Mangapps Farm Railway Museum is a privately-owned working steam and diesel museum on a 390-acre site at Burnham on Crouch in Essex.

Despite its obvious attachment to the past, the museum has not ignored the digital age - in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Community web editor at This Is Essex HELEN STANIFORTH talked to one of the partners in the family business, John Jolly, about how the internet is doing wonders for steam and diesel trains.

The past and the future go hand in hand at a railway museum which has boosted its profile thanks to a decision to go online.

The owners of Mangapps Farm Railway Museum, Burnham on Crouch, have been amazed by the interest in their website, which was created by This Is Essex, the online media organisation owned by two of the largest newspaper publishers in the county.

"George Stephenson was at the cutting edge of technology in his time and today we're at the cutting edge by being on the internet," said John Jolly.

"We realised a couple of years ago that the internet was the thing of the future as far as the public was concerned. So far it has been very encouraging," he continued.

John owns and runs the business along with his wife June, son James, a partner in the business, and daughter Catherine, who oversees the retail side of large events.

The family have noticed more people are visiting the museum from further afield, although they cannot attribute this entirely to the internet site.

Yet although it's impossible to quantify exactly how much of their business is internet-generated, they do know that their venture into the world of cyberspace is arousing a great deal of interest after examining the numbers of people visiting their site. Since the museum went online in November 1998, they have attracted just under 13,400 page impressions - and each day it continues to rise.

"We needed to get our name seen further afield and more and more people are using the internet. We had wanted to produce a proper guide book but we have such a large collection that we could not do it efficiently," said John.

"Very few people would have been able to afford to buy it so the internet is good because we can get sufficient information and detail on the site.

"Being on a site attracts other people in. People are looking for something to do in Essex and only a minority of visitors are railway buffs. Fifty percent of our business comes from Thomas and children's events such as Santa specials. There is a whole generation growing up on the net."

"The advantage to us using This Is Essex is that they do a lot of the work for you. In fact we got on the web before we got our own computer!" "Having the internet and a computer is becoming as common as it was to have a TV in the 60's.

"If anyone had asked us 10-years ago whether we would be on the internet, they would not have realised themselves the impact that the internet could have on business," he said.

The museum has certainly come a long way since it first began, although John says it was never a planned decision.

"It started off as a private collection which developed over a number of years and then 12 or 13 years ago we decided to open to the public," said John.

"We brought larger items in like buildings, we had some redundant farm buildings and it has grown from that. The museum opened in August 1989 and it just continued to develop since then," he continued.

John sees the museum as preserving history and being educational as well as being entertaining, although this aspect of the museum has grown greatly through special events aimed at children.

John's museum may be planted well and truly in the past but his attitude to running his business certainly isn't.

"In terms of the future, new things come along which we had not thought of. In 10-years time who knows where we are going to be?

"But we've certainly got to keep people's interest," said John, who is giving serious thought to e-commerce and what it could do for their business.

"E-commerce would be very useful. We could not manage bookings unless the computer was doing it all," he continued.

Whatever the future holds for Mangapps Farm, it seems certain that the museum will continue to embrace new technology as the perfect compliment to its enthusiasm for history.

John Jolly dressed in an Edwardian station master's uniform

One of the trains at the museum (right)

Pictures: Mangapps Farm Railway Museum

Click here if you want to find out more about Mangapps Farm Railway Museum

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