£1m needed for historic rail project
An ambitious fundraising project to redevelop and extend a historic railway station has raised enough funds to complete the first phase.
The Severn Valley Railway share offer programme to restore the picturesque Bridgnorth Station has topped £1.45m.
Now, the Bridgnorth Project Team is in a position to complete not only the construction of its new refreshment room, built in the style of a typical Great Western Railway building of the early 20th century, but also its planned refurbishment of the station’s historic booking hall and extension of the popular track-side pub The Railwayman’s Arms.
Other works now guaranteed include a comprehensive tree-planting scheme to improve the entire station site.
Tony Bending, long-standing volunteer at the SVR said he was still hopeful of achieving the final target of £2.5m.
“We’ve had enormous interest in what we are doing with more than 3,000 web enquiries, so we think there is still more to come. It’s also not too late to apply for a share offer pack on our website or by giving us a call and we’d like to remind everyone that with the shares come some generous shareholder travel benefits.”
There is now a 10-week countdown to the close of the share offer which is seeking to raise a total of £2.5 million by selling shares at a price of £1 each.
The rest of the money will go towards second phase works, including the installation of a turntable, more improvements to the public section and opening up road access with better car parking to accommodate significantly higher visitor numbers at the northern end of the line.
Launched late in 2016, applications for shares cannot be processed after October 31.
David Postle, long-time SVR volunteer and lead of the Bridgnorth Project Team added: “This station was built in 1862 to serve an important market town where revenue from goods traffic, particularly that serving the local agricultural community, exceeded that from passengers. It was not built to accommodate anything up to 250,000 visitors that are now seen on the current Severn Valley Railway each year.
“Modernising the infrastructure enables us to protect and conserve this unique piece of living history for future generations and that is why reaching our share offer target of £2.5 million is so important to us.”
Full share offer information can be found at www.svr.co.uk/shareoffer or by calling 01562 757900 (Option 2).
