The track has a peculiar foundation. In the early nineteenth century, the Duke of Portland built a system of flood dykes through his estate to irrigate water meadows along the floodplain. By the time the Sherwood Forest Railway came along, almost two centuries later, the dykes had long since dried out, leaving shallow embankments running across the landscape. The railway founders looked at those embankments and saw a free piece of engineering. The track now runs along the line of the Duke's old waterworks, which is the kind of repurposing that only really happens in England, where there is always some piece of pre-existing landscape ready to be put to another use.

The railway acquired its first two steam locomotives in 1998, started building the permanent way in 1999, and opened to paying passengers in 2000. Smokey Joe and Pet still do most of the work. A small electric locomotive called Anne handles works trains. A rail truck named Lottie Lister runs track inspections. A 1940s diesel called Pioneer, bought from Brocklands Adventure Park, sits awaiting full restoration and comes out only on special events. A diesel-hydraulic has been added to fill in. Another steam engine, working name Doodlebug, is under construction in a shed somewhere off the line. The fleet has the unmistakable feel of something built by people who simply could not stop saying yes to interesting machines.

The track itself is a study in scarcity economics. Pre-used rail, in high demand and short supply, was laid on used wooden sleepers in the manner of nineteenth-century light railway construction. The one-mile course includes a cutting, a tunnel, a level crossing and engine sheds, all packed onto land leased from the same farm that once hosted the Sherwood Forest Farm Park. The rolling stock is similarly assembled from elsewhere: four works trucks, twelve passenger coaches drawn from the Exmoor Railway, the closed Longleat Railway, the Bush Mill Railway via Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway, and the Lappa Valley Steam Railway in Cornwall. The three-car articulated set was rebuilt on site from the remains of three minirail coaches. Nothing here was thrown away that could be coaxed back into service.

When the railway runs, the engines move at a walking pace, picnic areas extend along the line, and there is an adventure playground and an under-fives play area for children who have come for the train and stayed for everything else. Refreshments are available. The countryside around is what remains of Sherwood Forest, the medieval royal hunting forest associated with the Robin Hood legends, now reduced from its full historical extent but still a real landscape of oak and birch. Riding a small steam train at four or five miles an hour through ground that the Duke of Portland once flooded for his cattle, on rails salvaged from somewhere else, behind a locomotive called Pet, is an experience that does not exist many other places. It exists here because a few people refused to let it not exist.