Late October update

This week Steve Cramp, Mountsorrel Railway project coordinator, had a meeting on site with the managing director of a Nottingham based company who would like to help the project. We are very pleased to announce that he agreed to provide, free of charge, up to four weekends work with an excavator especially suited to removing tree stumps. This should allow us to remove all the remaining stumps, of which there are many, from the Great Central Railway (GCR) junction to the Wood Lane bridge!

It doesn’t stop there either! He also agreed to provide the loan of two dumpers and drivers for a couple of weekends to ballast the trackbed as far as possible towards Mountsorrel.

Lastly he also agreed to lift a missing capping stone back onto the bridge at Wood Lane. Although seemingly quite insignificant, the eight hand carved granite capping stones represented half of the total cost of constructing the bridge back in 1896. The missing stone, which lies intact on the trackbed under the bridge, has become quite a focal point within the local community. Replacing the stone on the bridge will generate a lot of local support and interest, which is obviously good for the project.

All this free work is of great benefit to the project and will save us many thousands of pounds so we are very grateful indeed to the help that this company is providing.

The help came about through a business associate of one of our Mountsorrel resident volunteers. If we hadn’t taken this project to the hearts of the local community, this offer of help would simply have not materialized.

The team are now feverishly beavering away to ready the formation for the stump removal work which could start as early as November 8th. We are also organizing preparation of the holding area for the delivery of the 1,900 tonnes of ballast that Lafarge have kindly agreed to donate. We obviously can’t utilize the free dumper offer until we have the ballast!

With survey work also proceeding at a pace, so that the trackbed can be pegged out and the levels set, we could potentially have the first 950m of the route ballasted and ready for track very soon indeed. The cost to get to this point will have been very minimal indeed considering the position the project will then be at.

Fundraising continues, so do consider supporting the project by making a donation. Please send a cheque payable to “RVP Ltd”, with “Mountsorrel Railway” written on the back, to 112 Balmoral Road, Mountsorrel, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE12 7EW.

Finally some fine words about the project from Nigel Harris, GCR Director, from the Great Central Railway discussion group: "it's probably one of the best thought-through projects I've ever seen on the GCR".