Brockham was initially offered the entire railway "lock, stock and barrel" for £50 which included both Polar Bear and her sister, Sea Lion (in a dilapidated state), along with all the carriages many of which had been badly vandalised.

The plan was to sell rail and surplus equipment for scrap and use that to fund the move, but arranging this on the island proved difficult.

Many of these were owned by Peter Nicholson, Rich Morris, and Michael Jacob who formed Narrow Gauge Enterrprises and arranged to create a museum at Gloddfa Ganol in North Wales.

This caused the search for a new site, and for a while it was hoped a move to Ravensbury Park in Merton was the answer, but this failed to get outline planning consent.

Then in early 1977 Surrey County Council purchased a large tract of land including Brockham limeworks, and discussions indicated a new lease was now likely.

However in 1978 Narrow Gauge Enterprises moved their large collection of privately owned locomotives and rolling stock from the site to their new Gloddfa Ganol museum in North Wales.

Included in this was the need for a substantial site lease term (21 years minimum), the need for a commitment from Surrey County Council regarding parking arrangements, and the need for appropriate planning consent for change of use to a public museum, and this last issue was to become a problem.

In 1981, planning consent for public museum was again sought from the local authorities and this time it was firmly refused, because the only road access was across an ungated level crossing over the British Railways line from Dorking to Reigate.

In the period in which the museum was active there were still industrial narrow gauge railways in Britain, and a small group of people saved some of the rarer examples of locomotives for the future.