Devon Railway Centre

The Devon Railway Centre at Bickleigh in mid-Devon is a railway museum and miniature passenger railway operation on the trackbed of the former GWR Exe Valley line, combining a railway collection housed in the original Bickleigh station building with two passenger-carrying lines — a 7¼ in gauge and a 2 ft gauge — that give visitors active railway rides through the former station site and along the closed trackbed.

The Exe Valley line closed in 1963 — part of the same wave of West Country rural closures that eliminated most of Devon's secondary network in the early 1960s — and Bickleigh station subsequently became home to the railway centre in the 1990s. The original Victorian station building provides an atmospheric setting for the museum collection, and the surrounding Exe valley landscape of deep-cut riverside farmland and red Devon soil gives the site a strongly regional character.

The railway museum holds a collection of GWR and regional artefacts — signalling equipment, station furniture, nameplates, and company records — that document the railway heritage of mid-Devon and the Exe valley in particular. The working signal equipment and model railway layouts provide additional interest for visitors of all ages, and the combination of active passenger rides and static displays makes the Devon Railway Centre a more comprehensive railway experience than its modest size might suggest.