The Mountsorrel Railway is part of the Mountsorrel and Rothley Community Heritage Centre. This website is no longer updated. For updates see: http://heritage-centre.co.uk/
See new website
The Mountsorrel Railway is part of the Mountsorrel and Rothley Community Heritage Centre. This website is no longer updated. For updates see: http://heritage-centre.co.uk/
Nicky Morgan, local MP for Loughborough and surrounding villages, visited the Mountsorrel Railway recently to see the progress so far.
Nicky met volunteers and Steve Cramp, project coordinator, and said she was "amazed and very impressed" at how much we have achieved. Nicky said on Twitter: "Great to visit volunteers working so hard on the Mountsorrel Railway Project this morning".
Nicky Morgan MP: 4th from left, first row, on photo
We are very grateful to Mountsorrel Parish Council for their help and support. Councillor Mick Lemon commented "The Mountsorrel Railway project is an inspiration to everyone who lives in Mountsorrel and goes to show what is possible when the community works together."
Project volunteers had been working hard to match fund a donation of £6,000 that had been pledged by a member of the public, providing that we could match it before the end of September. So the Parish Council's donation, together with our existing fundraising, takes us well past the match funding required and therefore releases the additional £6,000 as well!
This is great news for the volunteers who are working to preserve Mountsorrel's industrial heritage. Over the last four years local people have volunteered in their spare time to help create a linear museum which connects to Loughborough's Great Central Railway (GCR). The project aims to run educational and public recreations of our industrial past and also for the GCR to run heritage passenger trains connecting with local tourist attractions at Mountsorrel, including Stonehurst Family Farm. The Mountsorrel Railway, when completed, will hopefully help secure and boost local jobs.
Project leader Steve Cramp commented "We have been overwhelmed by the support we have received from the public. It was only in May that we launched our £20,000 fund raising appeal for the next section of track laying along the branch. We never thought that we would reach our target in only six weeks! The project relies on donations from the public to bring this ambitious project to reality and it's so good to see the community getting behind us like this. The Parish Council's donation really is the icing on the cake and their kind words of support are very much appreciated indeed".
All this means that the current phase of track laying is now completely funded and, once materials are sourced, we can lay the next 450 metres of track, giving almost half a mile of running line along the railway.
Fundraising immediately turns towards the remainder of the railway. Phase 3 will extend track for a further 500m almost to Wood Lane, and the final phase 4 will be the remaining 500m to the end of the line at Bond Lane. Both these phases will cost £25,000 each, so we still have some way to go to reach Mountsorrel!
Please send your donations to 112 Balmoral Road, Mountsorrel, Loughborough, LE12 7EW. The project is a registered charity so if you are a UK taxpayer please down load a Gift Aid form. If you would like to get involved and volunteer yourself please contact project leader Steve Cramp.
Phase 1 track laying is now complete and the track slewed, lifted and packed ready to receive trains. The line is looking very good indeed.
The video below shows a freight train running onto the branch as part of the Great Central Railway's Quorn turntable project.
Our focus is now turning towards phase 2 track laying, which will see track laid for a further 450m along the branch. This will give almost half a mile of running line. Please see the details below about our fundraising appeal and help us to push on towards Mountsorrel.
Bond Lane bridge restoration
Our intrepid bridge restoration team has been working extremely hard on restoring the Bond Lane bridge. What a battle this has been though. Back in April we had some of the hand dressed original stones stolen, which our volunteers had restored ready for reconstruction. Since then we have had sand stolen from the site and in June we had two rows of newly laid stones smashed off the bridge and stolen.
We have been meeting almost weekly with the local police to discuss the problem. They suggested erecting a steel security fence. The cost of this though was beyond our means but thanks to the loan of fencing from Mountsorrel quarry we were able to secure the site. Sadly though this didn't last longer than four days before the fence itself was stolen!
The bridge restoration really has been a battle and at times soul destroying for the volunteers involved, especially our younger volunteers who struggle to understand why people would destroy the work they have done. Nevertheless, not to be beaten they have pushed on and the wall is very nearly finished. Work has progressed even further since the picture below was taken and the wall is now almost ready for the capping stones to be added to the top.
If you see any suspicious behaviour around the railway bridge at Bond Lane, please contact Leicestershire police on 0116 2222222.
Fundraising
A supporter has pledged a very kind and generous £6,000 donation to the project, providing that we can match it before the end of September! Our volunteers have been working very hard with fundraising initiatives to try to raise the matching £6,000 we need.
Many donations have been coming in from the public. Thank you very much indeed if you have already donated!
One of our volunteers Janet Preston ran a project fundraising garden party at the end of June, which raised a remarkable £600. On August 7th John and Jenny Hardy are having an "open shed" event to raise funds for the project. In their back garden stands what must be one of the largest garden sheds I have ever seen. It houses a collection of historical farm and industrial tools which John has collected over the last 30 years. An old Ferguson tractor is its centre piece, all carefully laid out in a way that puts most museums to shame.
John's shed is quite renowned locally and has featured on TV. He often hosts visits from engineering colleges. A flyer for John and Jenny's fundraising event is shown below. Please come along if you can and help support the project.
You can help us directly to raise the match funding we need by sending your donation cheque made payable to "DCRT" (David Clarke Railway Trust), with "Mountsorrel Railway" on the back, to 112 Balmoral Road, Mountsorrel, Loughborough, LE12 7EW. If you are a UK taxpayer please download a gift aid form and send it with your donation.
If we can match the £6,000 pledged we will have all the funds required for phase 2 track laying, so please help us not to miss out on this generous offer.
A free exhibition about the Mountsorrel Railway project is being held at Mountsorrel Library. The exhibition will show the history of this industrial steam line, and the massive steps the local community has taken to recreate it.
The exhibition will be in Mountsorrel Library from Tuesday 28th June until Friday 15th July.
We have had a remarkable response to our fundraising appeal to purchase track materials for the next 450 metres of track laying.
In the last two weeks alone over £5,000 has been donated by the public. The fund is now almost half way to the £20,000 target we need. We are immensely grateful to all of you who have donated. Without your support it simply would not be possible to take the railway back to Mountsorrel and realise all the benefits it could bring to the community.
We are almost entirely dependent on public donations and corporate sponsorship, as it is very difficult for us to secure grant funding. We do as much of the work as possible ourselves with our team of community volunteers. This is in order to greatly reduce the overall cost of the project, which will be less than 10% of what the cost would have been - had we have taken the approach of most projects where the work is done by grant funded contractors with the community often excluded from being actively involved. It seems ironic that in this age of cuts, and pressure to save money, we can't attract grant funding!
The Great Central Railway (GCR) had very kindly agreed to lay top ballast along the branch during the week commencing May 16th. This meant that the pressure was on as we only had two weeks left to lay the final three panels. The team had a big push and managed to lay two additional panels on the 7th. Both were slewed into position, plated and keyed up. We also dragged out two more pairs of rails from the stack and set them up ready for cutting and drilling by the Tuesday group. The GCR main line had now well and truly disappeared out of sight behind us and we could look out from the branch and see the GCR viaducts stretching across Swithland reservoir.
The GCR's signalling team have also installed the arm on the branch exit signal.
May 14th 2011
Our Tuesday group of volunteers had successfully cut and drilled the rails so we were ready to lay the final panel. Sleepers were laid out and positioned ready to receive the rails which we soon had in position, slewed and ready to receive ballast trains. The head of steel (HOS) is only three panels from the end of the long curve and the farm track level crossing is only another couple of panels beyond that.
We have rail for a further 450m of track and once donations have been received to fund the sleepers to go with it, the intention is to bring the rail to the branch and unload it at the end of the laid track. From here it will be dragged out in pairs using a tractor, right along the long straight. This should greatly increase track laying speed as all the rail will be in the correct place as we come to lay it. This won't happen though until we have raised the funds for the sleepers and other fittings, so please donate to our appeal fund to help make this happen.
The team spent the rest of the day packing the full length of all our new track so that it was able to take the ballast trains, which were due onto the branch during the following week. This was an important job because if sleepers are not supported properly the weight of the train can literally snap them in two!
May 16th 2011 - history is made!
This was an important day in local history as at 1:40pm the first train in 52 years ventured tentatively out of the loop at Swithland Sidings and onto the branch line. The historical event was captured on film:
This would be the first of several trains to run over the following three days as 200 tonnes of ballast were dropped and spread over our newly laid track. By the end of Wednesday the branch was starting to look like a proper railway.
The project would like to say a big thank you to all the community volunteers who have worked on the project, the public whose donations have allowed us to get this far, and to the GCR for their assistance with material moves, loan of tools and the ballast laying.
Over the coming weeks our volunteers will be aligning the track to its final position, leaving this section of the branch ready to receive heritage trains. The initial intention is for the GCR to run demonstration freight trains using the restored replica Mountsorrel Granite Company wagons, at future galas.
Our thoughts are now turning to relaying the rest of the branch to Mountsorrel and unlocking the full potential of the branch as both a linear museum and a heritage passenger railway linking Mountsorrel to the Great Central! This can only happen with your donations so please consider donating to our appeal fund.
One new panel was laid. This may not sound like much compared to the previous week's four, but we had so many other tasks to undertake as well. We had to move and lay out all the sleepers for the new panel and also key up all one side of the four panels laid last week, both which took quite a lot of time and effort. We also had to move some of the ballast bed to support the new panel as the track is moving slightly off centre to where the ballast was laid. This is because since the ballast bed was laid in November 2009, we have been able to achieve a better track line to ensure that we have a constant radius for the full length of this long curve.
The head of steel (HOS) is also becoming some considerable distance from the rail stack, so the opportunity was taken to use two rail trolleys to move the rails. The trolleys would become a great asset to us over the coming weeks.
The Tuesday group had taken on the challenge of cutting and drilling rails ready for Saturday's laying sessions.
April 16th 2011
A further panel of track was laid this week leaving only four more to go during our current track laying phase. The Tuesday group spent the day laying out sleepers for the next panel.
April 23rd 2011
It was Easter weekend with many volunteers away making the best of the good weather. Our numbers weren't high enough this week to move rail but the GCR had brought a wagon to the branch with 40 more sleepers. The opportunity was taken to unload the wagon and construct a new sleeper stack near to the HOS.
April 30th 2011
With volunteer numbers restored a further panel was laid, plated up, slewed into position and keyed up. The GCR was almost out of sight in the distance behind us.
Third and final part of this diary to follow later this week.
Earlier this week BBC Radio Leicester DJ Ben Jackson came to the trackbed to interview Mountsorrel Railway volunteer John Mace.
The interview was broadcast yesterday morning and is available on the BBC website for the coming week. Please click below and fast forward to 1 hour 33 minutes into the programme:
We are unhappy to report that our volunteer work to restore the Bond Lane bridge has been hampered because of the theft of some of the bridge stones. The bridge is at the end of the section of the Mountsorrel Railway being restored.
The end section of the bridge wall was collapsing (see previous news update). Volunteers had numbered and labelled key stones so they could be cleaned and replaced in their original positions as the wall was rebuilt. Our aim was to maintain the original appearance of the wall almost exactly how it would have been when originally constructed.
The wall was carefully disassembled with hammers and chisels, and each stone carefully cleaned, before being stored nearby ready for reconstruction to commence. What makes the stones so special is that they were all hand dressed at the quarry over a hundred years ago. Finding new hand dressed stone is very difficult today: you can only normally find rough blasted stone which is not in keeping with the original look of the bridge. So you can see it was imperative to preserve all of the original stones.
Despite being stored in what we hoped would be a safe location, we were extremely disappointed to find that a significant number of the stones had been stolen. This included almost half the carefully numbered stones, making it impossible to rebuild the wall exactly how it would have been. Our volunteers were devastated by this, which we believe was most likely carried out by one or more local people. When you give your time freely to try to bring a useful and beneficial resource to the local community it is disappointing to see your efforts undone in this way.
Fortunately we discovered the theft early, before all the stones were taken. The person appeared to be returning each evening to take more stones, so luckily we were able to move the stones away for safe storage at one of our volunteer's houses. Not an easy task in itself as there were almost five tonnes of stones to move!
Not all is lost. The rebuilding of the bridge wall is a priority while we try to find suitable stones to replace the ones that were taken. The remaining stones are being returned to site for each work party and then removed again at the end of the day. This extra handling and transportation is hindering the bridge volunteers, but it has to be done.
The photo shows the bridge wall under reconstruction. The temporary fence in front is to protect members of the public from the works, and will be removed when the wall is completed.
On a brighter note we would like to say a special thanks to project sponsors Languard Vegetation Management of Husbands Bosworth, who have been back with us again to weedkill the trackbed base. Weed control over a mile and a quarter of railway would be a mammoth task to undertake ourselves, so we are immensely grateful to Languard for providing this work at no cost to the project. We would also like to thank Lafarge Ready Mix for donating the concrete pour for the new Bond Lane bridge wall foundations. Their support represents a significant saving for the project.
If your company might be able to help the project in any way please get in touch with Steve Cramp. We are always in need of many items both large and small for tasks that involve plant or other machinery. We would very much like to hear from you if you think you can help. Thank you.
