You will have seen from the earlier reports by Finance Director
Chris Bristow and Commercial Director Colin Fewell that 2014 has been another
great year with excellent financial figures and a year-end bonus of a record
breaking series of Santa Specials. 2014 has been a very special year for us as
we successfully raised the funds necessary to restore the five bridges between
our current railhead at Laverton and our target of Broadway. This, together
with related donations, has enabled us to start the next half mile extension
north from Laverton. We still need major funding to see us all the way and we
will be pursuing this in due course. In the meantime we would like to thank
everyone who has made this such a successful year and opened the door to our
target of extending to Broadway. When I say everyone, this includes our
volunteers who work so hard to operate, maintain and improve the railway, our existing
and new shareholders who have contributed so much to our share appeal, our GWRT
members for continuing to support our activities and our many other funding
contributors who have donated to both general and specific improvements planned
or already in progress. This includes the legacies most generously left to the
railway and which have paid for major new facilities, such as the paintshop,
that we need to operate and improve our expanding railway. And have you seen
what the Broadway group have already achieved in rebuilding Broadway station and
with more major construction planned for 2015 - a must visit when you are next
in the area.
2015 will see a variety of improvement activities with replaced
track in Toddington Station – along with a relocated barrow crossing to avoid
the problems where a loco is obliged to stop astride the crossing. Toddington
will also have a new display ground frame and working signal for our visitors
to try and we are collaborating with Stanway House to develop a footpath link from
the station. At Winchcombe we will have a new visitor information coach and also
regular access to view the model railway even if it is not running. In addition
we are working on the feasibility of a new toilet block on Platform 2 and
eventually a replacement for the old wooden building on Platform 1 by a
structure that is more appropriate to a heritage railway station. At
Cheltenham, our volunteers rebuilding Platform 2 are nearing the end of their bricklaying
and we aim to have the platform available by the year end if funds permit. A footbridge there is our ultimate objective
and we are working with other interested parties to arrive at the most appropriate
design.
We are not forgetting our heritage objectives and a new
heritage group has been established to pursue this. Its first target is the
reinstatement of the old Hayles Abbey Halt – this is still a proposal at the
moment and will need detailed planning however it would be a useful addition
for visiting the Hailes Abbey site (note the interesting difference in the
spelling of station and abbey). The group also aims to tackle the restoration
of more of the goods wagons that we have scattered around the railway – and
there are many of them!
For the longer term we are looking at the redevelopment of
the Winchcombe yard and where we go after Broadway!
Alan Bielby
