Leighton Buzzard Railway

We took our daughter on this in the summer. Granted, she was only 18 months at the time so she didn’t fully appreciate it but it was a fun thing to do. It cost £7 per adult if my memory serves me correctly. While I felt the price was a bit steep I didn’t begrudge it as it’s a small volunteer-​run line. The staff aren’t paid to do it, which means it just runs on Sundays most of the year.
If you’re going to go on and it’s a popular time of year get there early. The ticket window only opens about 15 minutes before the train departs but as there aren’t that many seats (I’d say around 25 – 30) tickets go quickly.
There’s a café next door where the staff are really friendly and helpful.
The journey takes about an hour in total including a 20 minute stop at the coal yard to look at some old equipment and a small craft shop.
The first 10 minutes or so of the journey is rather spoilt by the housing estate that’s grown up along the line but obviously there’s nothing the volunteers can do about that other than continue to protest against further development, which they are doing.
All in all it’s a typical old-​fashioned fun trip out.

If you have young children this is a fun day out. The narrow-​guage railway is an old quarry line that has been preserved by enthusiasts and has now been in operation with increasing popularity for over 20 years. The line runs from Pages Park at the South of the town through the back yards and streets of the town to the West, over roads where a guard stops the traffic with a red flag, and up past playing fields and onto a terminus in what was an old quarry at the North of the town. The railway has about 7 delightful steam engines, some of them straight out of ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’. Be sure they’re actually running a steam engine on the day you go — sometimes they have a diesel engine instead. Kids love it, I know mine did — and afterwards they can run around in the Park to let off their own steam.