Pete Waterman launches steam rail fundraising bid
RAIL enthusiast and music mogul Pete Waterman has launched a campaign to raise the £1.25million needed to reopen a new railway station in Broadway over 50 years after the old one was closed and demolished.
Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway is currently working on an ambitious extension to the town, but the track currently stops a mile short.
And the volunteer-run group has launched a share offer - called Broadway: The Last Mile - to raise the cash needed to close that one-mile gap.
Today, Wednesday, Pete was among a number of guests at the launch who saw the remarkable progress that has already been made by volunteers to build the new station close to the site of the original one.
Much of the materials used are either originals recovered from elsewhere, including the footbridge and thousands of bricks sourced from former railway sites or close copies or original designs.
Two eight-coach long platforms are substantially complete, while a brand new signal box, modelled on that which once stood at Shirley near Solihull in the West Midlands, has been finished.
The steel frame of the new station building is also complete while the footbridge span, from Henley-in-Arden, was installed only two days before the launch event.
"The £1.25million target is entirely achievable,” Pete, the steam railway's president, told guests including senior local councillors from Broadway, Worcestershire, Wychavon, Tewkesbury, Cheltenham and Gloucester.
“Opening Broadway station will be the jewel in the railway's crown.
“It will not just bring a huge boost to the railway but to this delightful town of Broadway, which is renowned the world over as a tourist destination. And the train will be able to bring visitors from Cheltenham – without their cars.”
The £1.25million will go towards buying steel rail and ballast to close the one-mile gap, fencing materials, drainage and culvert repairs and additional civil engineering work as well as complete the station building, platforms and platform furniture.
Completion of the project - earmarked for 2018 - would bring the railway's length to about 15 miles.
The railway has it long-term sights set on other major projects including extending south from the present Cheltenham Racecourse terminus into the town itself.
The line could also be extended a further four miles to the north, to meet the Network Rail North Cotswold Line at Honeybourne.
The share offer is organised under HM Revenue & Customs' Enterprise Investment Scheme, which enables UK taxpayers to recover 30 per cent tax relief. The minimum investment is £100.
The Share Offer Document and an application form can be downloaded from the railway's website at www.gwsr.com
The heritage railway operates over part of the former Great Western Railway Stratford-upon-Avon to Cheltenham line, which opened throughout in 1906 with several stations and halts serving local communities. Most of these stations closed in 1960 and the line was closed entirely by British Rail in 1976 with the track and infrastructure removed three years later.
The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway took over a derelict Toddington station yard in 1981 and had laid sufficient track to start running a modest 'out and back' train service from the station in 1984.
Since then it has grown to its present 12-mile operational length at a rate of around a third of a mile per year, adding new workshop facilities and other infrastructure.
It now carries around 90,000 passengers per year on steam and heritage diesel trains, making a significant contribution to the local tourist economy.
In 2015, the 900 or so volunteers were honoured with the granting of the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service – dubbed the 'volunteers' MBE'.
