East Lancashire Railway
Real steam trains between Bury, Ramsbottom and Rawtenstall, with themed family days all summer - Peppa Pig, fairytale specials, the lot. The day rover means you can hop off for lunch and catch the next one back.
Bury Transport Museum
Bury, Greater Manchester
The building is the exhibit as much as anything in it: the Castlecroft Goods Warehouse of 1848, restored and filled with the North West's transport past. Buses, trams and wagons share the floor with interactive exhibits explaining how the warehouse itself worked and what passed through it, and the volunteer-run model railway is reliably the corner under-eights refuse to leave.
It sits a couple of minutes from Bolton Street station, so it slots naturally into an East Lancashire Railway day rather than carrying one on its own - an hour or so does it. It opens weekends ten till four, plus extra days when the railway is running. There is a shop, refreshments and full disabled access, and the whole place runs on volunteers who plainly love it.
Know before you go
- Weekends, 10am to 4pm, are the only reliable opening - other days it opens when trains are running on the railway, so check the East Lancashire Railway website before a midweek trip.
- Pair it with a Day Rover from Bolton Street station next door and you have a full Bury day: steam train out, museum, then the market for black pudding bravado.
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