Moorlands and City Railway

I read in a recent newspaper article that Moorlands & City have taken a 15-year lease on the Cheadle branch which will give time to investigate feasibility of restoring services.

In the March edition of Modern Railways a feature on freight says "a grant was awarded for coal traffic from Ayrshire to Lafarge at Cauldon well over a year before the line was likely to be available." There is no futher explanation but sounds positive.

 

Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle! Was the seam at Shaffalong (Cheddleton) completely worked out? I understand there's still extractable coal at (dare I say it) Foxfield.

 

Hey Ho, Hay Ho, its off to Endon we go, with a shovel and a pick and a measuring stick, we go, we go, we go, we go.
Started changing sleepers today in glorious sunshine. We are doing the sleeper changing where there groups of 3 or 4 that require replacing together. Doing 1 manually to keep the gauge for when the sleeper changer comes down, warm work but very rewarding. 2 photos of the gang plus 1 of the progress of the S160 and 1 of George Stephenson getting ready for boiler removal.

 

The Churnet Valley Living Landscape Partnership has today been granted £1.8m by HLF to undertake a wide range of projects in the area. Of particular interest to people on here the platform and signal box at Leekbrook are to be restored along with the crossing gates and water tower at Cheddleton. Press release here. Railway heritage project description here.

Those of us interested in canals are pretty excited as well as there are restoration and improvement projects on both the Caldon & Uttoxeter canals in the area

 

This is great news for the CVR. I think many of those who have been visiting the CVR for many years will agree with me that this scheme goes some of the way to "finishing off" the very first two stations that the CVR ran a service to/from back in 1996.

Many of us have spent a long time gazing at the derelict platform/box whilst our engine runs round the train and wondered when we'd ever get round to putting it back in as it was!

Equally I've heard a fair few people comment that Cheddleton is an excellent station, but would be even better with wooden level crossing gates

 

[Re: The old Cheadle branch, contractors have spent the last few weeks recovering all the remaining track on behalf of Moorland & City. I am told that it has to be completed within a 7 week contract.

 

Some points from the Calton meeting the other night- this is second-hand info so apologies if any I have misunderstood anything relayed:

1/ Cauldon branch needs some rail replacement before it is suitable for heavy freight
2/ Extension to Endon will be followed by Milton then Stoke
3/ re-the contract for coal to Cauldon from Ayrshire. The cement works uses approx 1,000 tons of imported coal a week. The plan pre-Moorlands & City was to take the coal to
Stoke by rail and then onwards by road, but there was no suitable area at Stoke for a
wharf . With the M&C project rail throughout becomes a plausible option for that flow.
4/ Birmingham area is possible destination for outbound bulk freight.
5/ Single 66 unlikely to be powerful enough for some Cauldon branch workings due to the
gradients
6/ Alton Towers services likely to be 2 trains each morning with return workings in the
evening.

 

Seen it today the section outside Cheadle to Huntley has had all track removed, anyone know what the plans for the branch line are?

 

Popped over to Endon today to see how things are shaping up.

Not a big deal of change really. Just new fencing and gates added, plus a little more clearing of the platform area. But still looks like quite a lot of work to do yet before we can see anything running into the old station.

Some shots of the station area;-









Plus one of 45379 on a test run approaching Endon from Leekbrook.

 

Another great sunny day at Leekbrook, needed plenty of drinks today, no shelter where we were working. We got to the section by the old loop and the concrete sleeper started, thank goodness. So about 1/2 mile done, with 60 sleepers hand changed, about 50 dug out by the mini digger where the sleepers had crumbled so bad that neither we or the sleeper changer could pull them out in 1,2 or 3 pieces. I estimated that at least that many again will be done by the sleeper changer, so somewhere in the region of 220-250 sleepers in that section alone. Thankful of a nice warm bath and a nice cold pint.

 

Is there likley to be any steam running soon or over Easter?

 

Where is the track going to?

 

See the discussion in the CVR 2012 thread in Events.

 

Neil, the line under restoration at the present time is the Stoke to Leekbrook and we are working on the section from Leekbrook to Endon now. At Leekbrook it can go 3 ways to Oakamoor, Cauldon and eventually Leek although this is just a siding as it stands at the moment.

 

Neil,

The Leekbrook-to-Stoke line can be seen here if you have Google Earth installed.

The photos (click on the location icons) shows the places along the line before any serious restoration commenced.

http://barryknapper.com/CVRF/Stokeextension.kml

 

Sorry - what I meant was - the track that is being lifted - where is that going. If the line to Cheadle was going to be reinstated I was puzzled why the track might be being lifted unless it was being used elsewhere.
Whether the Stoke line had been abandoned seems to have been an issue but with the track still in situe clearly it hadn't but lifting the Cheadle track ????

 

There seems to be a lack of advertisement about Churnet Valley's current locomotive status & what's operating.

Loco's most likely to appear this Bank Holiday weekend (May change) -


Friday 6th April:
- Cauldon Lowe service - Class 33021.
- CVR Local service - BRCW Class 104 Dmu.


7th & 8th April:
CVR Local service - Either Class 33021 or Class 104 Dmu.


9th April:
2 Train CVR Timetable - Class 104 Dmu & Class 33021.


The current situation with Steam locomotives is that the S160 6046 has over run its overhaul, BUT it's hopped that it'll be out for the 'Railway at War Weekend'.


Other loco news:
- Black 5 44767 has had it's boiler removed and sent away for repair by the owning group.
- 33102 is progressing nicely, should be all complete by the September diesel gala.
- 47524's overhaul is steadily progressing.
- S160 5197 should be next on the Steam overhaul list.
- Brightside is progressing steadily.
- 37407 & 37424 are stored at Cheddleton MPD along with Class 25 Tamworth Castle.
- Privately owned ex Barry 8F is stored awaiting restoration.
- Class 04 & Janus are operational shunters.
- Loaned Class 33021 is operational.
- Class 104 DMU with 110 car is operational.
- GWR 5199 has now gone back to Llangollen Railway.
- Other 104 Power Car's are stored on CVR site.

 

Frank, to my knowledge that's 3 places you've posted this. So I'm guessing it's in many more too. Trust there's no hidden agenda here?