A North East heritage railway attraction is in line for a brighter 2025.
An extensive railway garden will be created at the Locomotion museum in County Durham. The Banks Group has given £20,000 towards the garden, which will run across the length of the museum’s kilometre-long site.
Lucy Hinds, executive assistant at the Banks Group, said: “Locomotion is one of the region’s most important cultural and heritage venues, and demonstrates the huge impact that the railways had on the development of both our home county and the wider world. The Railway Garden is a key part of the Locomotion team’s ambitions to provide an even better museum experience and we can’t wait to see how it looks when it opens next year.”
As well as being a place for visitors and local people to relax, the new garden is designed to encourage a population of the rare Dingy Skipper butterfly, which is listed as a priority species under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. The site boundary will be planted with a new native hedgerow, while existing trees will be fitted with bat boxes. Locomotion is hoping the garden will be in full bloom in time for the 2025 bicentenary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
Locomotion, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, is the sister museum of the National Railway Museum in York and welcomes around 200,000 visitors every year. It was founded to recognise the world-changing impact of the origin of the railways and Shildon’s pivotal place as the birthplace of passenger rail. The garden, which has also been supported by the Northumbrian Water Branch Out Fund, is part of a wider plan for the transformation of the Locomotion site and will surround its collections building, New Hall, which opened earlier this year.
Sarah Price, head of Locomotion, said: “The railway revolution had a significant impact on the natural environment, with new railway routes creating a corridor in which certain plants and animals could thrive. The planting design for the Railway Garden draws inspiration from the self-seeded railway lines found across the UK. This project will deliver substantial benefits for both wildlife and the local community, transforming an area that was previously wasteland to create new volunteering and learning opportunities for local people and museum visitors.”
View news Source: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/county-durham-railway-museum-bloom-30634264
