Bluebell Railway Museum

The Bluebell Museum collects, preserves, interprets and makes accessible to the public, artefacts, history, customs, practice and skills relating specifically to the Bluebell Railway and generally to the railways in the South of England. 

The Heritage Lottery Funded Museum building is on platform 2 at Sheffield Park Station.

The Carriage Works at Horsted Keynes has a visitor centre displaying details of the work being done to restore the rolling stock used on the Bluebell Railway. Historical information is also provided charting the development of coaches and wagons. 

At Kingscote the Goods Yard at the north end of the station is being recreated to represent a typical wayside station goods yard of the 1950/60s.

The Bluebell Railway Museum Archive will contain all the reference material and photographs in the care of the Museum. 

The reference material contains public timetables, working timetables, guide books, general reference books and much more. We already have a vast collection of material from the very early days of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway up to British Railways end of steam. Though biased towards the railways of South East England all the pre-grouping areas of the Southern Railway are represented. Archive material will be made available for research purposes. 

The photographic archive is huge, containing many 1000s of photographs of, mainly, southern interest. Effort is already being made on cataloguing this material and the first three collections are already available.

School Visits

The Bluebell Railway is based at Sheffield Park Station, East Sussex, TN22 3QL, on the A275 some two miles north of the A272 and midway between Haywards Heath (7 miles) and Uckfield (8 miles). It runs some 11 miles north from Sheffield Park to Horsted Keynes, Kingscote and East Grinstead where it connects with Southern mainline trains. In all it provides a 22 mile round trip. The Railway's four stations, its locomotives and its rolling stock cover a period of railway history from the 1870s to the 1950s and as such provide children with a unique insight into a way of life that has largely disappeared from the United Kingdom today.

Visits can be tailored to meet specific teaching needs relating to the National Curriculum, or to provide experience of specific events, such as WWII evacuation exercises, or occasions, such as enrichment days.

Trains normally depart Sheffield Park Station for the 1 hour 40 minute return journey but other arrangements are possible.