Preservation
After only two years of closure preservationists had plans for Bridgnorth, resulting in the formation of the Severn Valley Railway Society. Vegetation was cleared, railway bric-a-brac was collected and the station buildings were refurbished. Although the original signal box was substantially demolished (only three sides of the bottom brick part and interlocking are original. The brick base was originally somewhat longer.), Bridgnorth station was never damaged through this demolition activity. From then on preservation gained momentum until the present day. Bridgnorth became the engineering centre of the new SVR because of the need to repair the growing numbers of rolling stock items and locomotives after opening to the public when the first train steamed from Bridgnorth to Hampton Loade in May 1970.
The station is reached from High Town via a modern footbridge over a main road and a valley, the present bridge having opened in 1994. This replacement tubular steel bridge occupies the site of a lattice bridge closed and demolished several years previously. A section of the original footbridge adorns the centre island of one of the road traffic roundabouts.
A share issue has been launched in October 2012. It is intended that a significant part of those monies raised will go towards additions to and refurbishment of the station buildings. The design of the additions are already (October 2012) proving to be the subject of robust debate both on a number of Internet fora and within the Severn Valley Railway community.
Read more about this topic: Bridgnorth Railway Station
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)