The Bishopside branch
Three of the entries below have happened and three have not. The one set on the dark plate is where the work stands today; everything under it is written as an intention, and we would rather publish those than not.
2021
The trust bought fourteen miles of it from the receiver, together with two viaducts, a signal box and a station roof with a sycamore growing through it.
2023
Ballast, sleepers and rail from Bishopside as far as the old goods yard, laid by volunteers across nineteen working weekends, most of them wet.
2025
One railcar ran to Cowley Halt and back on the last Saturday in June. Eleven hundred people rode it that weekend and the morning trips sold out by ten.
2026
The deck is in scaffolding until the autumn and the line stops short of it. Every entry below this one waits on the engineer’s report, which is the honest reason the rail ends here today.
2027
Six more miles, if the deck comes back sound.
2028
Two trains a day, most of the year.