\t\t\t\tBrookside Miniature Railway is a time established miniature railway and is well known throughout the United Kingdom. The railway is situated in Brookside Garden Centre, Poynton, near Stockport and Macclesfield. Orignally as a 5 inch gauge \u201cthere and back\u201d, it progressed by stepping up a gauge to 7 1\/4 inch.<\/p>\n
In 1972, a 5 inch gauge railway was laid at Brookside Garden Centre. Although the railway was only a simple out and back, it ran almost every weekend and proved as a popular attraction. The locomotives at this time were 0-6-0T Simplex and 0-6-0T Speedy, both of which are now on display in the railway museum.<\/p>\n
In 1989, Brookside Miniature Railway was updated, to cope with demand, from 5 inch gauge to 7 1\/4 inch gauge. To go with the \u201cnew railway\u201d, a 4 platform station with 2 turntables, booking office and station canopy was built. This was designed to give maximum\u00a0operation flexibility in busy periods. The railway ran for 1\/4 mile up to the garden centre, round the swimming pool and back to Brookside Central.\u00a0Locomotives that ran on the railway mainly were 0-4-2T \u2018Princess\u2019 and 0-4-2T \u2018Lady Pauline\u2019 on the steam side. \u2018Annie\u2019, D1706 \u2018Thor\u2019 and Class 47 \u2018Brookside\u2019 were the main diesels along side others. Most of the original locomotives now work at the Dragon Miniature Railway, Marple.<\/p>\n
In 1999, the railway expanded even further. The layout of the railway was changed from a \u201cballoon loop and terminus\u201d to a continuous circuit. As a result of this, another tunnel had to be built to carry the road over the top. Beyond this a 60ft cutting had to be dug out to allow the railway to be built. This is on a ruling gradient of 1 in 36.\u00a0New and more powerful locomotives had to be purchased\u00a0in order to cope with the larger run. 0-4-2T \u2018Jean\u2019 was bought from Exmoor Steam Railway in 2000 and was so\u00a0successful, 0-4-2T \u2018Jane\u2019 was purchased within a few months. Also in 2000, Mighty Max \u2013 petrol hydraulic was built by Knightley Light Railway. By far the biggest locomotive at Brookside. The steam fleet increased in 2002 with 2-4-2T \u2018Billy May\u2019 and further in 2003\/4 with \u2018Amy Louise\u2019 from Exmoor.<\/p>\n
In 2007, a further extension was made over the river and into the old overflow car park.The new extension has 2 bridges and a small station halt \u2013 Bridge of Orchy. There is a large\u00a0space in the middle for the Country Fairground run by the Keeling Family on certain weekends. This gave the railway an extra 2 \u2013 3 minutes on journey time.<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brookside Miniature Railway is a time established miniature railway and is well known throughout the United Kingdom. The railway is situated in Brookside Garden Centre, Poynton, near Stockport and Macclesfield. Orignally as a 5 inch gauge \u201cthere and back\u201d, it progressed by stepping up a gauge to 7 1\/4 inch. In 1972, a 5 inch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4303,4286],"tags":[534,653,3072],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brookside-garden-centre-miniature-railway","category-transport","tag-brookside-garden-centre-miniature-railway","tag-cheshire","tag-transport","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6OeSW-51","jetpack-related-posts":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}