Richmond Vale Railway Museum volunteers Graeme Glanville and Peter Gunnell work to save the museum's rare vintage coal mine underground skips. Photo / AAP
A woman has escaped with her life, trapped inside a building as a bushfire ripped through an historic rail museum in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.
Volunteers at the Richmond Vale Train Museum near Cessnock are counting their blessings after the blaze reduced several irreplaceable exhibits to ashes but
spared the life of their colleague.
"Our secretary was here on site, she was actually in the museum building as the fire came through. Basically it passed both sides of her but she is alright, she survived," museum chairman Peter Meddows said.
"She said she didn't think about it at the time, that it bothers her now more than it did then."
Caught in the path of the ferocious bushfire, the Australian museum lost 2km of railway line as well as a number of restored historical trains and a coal hopper from 1880. The final damage bill is expected to hit the A$1 million mark.
