Бьюр Вэлли темір жолы: тарихы мен қазіргі жағдайы

The Bure Valley Railway is a 15 inches minimum gauge visitors' attraction in Norfolk, England. It was created on the original disused full gauge bed of a defunct passenger service to incorporate a new, adjacent pedestrian footpath. The railway runs from Wroxham to Aylsham (9 mile (14 km)) and is Norfolk's second longest heritage railway. It uses both steam and diesel locomotives. There are intermediate halts at Brampton, Buxton and Coltishall. There are 17 bridges, including a 105 feet (32 m) long girder bridge over the River Bure in Buxton with Lammas, and the Aylsham Bypass Tunnel under the A140 at Aylsham. The railway is listed as exempt from the UK Railways (Interoperability) Regulations 2000.

The railway is built on part of the trackbed of the East Norfolk Railway (ENR). The ENR started in 1877 when the East Norfolk Railway opened from Norwich to Cromer, with an extension from Wroxham to Aylsham in 1880. The western extension was planned by Edward Wilson & Co. in 1876, with the line being constructed by William Waddell at a cost of £44,000, initially employing 100 men, 10 horses and 43 waggons. The ENR was taken over by the Great Eastern Railway in 1882, although they had always held a controlling interest in the company, with the GER completing the line's extension to County School on the Norfolk Railway's line. The GER was amalgamated into the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923, and the railway was nationalised in 1948. On 15 September 1952 the passenger service stopped, and the line between Foulsham and Reepham was closed to all traffic, but the freight service continued on the remainder of the line. Buxton Lamas, as it was then known, closed for goods in 1964, and Aylsham and Coltishall in 1974. Freight trains continued to run over the line after this for two principal sources of traffic. From September 1960, the line west of Aylsham via Cawston and Reepham, which originally went to the junction at County School Station, instead turned south via a new curve at Themelthorpe to join a fragment of the old Midland and Great Northern system to reach Lenwade and Norwich City. Coal traffic continued to be carried from Norwich Thorpe via Aylsham to Norwich City There was also regular traffic from Lenwade in the form of concrete building components. This traffic ended in 1981 and the line through Aylsham formally closed on 6 January 1982. A weed killing train ran in 1983 and track lifting trains ran the following year.

When the RKF's parent company, RKF Group Plc, went into receivership in January 1991, Broadland District Council moved quickly to acquire the line from the receivers as it feared that property developers might seize the opportunity to take control of the land. The Council changed its mind before the transaction was completed and the route continues to be owned by Broadland District Council. In 2019 Norfolk County Council received £1.2 million Interreg funding to invest in refurbishments along the Bure Valley route. This was additional to the £10,000 annual maintenance budget the council employs on the line. In March 2020 the Bure Valley Railway threatened to take the council to the Office of Rail and Road over a claimed contractual failure to adequately maintain fences and structures along the line for which the council has responsibility.

In April 2020 the railway stated that they were in difficulties due to the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on their operations. In June 2020 the local media reported, that the BVR were in "dire straits" and at risk of closure due to the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic and the refusal of an insurance claim relating to loss of income, despite Broadland DC deferring their annual £30,000 rent payments until September 2020 and receiving a £25,000 Covid 19 support grant. Full relief from business rates was granted by national government for 2020/21 fiscal year. The BVR furloughed some of its staff. The railway was able to re open with volunteers on at weekends from 11 July and 5 days per week from 1 August were all staff came off the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. As of January 2021, the insurance claim remained unpaid despite a High Court ruling that insurers had to make payments owed under business interruption policies. In January 2021 the railway, once again, declared that they were in financial crisis, having lost £765,000 in a year despite having been able to operate for much of their main season. The issues were compounded by the discovery of major faults on two of the railway's steam locomotive boilers, the failures of which might mean that the railway would not have the required locomotives to be able to reopen if said boilers were not repaired/replaced. The railway opened again in Summer 2021, after the boilers of two locomotives were replaced.

In June and December 2021, the railway performed trials contributing to the development of a sustainable coal replacement for steam locomotives on heritage railways, in collaboration with the Advanced Steam Traction Trust (ASTT), the Heritage Railway Association, and Coal Products Limited. The first trial compared 3 bio coals to traditional welsh coal, and the second pitted the best performing of these bio coals against the welsh coal again, but under harsher conditions. The first trial found that a variant of Ecoal50 could deliver equal engine performance with a 28% increase in coal consumption, and this coal was chosen for use in the second trial. In May 2022, the railway won the Heritage Railway Association's Award for Environmental Innovation for their work.

On Monday 30 May 2011, a train on the line suffered a derailment at Brampton, during which wheels from one of the coaches were reported to have come up through the floor of the vehicle. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch were called in to conduct a preliminary examination into the incident, and found it to have been caused by the failure due to metal fatigue of an axle journal that had been welded several years previously (when the railway was under different management). It found that the BVR did not have an adequate safety management system. Following this accident all wheels of this design were identified by the railway and scrapped, being replaced by new wheelsets, and a new computerised passenger carriage maintenance database was introduced, providing detailed tracking of the service regime of whole carriages, and of individual bogies and axles.

The Friends of the Bure Valley Railway (FoBVR) is the volunteer supporting group for the Bure Valley Railway. It owns locomotive number 4 and supports the railway financially and with regular working parties of volunteers. There is a hut at Aylsham which sells donated bric a brac, second hand books and magazines during the season to raise money to support the railway. A secondhand book, record and DVD shop is open at Wroxham station.