Churnet Valley - Rudyard

Hello,

Is it possible to get between teh Rudyard Lake Railway and the Churnet Valley Railway via the canal? Or is it not really in use anymore??

 

No, the Caldon Canal Leek branch only goes just short of Leek, from Leek to Rudyard it is only the feeder which is little more than a large stream.

 

You can walk down the feeder from Rudyard into Leek but then you have to walk to Cheddleton via the canal or main road. Its not easy to find you way though Leek. You can also walk the trackbed into Leek until just short of the tunnel and then over y the Hill to the Morrison store which is on the site of Leek Station. Sadly the County Council sold the land to the south of the tunnel which would have been a potential station site for us to extend South.
We are looking Northwards to Cliffe Park ( 1 mile ) and Rushton Spencer ( 1.5 miles) once we have put in all the support infrastructure required. We now have the rolling stock, passenger numbers etc to support such a move.

Mike
http://www.rlsr.org/

 

Excellent news it's a fine little line a nice run for families and I enjoyed chatting with some of your vols on how the lines signalling worked, out of curiosity will you be adding another token section when you extend

 

Probably but its possible we would move the main passing loop to a point between the existing loops so that we could retain a basic hourly service with a half hour two train service . To do this the optimum passing point would be nearer the Rudyard end than the mid point of the line. This is because the Dam station can delay trains in either direction as its very busy. We also unusually sell a lot of single tickets for both the whole line and to the Dam station. We were running two trains today and as usual the train at the North end of the line was first to the passing loop.

Mike
www.rlsr.org

 

thanks for that, all the best for the future hope your extensions go well