An extended standing ambition to attach a heritage railway to the mainline community has taken a step ahead after it was granted permission to rebuild a piece of a disused railway.
The railways – overlay on Google Map
There are two separate organisations concerned – the Kent & East Sussex Railway which runs a heritage line between Tenterden and Bodiam, and the Rother Valley Railway which is trying to reinstate a misplaced railway between Bodiam and Robertsbridge.
The important thing advantage of the extension is that there’s a mainline station on the Southeastern line at Robertsbridge, just a few stops from Royal Tunbridge Wells, which might make it vastly simpler for the general public to pay a go to to the heritage line. In the mean time, the heritage railway is simply accessible by automobile or bus.
To revive the disused railway, the Rother Valley Railway (RVR) submitted an software and a public inquiry was held in 2021.
There have been over a thousand objections to the plans although, with 224 letters of assist, and the Surroundings Company withdrew their objection partly. A lot of the objections had been in regards to the addition of latest stage crossings on roads the place the restored railway could be crossing, however the inspector’s report concluded in the long run that the marginal downsides had been greater than outweighed by the financial advantages of the railway’s extension.
The ambition to revive the railway hyperlink has had earlier assist from their native MP, Huw Merriman, who simply occurs to be the Minister of State for Rail and HS2 — so he was recused from the choice making course of.
The TWA Order supplies the Rother Valley Railway with statutory authority to assemble the brand new railway and keep the brand new and present lengths of the observe as a heritage railway from Robertsbridge Junction to Bodiam, the place it could be a part of the prevailing heritage railway to Tenterden and would authorise the crossing of the general public freeway in various areas.
The anticipated value of the railway extension has been put at £5.3 million, which is anticipated to generate as much as £35 million for the native financial system and round 85 jobs over the primary decade of its operation.
Southeastern can even profit from additional passengers, and though the inspector disagreed with the RVR’s estimate of round £330,000 per 12 months for Southeastern, the inspector nonetheless agreed it could be a considerable quantity. The report additionally stated that the expansion in leisure travellers would assist to offset the foreseeable discount in commuters because of extra folks working from house, thereby making the mainline railway extra viable.
Connecting the heritage railway to a city with a mainline railway can even be a lift for points of interest within the space, equivalent to Bodiam Fort.
Rother Valley Railway chairman Gardner Crawley stated: “We’re trying ahead to working with everybody to deliver the brand new railway to fruition. Work will begin on the earliest alternative to hold out the land and ecological surveys. Substantive bodily works are unlikely to begin earlier than subsequent 12 months.”
This text was revealed on ianVisits
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