Moseley Railway Trust and Apedale Heritage Centre have jointly completed the purchase 8.5 acres of land adjacent to the Heritage Centre on Thursday 13th April after an 18-month project to raise the funds and undertake various legal requirements including changing restrictive covenants on the use of this land placed there by the Coal Authority to protect the land from commercial development. Completion of the purchase has allowed Moseley Railway Trust to adapt some of the existing mines buildings on the site for new uses.
First of these was the "Red Shed" - a corrugated iron building with a steel frame, formerly used to house coal bagging equipment from when the site was one of the last working mines in the area. Conversion of this building has allowed MRT to house the Cadeby collection, which will start to arrive at the end of April 2006. The conversion has required removal of the coal hopper at the south end of the building, and removal of the south end wall and conversion into a pair of opening doors. Parallel with this, nine track panels have been constructed to stand the loco's on inside the shed using rail and steel sleepers acquired from the Woodhead Tunnel. This will allow the Cadeby locomotives to be unloaded directly onto a section of temporary track outside and rolled into the storage shed. Other work on the building has improved the weather protection and security of the building. It is envisaged that this building will eventually be demolished to make room for a purpose-built running shed once other covered accommodation has been constructed.
The next stage is to submit a formal planning application to allow construction on-site to commence in earnest, which will take about three months.Assuming this is granted without any delays, the first project will be to construct a new shed to house the MRT collection currently in store at Buxworth in Derbyshire to reduce the cost of storage. Once this is building is complete and loco's safely installed, delivery of other materials and construction of the running line and other infrastructure can commence - this should start towards the end of 2006, with an anticipated completion of the line sometime during 2007.
