Appointment of Bill Britton as Head of Department

I am pleased to report that the GWSR Board has approved the appointment of Bill Britton as Head of Department in charge of the rebuilding of Broadway Station. Bill has headed the team rebuilding the platforms and with work in progress on the signal box and due to start next year on the station buildings, he has agreed to also take on the responsibility for the planning application and construction management for the required car park and access road upgrade.


Congratulations to Bill and we ask everyone to support him in his widened role of looking after all aspects of the rebuilding of Broadway Station. His blog site is widely read and has been an excellent record of progress.


Alan Bielby

Completion of Broadway Bridge Restoration and Road Reopened

I am pleased to report that the road under the GWR railway bridge at Broadway was reopened this morning after 3 months of closure for bridge restoration. The reopening is two days ahead of programme and this is all the more impressive because removal of the rusted steelwork revealed additional steel replacement work that had to be included in the work. Congratulations go to Messrs Laws for the timely completion of a complicated package of work and to John Balderstone for working hard to ensure the high level of input from the GWR to enable this to happen. We must also thank the residents of Broadway for their patience while the road was closed.


Some additional drainage work remains on the adjacent embankments and once this is completed work will start on the Childswickham bridge. This will commence in about two weeks time.


Alan Bielby

GWSR PLC Financial Position at the half year, 31 July 2014

Dear All,

I was pleased to be able to report to the Board on Friday 29th August that the operations of the railway in the 6 months to 31 July 2014 have been very good financially, both in terms of operating profit and cash flow.

The good cash results were despite having to absorb the cost of a number of unbudgeted items which included remedial work on the slips at Dixton Cutting and Defford Straight and the purchase of a second Ford Transit.

In addition, I am pleased to advise you that cash inflow into the Bridges to Broadway share issue has been good although we are not quite there yet - with two months of the offer to go if you have been holding off buying shares now's the time!

 

I think everybody is well aware of the excellent work being done by George Law and Co. on the bridges supervised by John Balderstone, and the fantastic progress being made at Broadway by Bill Britton's team.

Looking ahead to next year, 2015 will be a very important year for us in our drive to reach Broadway in both civil engineering and tracking laying northwards from Laverton and continued development of the station site.

Accordingly, with the Board's approval, I have asked all heads of department to look carefully at all second half expenditure to ensure our cash resources by the year end are as large as possible in order to be able to fully support next year's investment in our railway.

These are good times on our railway!

 

If anybody has any questions for me please email finance.director@gwsr.com

 

Best wishes,

 

Chris Bristow