A History of the                                 
Sandtoft Miniature Railway group
by Bob Ashton                                                                                         Page 3

The 5 year planning permission for the Lecture Theatre had expired. A new station complex, audio visual lecture theatre, achieve storage area, café and station waiting rooms were being looked into with a design in keeping with the architecture of the Axholme Stores. In 1999 funding was found to be available in conjunction with North Lincolnshire Council for the construction of the new station complex and at the same time to purchase land around the museum for car parking a new depot complex, workshops including a paint shop for vehicles and to extend the trolleybus circuit for half a mile to what was the then the potato shed storage area.
The first of the estimates from an electrical contractor were obtained for a new power cable from the sub-station and the land that was to be acquired across the dyke behind the present workshop so these latest developments could be put to the museum's Board of Directors. However these plans could not be put forward as other matters took precedence at the STC Board of Directors meeting and were as a result shelved. 

Right: A former Dock Managers tin covered house on a wooden frame work from Goole and re-erected in 2006 now stands where the proposed new railway station building and waiting room could have been.

All the plans for these new developments ground to halt in May 2000 when for operational reasons the train service was suspended by the group and all operations ceased at an E.G.M. in June 2000. The SMR group then moved to Thorne.
This page was revised on the 17th April 2010. Our Introduction Page contains some of the activities we are now involved or you may visit the Thorne Memorial Park Miniature Railway website to see the activities of our members since we moved to Thorne.
Perhaps one day a new miniature railway will be re-built or even a narrow gauge railway especially as some of the land being looked at in 1999 was made available in 2008 and sold to the museum.  In the meantime the rail that once severed the former railway is still in store and the rolling stock is loan to the miniature railway at Thorne. Two coach tops are in store at another railway. 

Above lower three photographs taken at the Birmingham and West Midlands Transport Museum could this be Sandtoft in the near future. Click here to see more images and information about the museum.