New South Wales Rail Transport Museum

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The New South Wales Rail Transport Museum located in Thirlmere, New South Wales south-west of Sydney, is a museum dedicated to displaying former locomotives, carriages and goods wagons from the New South Wales Government Railways as well as private operations in NSW. The collection features steam, diesel and electric locomotives and other rolling stock. A large proportion of the collection is owned by RailCorp NSW.

The museum operates steam heritage trains which run between Thirlmere, Picton and Buxton. It also hosts the Thirlmere Festival of Steam, in March each year. In addition to this, the museum operates mainline tours under the name Heritage Express. These can consist of day or extended tours, usually over a weekend.

1 History
2 Organisation
3 References
4 External links
5 See also

[edit] History

Established at the Sydney suburb of Enfield in 1962, the museum was forced to move in the mid 1970s due to a proposed redevelopment of the Enfield site by the railways, who selected Thirlmere as an alternative due to the disused "loop line" which could be used for train rides. The new museum opened in 1975.

The Museum was a foundation, management member of 3801 Limited. 3801 returned to the RTM in November 2006 after the RTM left 3801 Limited.

Historic events include the famous British railway locomotive 4472 "Flying Scotsman" visiting Thirlmere in the mid 1980s.

The museum played a major role in the celebrations to mark 150 years of the NSW railways (in 2005), restoring locomotive 3526 in 2004, for the occasion. They provided much of the rolling stock for a 150 years display at Sydney's Central Station in September 2005. 3526 joined other non-museum locomotives in shuttles to the suburb of Hurstville during the weekend.

[edit] Organisation

The Museum has over 2000 members, including an active volunteer workforce of over 300 and a small number of full time staff. It is administered by a voluntary Board and a Management Committee.

The Museum is accredited as a rail operator under the NSW Rail Safety Act 2002 meaning it has network access rights on the NSW main line rail network.