WE’RE in rural Buckinghamshire but the station is frozen in time, taking us back to Cambridgeshire in the 1960s.
There’s the unmistakeable sound of a steam train puffing up the incline, but passengers wandering along the platform can also spot the odd emu or wallaby and hear the cry of a peacock.
Like Alice in Wonderland, you could be forgiven for feeling a little disorientated by the unexpected and slightly surreal surroundings, but that’s quite a common sensation among guests to Fawley Hill outside Henley.
Once described by Country Life magazine as the most bonkers estate in Britain, it is home to a restored Victorian railway station, the steepest standard gauge railway track in the world, a railway museum and more than 20 animal species.
It all began as a “small-scale” hobby of the late Sir William McAlpine, great-grandson of the engineer and construction company boss Sir Robert McAlpine. “Bill” had been given a plot of land on his father’s estate in 1959 and the company’s architect set about designing Fawley Hill, which was built in 1960.
Back on the platform at Somersham station a small tank locomotive has pulled in with a couple of brake vans for the short trip down the hill that will give visitors a better idea of the scale of the whimsical realm created by Sir William and Lady McAlpine.
Along the route are landmarks ranging from massive station facades (from Broad Street and Ludgate Hill), station arches from Waterloo and even a huge England-Scotland border sign.
The half-mile trip also provides a chance to meet some of the extensive menagerie of animals which roam the estate.
You pass under a footbridge from the Isle of Wight, a Midland Railway signalbox and a circle of columns which once graced the undercroft of St Pancras station. There’s a stone frontage from a parcels depot in Cardiff and an ornate cast-iron crest from Blackfriars Bridge in London.
For train enthusiasts, it’s a veritable treasure trove. Those large-scale relics in the grounds are gathered from all over the UK and beyond, but it’s the museum here which demonstrates the true scale of McAlpine’s fascination with railway memorabilia.
From the huge old wooden departure board which once stood in Brighton station to countless signs, paintings, maps, coats of arms, models, clocks…it contains a truly mind-boggling array of all types of memorabilia from the heydays of Britain’s railway network.
Over more than half a century he gathered together thousands of items which might have been lost or scrapped, playing a major role in rescuing the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway in Kent when it was in danger of closing, as well as the Ffestiniog and Dart Valley Railways.
He also saved the famous LNER Flying Scotsman locomotive 4472, buying the engine, paying off creditors and repatriating it from the United States two years after an ill-fated American tour had bankrupted its previous owner and led to it being impounded in San Francisco.
He and his second wife, Lady Judy, married at Somersham station in 2004 and the self-styled “mad redhead” has continued to make it possible for guests to explore his cherished collection since his death in 2018, helped by a small army of enthusiastic volunteers who are clearly devoted to her.
Our visit is on one of the regular open days organised for volunteers to show their families and friends what they get up to at Fawley Hill and there are smiles everywhere, as my neighbour points out.
“It’s a happy place,” he says as we survey the cheerful throng milling around the museum and station yard. “Whenever you’re here you see people smiling.”
The enthusiasm is infectious. He stumbled across the estate while out walking, when he was bemused to hear the sound of a steam train puffing up a gradient, and on discovering the existence of Fawley Hill, immediately signed up as a volunteer.
Days on the estate start with the feeding of the assorted animals which live here, from meerkats and lemurs to sika deer and playful emus.
“To see so many different animals milling around you, being remarkably polite to each other and to you, is surreal,” admits Lady Judy.
Bill became involved with the Zoological Society of  London (ZSL) when he built the narrow-gauge railway at Whipsnade, and started taking surplus zoo animals soon after.
With zoos constantly moving animals around to prevent inbreeding and conserve species which are dying out in the wild, there comes a point where “spare” animals need to be housed, which is when Fawley Hill may be able to help.
“Here they live virtually wild,” says Lady Judy. “We feed each day and there are plenty of houses and shelters but none are allocated and no one makes the animals ‘go to bed’ at night.”
The house itself is hidden away from prying eyes, though we know from articles in Tatler and elsewhere that it is every bit as disarmingly eccentric as the rest of the estate.
It boasts a hall hung with dozens of hats, a dining table dominated by a miniature train track with a tiny locomotive that delivers condiments to guests and a playroom stacked with every imaginable toy, not to mention a life-size Elvis and a folding floor that is a gigantic map of England.
Back at Somersham station, there’s time to take a final survey of the surreal surroundings before heading back to the outside world and reality: less colourful, entertaining and smile-inducing than the exotic fantasy land of Fawley Hill.
Fawley Hill hosts regular steam rallies and organised events and is available for weddings and private hire. For more detail about the lineside features, see Hidden Treasures of the Fawley Hill Railway.
