Mid Suffolk Light Railway (MSLR) has announced its full programme of events for the end of the summer.

Suffolk’s only standard gauge heritage railway, located in Stowmarket and known as the ‘Middy’, offers steam trains and other attractions every Sunday and public holiday, some of which it revealed last month.

In 1991, the Railway was rebuilt to recreate part of a line which ran for the first half of the twentieth century. In 2012 the MSLR was awarded the Heritage Railway Association‘s Interpretation Award, and in October 2014 was voted Suffolk Museum of the Year.

Sunday 20 August is Diesel Day.

MSLR has two operational diesel locomotives, both of which will be in operation:

• Heritage Railway Association award-winning Shredded Wheat Company shunter, a small, pretty engine that gives a steam-like effect thanks to its copper-capped exhaust chimney
• Ruston & Hornsby 165, which was built for the West Midlands Gas Board in 1951 and, after several other owners, arrived at the Middy in 1998, where it works as the Railway’s shunter and fallback and general-duty loco.

Sunday 27 and Monday 28 August are Model Mania and Hornby Collectors’ Days.

On these days, visitors can admire displays and layouts by collectors of Hornby and Hornby Dublo model railways.

Modellers and demonstrators will show off their trains, boats, planes and road vehicles, and there will be exhibitions from the Norwich Model Boat Club, the Thurrock Scale Model Club, the Mid-Suffolk Radio Control Model Club and the Gipping Valley Model Boat Club.

Sunday 3 September is Steam Railway and Vintage Tractor Day.

MSLR’s last open day of the the 2023 season will see all the Middy attractions in operation, plus the annual display of vintage tractors by the Tivetshall Old Ram Vintage Tractor Club.

Malcolm Root, Vice-Chair of the Guild of Railway Artists, will be attending, and will be signing limited edition prints of his latest work, an image of the Middy at Laxfield in the British Railways period.

Visitors on each of these days can enjoy:

• unlimited train rides
• museum
• shop
• café
• Restoration Shed visits
• real ale bar.

The award-winning Railway will be open from 10.30 until 16.30.

Prices are:

• £12 adults
• £6 children under 16
• £30 families (2 + 2)
• £10 over 65s.