Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Severn Valley Railway signals turn red for work on track
Tuesday 3rd January 2012, 10:59AM GMT.
The Severn Valley Railway in Shropshire closed for six weeks from today to allow a £250,000 programme of track and drainage work to be carried out.
The last of the SVR’s Festive Season trains ran yesterday and now the major maintenance work has got under way. A mile of track to and through the 480-yard long Bewdley Tunnel is to be renewed.
The trackbed will be reballasted, signal cabling replaced, new drainage installed, and both tunnel portals re-pointed.
Contractors will cut new drainage channels in the bedrock and will have to employ ‘forced ventilation’ to allow workmen to breathe in an atmosphere that would otherwise be polluted by fumes from plant and machinery.
SVR infrastructure manager Phil Sowden said the railway aimed to have the main areas of work sufficiently complete to allow the resumption of trains during the schools half-term holiday from February 11 to 26.
The Kidderminster-to-Bridgnorth steam heritage line spent around £400,000 on major track and drainage renewal work at Arley and on the Sandbourne Viaduct, south of Bewdley, this time last year.
Mr Sowden said this winter’s work programme brought the total spent on infrastructure renewals over the last three and a half years to £1.5 million.
The railway reopened in Easter 2008 following the disastrous flooding of June 2007.
Since then major work has included the relaying of track and structural repairs to Worcester Road Viaduct, Kidderminster and the construction of new gable ends, doors and cladding at the Bridgnorth loco works.
Mr Sowden said: “Engines and trains are the glamorous side of what we do but if you haven’t got a railway to run on you’re going nowhere.”
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