In 2013, Richard Goulding began planning a miniature railway at North Weald station on the Epping-Ongar railway. However, the plans were not realised. 
In 2015 there was a call from the Epping Ongar Railway Volunteer Society (EORVS) for volunteers to try to revive the project and build and operate a miniature railway somewhere in the EOR area. To this end a new independent group of volunteers was formed, and so the Epping Ongar Miniature Railway Group (EOMRG) was formed and the Stafford locomotive of Richard Goulding who sadly died in 2015 arrived in the North Weald in the summer of 2017.
The Lodge Farm Park Miniature Railway in Romford, where our Stafford used to run, has just completed its track and invited Stafford to the opening ceremony on 29 April 2019. Richards family and friends from the railway took a ride behind the locomotive on the track that Richard helped build. To mark the occasion, we had a set of brass nameplates made for the locomotive, officially naming the locomotive after its former owner "R. J. Goulding".
In April 2019 EOMRG began looking for a potential site for a permanent layout near its home base in the North Weald. We approached a number of potential landowners, including Harlow Garden Centre, which has recently passed into the ownership of Blue Diamond. Blue Diamond were very quick to get back to us and expressed a keen interest in locating us on their land in Harlow. 
Within a month, a plan of the proposed route was submitted to Blue Diamond for approval. It included a two-phase plan. The first phase involves a loop around the main garden area, starting and ending at the terminus. The second phase is a track running south from the station to the boundary line and then west towards the M11 motorway.
In May 2019 we had a very rare opportunity to purchase the entire railway stored in a 40ft container. The Fenn Bell Miniature Railway, this was the line that ran past the zoo in the grounds of the Fenn Bell Inn in Kent. Unfortunately, the line only ran for 18 months. 
The container contained a virtually complete railway including track, signals, wagons, a freight set of three wagons, a partially built petrol hydraulic locomotive and a battery powered locomotive.Over the next few months the line moved out of the track area and around the start of the main line. In July 2019, several locomotives arrived.
Former EOMRG locomotives arrived on site, including the Stafford "R.J Goulding" locomotive and an American Giant battery locomotive known as "Bigfoot". Along with a new addition to the fleet in the form of a private diesel-electric shunting girth locomotive known as 'Jenko'.
In August 2019, the railway opened to the public for the first time. Trains ran along the currently completed sections of track for approximately 300 metres.When the first stage was completed, the railway had a full loop around the Gardens, a journey of just over a quarter of a mile And then the metalloid pandemic hit us and miniature railways across the country ground to a halt. For a good six months there were no trains running at all until we slowly started running trains again, which we opened with a social gap!
By the end of 2021 we were focused on the second phase of the railway. Plans for the extension were reviewed and approved by the Garden Centre and work began in early 2022. A phenomenal effort was made by our amazing team of volunteers who completed the project in a record 6 months! With the expansion, the Garden officially opened to the public at our "Miniatures and Models Festival 2022!".
In the meantime, our locomotive fleet has grown tremendously and the number of locomotives has grown to a strong 10 locomotives of all shapes and sizes! 

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