery with some of the remaining colliery buildings.
Mine underground railway equipment under the bridge seen in the previous photograph. This was about the southern extent of public access on the Discovery Museum site.
View looking north from the public footbridge outside the museum site over the railway tracks. The two sets of colliery shaft headgear are on the right among the colliery buildings, while the main Discovery Museum building is some distance behind the building on the left, which was used for storage. The building on the right was the ‘Midland Red’ bus garage.
Visiting vertical boiler steam tram locomotive, built by Cockerill in Belgium, gives train rides in the passenger coach south out of the site in 2001.
The train has just past under the footpath bridge from which the previous two photographs were taken. The locomotive carries ‘THE PADDY’ headboard in homage to trains carrying miners to and from the mines which had often been called ‘Paddy Trains’.
‘THE PADDY’ train at the terminus platform of the railway about half a mile south of Snibston Discovery Museum. Since closure of the museum the railway track along here has been removed and replaced with a foot and cycle path through the Discovery Park.
Snibston Discovery Museum - Outside