Developments on the Corris Railway

We are pleased to be able to report that the first two phases of the Corris Railway's redevelopment of its station in Corris are now complete.
Phase 1 involved the purchase of the necessary land and obtaining planning permission. This took a number of years.
Phase 2 was completed yesterday and that required the removal of the large portacabin which had previously been used as a doctor's surgery, the preparation of the ground, the fencing of the site and the laying of an extended platform road.
There are tidying up tasks to be done and the fencing will need to be completed but we are ready for our Gala next Sunday (the 29th).
We will now start the planning of the next phases of the development.

 

Great to see progress being made on this lovely little railway, I hope to visit it for the first time in good time. Has there been any development on the southern extension at all?

 

In short there is a lot going on including some progress on the ground. Unfortunately the next phase involves land purchase and civil engineering challenges and requires a lot of money. We are moving forward but unless someone turns up with a big pile of cash it is all going to look rather slow from the outside.

 

I was there again two Sundays ago and it looked great. Is anyone looking at National Lottery funding? I know its usually the same railways getting funding again and again or has that dried up now?

 

We are looking at all options but it is difficult to get grants unless you can claim to be creating jobs or making other large scale contributions to the locale. We are a bit small to register on most grant providers scorecards even though the amounts that we need are relatively modest.

 

Does anyone know if there a website update due? getting withdrawal symptoms ;-)

Thanks

 

A perfect communication storm, I am afraid. Our Webmaster has been on a trip to Australia and our main photographer, who has also been on holiday, has returned to find that his email is no longer functioning! Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible.

 

Phew!!! Thanks for the reply

 

Statuatory reports for year ending 31st December 2016 hit the Corris Rly website today. For us non financial types, the Corris Railway Society 2016 (Draft) report will probably be the most interesting. Most is a summary of snippets already posted, but there's plenty of meat to be plucked from the bones.

Once on the link below, there's a table of what's available (newest reports at the bottom) and though none are massive chunks of data, please note that they're download documents, so unless you mobile plan has unlimited mobile data, best not use your phone allowance folks!
http://www.corris.co.uk/information.php?info_id=24

 

Update time. A couple of sets of photo updates and Carriage 23 is really beginning to look the part:
http://www.corris.co.uk/information.php?info_id=4

How many lines would kill to get their paws on that big yellow gantry lurking a little way up the old Upper Corris branch?

 

Updates to the website over the past fortnight include quite a few new photos showing solid progress on carriages 23 & 24 and (drum roll please......) No.10, the new Falcon, has tyres on it's driving wheels:

http://corris.co.uk/

 

Some further news
Some more information as follows may be of interest:-

The Corris Railway Society has been in possession of the former Railway stable block and coach house in the village of Corris for nearly half a century and today it houses a museum, shop and café which opens its doors on days when trains are operating on the revived section of the Railway. It is one of a trio of original C.R. buildings in the care of the volunteer workforce, the others being the locomotive shed at Maespoeth Junction and Esgairgeiliog station (which is awaiting the return of trains to its platform).

The museum building has needed considerable adaptation, renovation and maintenance since the 1970’s and at the end of February this year contractors were arriving on site to carry out repairs to the roof to keep the Victorian era building weather tight well into the 21st century. It is planned to have the shop open in time for the running of the first trains of the season on Good Friday (March 30th) but opening of the museum area will depend on completion of the roof repairs in time and the replacement of the exhibits from storage.

Away from Corris and the Dulas valley progress continues on construction work for the next steam engine to work on the Railway. Two Society members with engineering skills have been manufacturing the trailing pony truck in their workshops and quotations for the manufacture of its wheels and axle are being sought. Sponsorship of the pony truck components can be made via the website www.corris.co.uk

 

The Maespoeth Mafia have a new website. Haven't been completely through it yet, but it presents a decent appearance and the layout of the photo section looks good, though the captions seem to have vanished. A set of menu tabs would save having to scroll down, but on the whole, it looks better for it's redesign.

Have a butcher's and see what you think:
https://www.corris.co.uk

 

Looks a lot better-much easier to navigate rather than the dozens of tiny menus on the old site.


Keith

Ps The photo captions are still there-you have to click on the photos to see them

 

Members might like to have a glance at my my own modest Corris page (at http://www.watsonlv.net/corris.shtml), especially the updated Distances Table. Now including the soon-to-be constructed extension to GEODWIG SOUTH station.

[Table also available for the Welsh Highland at http://www.watsonlv.net/pdf/WHR_distances.pdf]

 

Hi Lez

While the prospect of a Geod wig is intriguing, the spelling of Pont Goedwig is the clue! The name should be either Coedwig South (in English) or De Coedwig (in Welsh). Note that the first letter is either 'c' or 'g' depending upon whether it is subject to soft mutation (don't ask!!), which it is after Pont.

 

What are the possibilities of extending northwards towards Aberllefenni?

 

It's Pont-y-Goedwig (the mutation is caused by the 'y' preposition) however to add confusion the house there is indeed called simply Goedwig rather than Coedwig (which means forest). I haven't seen South Goedwig mentioned as a proposed station before, presumably it is contemplated as a temporary end of the line for the current push-pull operation.