Sharing Heritage: Moseley Railway Trust celebrates £9200 Heritage Lottery Fund grant

The Moseley Railway Trust has received a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Sharing Heritage grant, it was announced today. The Trust has been awarded a grant of £9200. This money will be used to develop an Industrial Railway Trail around the Trust’s site at Apedale, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. This exciting project will allow the Moseley Railway Trust to demonstrate and display its collection of industrial narrow gauge railway locomotives and wagons for the benefit of visitors to Apedale. A key part of the Railway Trail is a new stretch of narrow gauge railway, and construction work has now started on this – the work is being carried out by the Trust’s volunteers. All being well, the new railway will be operational for the “Tracks to the Trenches” gala on September 12, 13 and 14. This event will commemorate the role which small railways played in the First World War – and the new railway, funded by the HLF Sharing Heritage grant will play a key part in this!

Sharing Heritage is a new funding programme to help people across the UK explore, conserve and share all aspects of the history and character of their local area.

The Moseley Railway Trust is a registered charity. It exists to preserve, conserve and interpret narrow gauge railway locomotives and other artefacts. This work is carried out at the Apedale site by a team of volunteers. The volunteers are a very diverse group of all ages and backgrounds – the Trust prides itself on having an active group of younger members, who are able to learn genuine skills as they carry out work on the site. The Trust arrived on the Apedale site in 2006, and opened a passenger carrying railways, known as the Apedale Valley Light Railway, in 2010. The key current development on site is the construction of a large museum to fully display the Trust’s collections.

Commenting on the award, Phil Robinson, Moseley Railway Trust Chairman said “We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded this grant from HLF. It will allow us to improve the Apedale site and also increase the skills and knowledge of all our members. We very much look forward to working with HLF on this project, and hopefully others in the future”.

Reyahn King, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund West Midlands, said: “Sharing Heritage is a wonderful opportunity for communities to delve into their local heritage and we are delighted to be able to offer this grant so that the Moseley Railway Trust can embark on a real journey of discovery. Heritage means such different things to different people, and HLF’s funding offers a wealth of opportunities for groups to explore and celebrate what’s important to them in their area.”

Waterhouses Junction is ours

Regular readers (both of you) will have seen the steady advance of the New Field Railway to the site of the Triangle known as Waterhouses Junction  (for reasons too complex to relate right now). Give the weather on Saturday, the Waterhouses bit is well deserved. Still, at least we weren't sat in a field in Folkestone.
Track laying has now passed WH North, and this weekend passed WH South and then kept going until we ran out of trackbed. At that point, the Groundworks man turned up and built some more trackbed. You just can't win. Work has now started on the curve towards WH East, which will connect to the Trench Tramway via a passable impersonation of the Snowdon Mountain Railway. It will also connect the previous, infamous, field Railway. This connection will finally allow the Apedale equivalent of the Lost Legion - a couple of Rustons marooned in the Field Railway Container - access to the complete railway system again. Meanwhile, the search has now started for Abt Rack fitted Motor Rails. All leads to here, please.

Sniff the Barrel

Saturday was Steam and Industry Trains day down at Apedale - an opportunity for some of the lesser-spotted diesels to stretch their legs on the mainline with a freight train. The inevitable star of this event was the newly-restored Hudswell Clarke diesel, in its gleaming paintwork. Unfortunately, this particular star was rather shortlived due to a fractured coolant elbow leading to a loss of coolant from the engine and a loss of happiness for the driver. No serious harm done, and hopefully a simple repair. The loco was stabled in the yard with the doors open in a rather ungainly fashion. Comparisons toVTOL F35s were made but it can be confirmed that the Hudswell cannot take off vertically, no matter how hard it flaps the doors. Something to do with thrust/weight ratio, apparently.  Meanwhile, elsewhere in the yard, frenetic preparations were being made for a loco and wagon (two wagons, actually) to attend the War & Peace Revival mega-event at Folkestone next weekend. Perhaps inevitably, this is a bit of a curtain raiser to our own Tracks to the Trenches event in September. The lorry will, hopefully, return with the first of the visiting locos for the September event. The second wagon is just visible insider the large "D" class; it's a water carrying wagon, mounted with a rather splendid barrel. The barrel has an "interesting" aroma, variously described as Vimto or Vintage Port. The descriptions clearly indicate the various social strata from which the Trust draws its membership. As ever, get in touch here, and if you ask nicely, we'll let you Sniff the Barrel.

Le Grand Arrive

In celebration of the visit of the Tour de France to Yorkshire, the members of the Moseley Railway Trust have spent the day dressed from head to toe in Lycra. That's got your attention, hasn't it? But what we have seen is the arrival of a rather large French wagon. Intended as a companion for the "Joffre" steam loco, this is a French military railway "Pechot" wagon. It was obtained from the Chanteraines group in Paris. Apparently it was used at a concrete works prior to preservation., and has been subject to extensive restoration off-site prior to arrival at Apedale. It is now, by some margin, the oldest railway vehicle on site - dating from 1888 or 1889, depending on where you look. It says a lot for the foresight of the French military that they were building equipment like this when the British still regarded the pack animal as quite advanced. Or, perhaps, reeling from the right old kicking in the Franco-Prussian was of the 1870s, the French had learned some hard lessons. Regardless of the wider historical context, it looks good and will hopefully be an attraction for the Tracks to the Trenches event in September (have we mentioned that recently)? As ever, get in touch here.