The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway (GWR, GWSR or Gloucs-Warks Steam Railway) is a volunteer-run heritage railway which runs along the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire border.
So far the GWR has reopened a total distance of 12 miles (along the closed railway line) between Laverton Halt and Cheltenham Racecourse railway station.
It operates over 12 miles between Cheltenham Racecourse and Laverton Halt (although not yet re-instated nor re-opened) and is currently extending to Broadway, Worcestershire.
With the extension (currently under construction) towards Broadway, the line will be increased to a total of around 15 miles in length by 2015, making this the seventh longest Standard Gauge railway line in the United Kingdom.
As part of the regeneration project of the National Network's Worcester-Oxford line, which crosses over a proposed extension of the GWR and included the rebuilding of the island platform at Honeybourne, the GWR also plan to eventually extend their services "a further 4 miles" to Honeybourne (increasing up to a total of 19 miles in length possibly by the year 2020).
In the long term the GWR could (once work has completed on extending to Broadway and then to a newly-reconstructed island platform 3 at Honeybourne) extend further:
- South (via a proposed Cheltenham North - serving a nearby stadium close by) to (a new heritage platform or two) at Cheltenham Spa (where the GWR could once again interchange with services on the nearby national network's Cross-Country Mainline).
- North to Stratford Racecourse in Stratford on Avon via Milcote (in Warwickshire) and thus become the fourth longest heritage railway in England, crossing the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire/Warwickshire borders.
Read more about Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway: Overview, Signalling, Plans, Landslips, Operational Diesel Locomotives and DMUS
Famous quotes containing the word railway:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)