Developments
Confirmation was received in November 2009 that a grant of £100,000 had been awarded by the Groundwork UK Community Spaces programme which will be used to fund the restoration of three historic railway bridges on the former Haltwhistle to Alston line. Northumberland County Council’s west area committee also granted consent for a completely new station at Lintley and the new extension to Lintley opened to traffic on April 1, 2012. Rails extend across Lintley viaduct for a distance of about 200 metres from the new station to form a headshunt for works trains.
A further one and a quarter mile extension to Slaggyford has all consents necessary and funding is being sought with hopes of opening around Spring 2015. The extended line from Kirkhaugh to Lintley Halt was officially opened in Saturday 12th May 2012 by Lord Inglewood, a long-time friend of the railway society.
On the same day Cumbria County Council handed over documents confirming a Community Asset Transfer of the Society's leased land in Cumbria. Work to gain a similar status in Northumberland is ongoing with Northumberland County Council.
Passenger rolling stock
Trains are made up daily depending on predicted passenger numbers. There are four all-steel open-ended gallery coaches built by a contractor in Alston, two wooden-bodied coaches and two brake vans constructed in the railway workshops. Additions to the fleet in 2011 were an all-steel buffet coach, originally built by Gloucester Carriage and Wagon for Sierra Leone Railways, and re-gauged from 750mm to 610mm for use at Alston, and a re-gauged former Romanian steel coach now converted to be fully accessible for disabled passengers.
2012 Season
The timetable shows four return trips from Alston to Lintley. Outward trains leave from Alston at 1045, 1215, 1415 and 1545 hours. Return trains leave Lintley 45 minutes later.
-
Thomas Edmondson runs round the train at the old Gilderdale Station (closed in September 1999)
-
The locomotive shed at Alston, around 1990
-
Polish locomotive 'Nakło'.
Read more about this topic: South Tynedale Railway
Famous quotes containing the word developments:
“I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
—C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)