Rail line to be extended thanks to £1.25m public support

THE fundraising campaign to extend the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway line into Broadway has reached its £1.25million target.

It comes almost exactly a year to the day that rail enthusiast and music mogul, Pete Waterman, launched the share offer.

Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway — which runs along part of the former Great Western Railway Stratford-upon-Avon to Cheltenham line — is currently working on an ambitious extension to a new railway station that has been built in Broadway over 50 years after the old one was closed and demolished.

The share offer — named The Last Mile — was launched to raise the money to pay for new track, which currently stops a mile short.

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 to complete the station building, platforms and platform furniture.

Chris Bristow, the railway’s voluntary finance director, said: “Our volunteers have worked flat-out to make this a success and the public has responded magnificently!

“The number of share applications from people of all walks of life has accelerated as the 30th April Share Offer deadline looms. “It means that completion of the project, on time, is assured.”

There is one major hurdle remaining before the track reaches Broadway station, and that’s the high embankment between Childswickham Road and Station Road, with work now having started on a £400,000-plus project to remove some inappropriate materials used for historic repairs, and to stabilise the structure using a modern solution.

Mr Bristow added: “We still have significant expenditure ahead of us and we still need every penny we can raise, but the project to bring trains into Broadway station in March 2018, for the first time since 1960, is very much within our sight.”

Completion of the project next year will bring the railway’s length to about 15 miles.