Present Day
The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway took a lease of Toddington yard from 24 March 1981, with the first working party on site on 28 March. After site clearance, the first track was laid and a compound was built alongside the goods shed which was used by a small business. The signal box was included in the compound, although its lever frame had been purchased and removed by the Gwili Railway a few days earlier just as the lease negotiations were being finalised.
Toddington's first locomotive, a Hudswell Clarke D615 0-6-0 diesel shunter, was delivered on 30 May 1981, to be followed by GWR 2800 Class 2807 from Woodham Brothers on 20 June 1981. During the next four years, the station site was transformed with the thorough refurbishment of the station building, reinstatement of the platform and restoration of the signal box with a new frame from Earlswood Lakes. Double track was laid through the station towards Stanway Viaduct to the north and extensive sidings were laid to accommodate a large collection of locomotives and rolling stock. The goods shed was taken over and converted into a workshop and office, whilst a water tower was brought in from Ashford.
The station was inspected by Major Rose of Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate on 21 March 1984 and authorisation was given for operation of a 2-coach push and pull train over a ΒΌ-mile section of track as far as Didbrook Bridge. The official reopening of the station took place on 22 April 1984 when Nicholas Ridley, the local MP, cut the tape on Easter Sunday. By 2003, the line had been extended south to Cheltenham Racecourse. In late-2005/early-2006, a start was made to relay track north towards Broadway, and the first 2 miles of this section, as far as Laverton Halt re-opened in 2011, with Broadway expected to re-open sometime around 2015 (expanding to a total of 15 miles in length).
Read more about this topic: Toddington Railway Station
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“A day in thy courts is better than a thousand.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 84:10.