last updated
08/09/2007
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Brook House Miniature Railway
This is a photo taken about 1910 of Guy S. Mitchell's Brook House Railway in Grove Road, Totley Rise - only a short distance from our own Abbeydale Miniature Railway. This was one of the very first 7¼" gauge miniature railways ever constructed in a private garden. The 4-4-0 tender loco is a coal fired Bassett-Lowke LNWR 'Precursor'. Guy Mitchell is standing on the footbridge. The house and land later became a private girls' school - now demolished to make way for modern housing.
The Station
The locomotive is a Basset Lowke, LNWR Precursor type. Guy Mitchell himself is riding directly behind the little girl. The lady in white is Mrs. Mitchell and the lady in black the children's nanny, Jane Smith. The Mitchell's had four girls (Lillian, twins Irene May and Emmy Isabelle, and Guyda - so the little boy must be a visitor - perhaps a relative.
Brook House later became a private school run by a Miss Dorothy Trott. Many traces of the railway's infrastructure remained - including Riverside Halt and the clock shown in the photo, and the old track bed paved to make paths - until in 1958 the Old Hay Brook burst its banks and washed everything away.
Any
information about this railway will be gratefully received and added to the
railway's history in the 7¼" Gauge Society and the Dore Village Society archives.
