The Ecclesbourne Valley Railway is a 10-mile (16.1 km) long heritage railway in Derbyshire, the headquarters of the railway centre around Wirksworth station respectively, and services operate in both directions between Wirksworth and Duffield and from Wirksworth to Ravenstor.
From April 2011 onward, passengers are now able to board and alight heritage services at Duffield where in recent years a station platform (3) has been re-constructed. Heritage services are timed to connect with East Midlands Trains Nottingham - Derby - Matlock service at the adjacent Duffield Network Rail platforms and therefore it is now possible for passengers to travel to and from Wirksworth by train from anywhere on the national network.
The Ecclesbourne Valley Railway is named after the River Ecclesbourne and the track follows the river from its source to its mouth at the Derbyshire village of Duffield.
Despite being a branch in itself, there is also a separate half-mile branch operating from Platform 3 at Wirksworth Station up a 1 in 27 gradient incline to Ravenstor (for the National Stone Centre and the High Peak Trail, respectively).
It is currently one of only two heritage railway lines in the UK that operates a whole branch line in its original form, the other being the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway at Haworth in West Yorkshire.
The line is principally operated by one of the largest fleets of operational heritage Diesel Multiple Units in the UK, locomotive hauled trains operate on Enthusiast and special event days often alongside the DMU fleet.
Read more about Ecclesbourne Valley Railway: Stations, WyvernRail
Famous quotes containing the words valley and/or railway:
“I see before me now a traveling army halting,
Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)