The site sat just south-east of Coventry, immediately adjacent to Coventry Airport at Baginton. The proximity earned it the nickname 'The Airfield Line', though it had no operating connection to the mainline rail network. The land had previously been part of the municipal water treatment works -- a rectangular field with no rail heritage of its own. In 1986 a group of enthusiasts founded the Coventry Steam Railway Centre here, primarily to preserve a Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 tank locomotive numbered 1857. They laid track from scratch, located rolling stock, and brought in heritage buildings including the Little Bowden Junction Midland Railway signal box. The site grew slowly. By the mid-1990s, with a small membership and limited funds, it had nearly stalled.

The turning point came in the late 1990s. One of the original founders retired due to ill health and sold his interest to a consortium of members from the Suburban Electric Railway Association. The tank engine that had inspired the original founding was sold to another railway. By 2004 the remaining founders had departed and SERA ran the site alone. The new owners had a clear vision: preserve electric multiple units, the suburban workhorses whose history nobody else was telling. In 2009 management passed to the newly formed Electric Railway Museum Limited, a charitable company established two years earlier specifically to give Britain's electric railway heritage a permanent home. The first public open day was held in September 2010. The first chairman was Graeme Gleaves. In 2011 the museum won the Heritage Railway Association's Best Small Group award.

The roll-call of preserved units was unmatched anywhere in Britain. Overhead-electric EMUs included British Rail Class 307 number 960 101 and its sister 960 102, BR Class 312 vehicles 78037 and 71205, and BR Class 370 vehicle 49006 -- a rare survivor from the ill-fated Advanced Passenger Train programme. From the Southern Region third-rail network came a BR Class 405 4Sub unit, the kind of compartment-stock commuter train that defined the Southern Electric experience for fifty years. The most unusual exhibit was a rebuilt First Class trailer car from the Liverpool Overhead Railway -- the so-called 'Dockers' Umbrella' that ran along Liverpool's waterfront from 1893 until its closure in 1956, of which almost nothing survives. Each of these units was the last of its kind. Once they were gone, the class would be extinct.

Alongside the EMUs sat a smaller collection of industrial locomotives -- the kind that never appeared on national railway timetables but kept Britain's industrial economy moving. The Ruston & Hornsby 0-4-0 diesel-electric Mazda, built in 1950, was operational. A 1953 Ruston & Hornsby 88DS shunter named Crabtree was undergoing restoration. The electric locomotives came from power stations: Spondon Power Station No. 1, a battery and overhead electric loco built by English Electric in 1935; Kearsley Power Station No. 1, a Bo-Bo Hawthorn Leslie of 1928; and the operational Heysham Power Station No. 1 from 1945, named Doug Tottman in honour of one of the preservation movement's stalwarts. Each told a small story about how Britain's power stations once ran on dedicated narrow-gauge electric haulage.

On 9 July 2017 the museum announced that the Coventry City Council land it leased had been sold for development. The site would close on 8 October 2017 -- the last open day of that year. The volunteers and trustees faced an enormous logistical problem: how do you move and rehome a unique national collection of railway vehicles, none of which fit on standard road haulage easily, with only a few months notice and a budget that was nowhere near sufficient? The answer was extraordinary collaborative work across the heritage railway community. By the end of July 2018 the site had been cleared completely. The Class 307s went to the Colne Valley Railway and the Tanat Valley Light Railway. The Class 312 components went to the Colne Valley Railway. The Class 370 vehicle went to Crewe Heritage Centre. The Class 405 Southern unit went to Locomotive Storage Ltd. The Liverpool Overhead car went to Hope Farm at Sellindge in Kent. The Spondon and Heysham locomotives went to the Battlefield Line and the Colne Valley respectively. The Kearsley loco went to the East Kent Railway. Nothing was scrapped. Nothing was lost. But the only place in Britain where they had all sat together, side by side, was gone.