Vintage Transportation: The Great Laxey Mine Railway

This build is my tribute to all the volunteers and enthusiasts who put their time, energy and money into preserving all kinds of vintage transport. 

It’s inspired by a real life railway that runs in a former mining village not far from where I live. The line operates 2 replicas of the mine’s original steam locomotives (“Ant” and “Bee”) that worked the mine between 1877 and 1929. They transported excavated rock from the upper mine levels to the nearby “washing floors” where the valuable lead, zinc and silver ore was processed. 

When the mine closed, the tracks and rolling stock were scrapped, but in 1998, work began to restore the line as a tourist/heritage attraction. The work was funded by public donations and carried out by volunteers.

Nowadays the engines usually pull specially designed passenger wagons to give visitors a feel for what life was like back then but occasionally they put on demonstration runs, pulling the kind of ore wagons that would have been used in the mine.