We guess you are wondering what we have been doing over the past few months. Well the good news is that whilst we haven’t been in a position to reopen to the public, we have been able to continue to work at the site; and even in this latest lockdown the rules permit us to continue volunteering and getting the railway ready to reopen in 2021.

One great thing that happened recently was the awarding of a grant of £76,100 from the Lottery Fund’s Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage to help us with various projects.  This was accomplished by a lot of hard work by a few dedicated volunteers and we are extremely grateful to them. This, as well as the donations that many of you have given us, will allow us to continue to move forward and get us ready for next year.

With no trains running the track team have continued to work on basic maintenance, and also to improve the layouts and increase the length of our track.   We know you expect to see something different every year you come to visit us – and next year will be no different as you will find that the track no longer starts at our temporary platform at Prospidnick but it is well on its way northwards to reach the cutting in the car park where our new station will eventually be built.  Where you will join the train depends on how quickly we can get things done – so next year may see you still using the old Prospidnick platform, but it is making progress!

So what was involved…

Slewing the track at Prospidnick station into the centre of the track go give the right alignment to go over the bridge you normally walk across to get to the platform.

Getting the rails down to the site to get ready to lay them and preparing the old track bed.

Moving the sleepers from the cache in the car park.

And finally putting it all together to form a new piece of infrastructure.  Simples!

As always we are reliant on volunteers to do all our work both on site and remotely, and with some of our volunteers still having to be careful we would welcome some additional help on site to help with our building and refurbishing activities.  So if you are interested in helping out please get in touch at info@helstonrailway.co.uk.

Finally we know this is a difficult time for everyone, and our thoughts go out to all of you who are struggling through illness or hard times.  We want to see you all back next year so keep smiling, try to keep safe and thank you for helping us to keep going even when it all looked so difficult.  As a group of supporters we couldn’t ask for a better bunch of people – you have been amazing!