New Museum Building Project

There are some exciting times ahead at the Museum and visitors may have seen signs of this over the past couple of years. We are in the process of putting up a new museum building and extending the narrow gauge railway. The work put in so far has mainly been focused on the railway extension and now the opportunity has come to do some work on the building.

 

It will be a steel frame structure (approximately 30’ by 90’) and has been designed to blend in with the surroundings. We hasten to add this doesn’t mean we are going to camouflage it or plant trees all over the roof! One end will have café and the mezzanine upstairs will be dedicated for storage and archive purposes.

 

Time has not always been onside with this project, the planning permission alone took nearly two years to be granted, however it is time to get the ball rolling.

 

We are going to be running a 'crowd funding' campaign in order to raise funds for this exciting project. It is hoped to announce further details of this over the coming months.

 

Funding applications have been submitted to the Copeland Community Fund and the Cumbria Waste Management Environment Trust. Decisions on these applications will be made in March 2024/

 

Other funding applications are being prepared for other funders.

The new Museum building © M. Cuthell 

The Railway Extension

To join up with the new museum building we are in the process of extending the narrow gauge railway.

 

When completed it will be around 500 yards long giving our railway a total length of 3/4 of a mile. It will split the journey into two distinct parts, first the nice views (how many people view the Lake District) then secondly the heavy industry (the seldom seen side of the area) - the section already in use.

 

So far around 3000 tons of material has been shifted. Most of this has gone into the curved embankment, seen behind 'Sir Tom' in the photo below. Since this photo was taken a further 90 yards of track has been laid.

 

When completed we will have used a total of 600 sleepers along with 3600 rail spikes!

'Sir Tom' on the Extension, June 2020 © D. Chaplin-Brice