BACKGROUND
The Furness Railway Trust has accepted further grant aid, towards its plans
to create a museum and workshop, with associated visitor facilities.
There is an urgent need to bring the Trust's valuable collection under cover on a single site, and to allow further restoration projects to take place. There is no room at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway for such a facility.
Key requirements at the outset of the process was that any site should be close to Haverthwaite station, can be accessed by an existing junction or junctions on the A590 trunk road, and can be linked by rail to the existing L&HR. Any site should also be able to accomodate the increasingly common overspill of parking from the existing Haverthwaite station during the high season, and provide a southern terminus for the new shuttle bus to nearby Grizedale Forest.
However, the Trust has dropped any plans for development on a site near St. Anne's Church in Haverthwaite, which did meet all these criteria but had technical problems and failed to win the necessary backing of local people. The current work will now assess what is the best site; as there are no other potential sites in Haverthwaite, this seach has moved away from the original goal of enhancing the western (Haverthwaite) end of the L&HR. The views of local people in determining this will continue to be vital. You can log your comments here now.
One of the key features of the proposed scheme is that it should be as 'green' as possible. The FRT Committee is keen that the carbon footprint of the new site should be minimised and that environmentally friendly technology should be utilised wherever possible. In short, the desire is to make the scheme an exemplar in energy and resource saving features and a showpiece on how to implement sustainable tourism.
The original preferred scheme could have cost in the region of £5m and approaches had been made to a number of funding bodies with positive initial responses. This included expensive elements including a rail tunnel under the A590 trunk road; now the project is being recast as a new site is sought, the overall cost is likely to come down.
At the moment, the proposals are still very much at the conceptual stage and we are a long way from being in a position to seek planning permission. Much work still needs to be done to produce workable architects and engineering drawings, and the supporting documentation required by the Lake District National Park Authority.
A public meeting in the village in December 2007, chaired by local Cumbria County Councillor Ted Walsh, raised a number of issues, mainly focussing on the impact that additional traffic would have on the road junctions. However, it was the overall mood of the meeting that the FRT should be asked to develop the proposals further and to report back on how some of the issues raised could be resolved or mitigated. That work is now underway.
The Trust has accepted grants from the Ulverston and Low Furness Market Town Initiative and the North West Development Agency, with a required contribution from the FRT's own financial resources. Strict regulations regarding the tendering and letting of contracts for the work meant that considerable time was spent in preparing the required documents and procedures.
The Trust believes these proposals are both exciting and innovative. They would provide a new all weather attraction in the South Lakes and encourage sustainable tourism. The economic benefits would be felt widely amongst many businesses in the South and Central Lakes areas. Importantly, it would also allow us to have the facilities that we so badly need to assist in our railway conservation work.
HISTORY
The Trust appointed consultants in 1992 who confirmed the need for the FRT to identify suitable accommodation to display and maintain items of its collection of rolling stock and other historical railway artefacts.
Space at the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway is very limited, and the consultants, Porter-Brown Solutions and MJN Associates, were asked to prepare an Options Analysis Report to weigh up the best way forward for the Trust.
The consultants' brief was to consider the best way the Trust can use its resources and fulfil its ambitions. The FRT has a growing collection of rolling stock and other historic assets, which is spread around a number of sites in the North West. The collection includes Britain's oldest working standard gauge steam locomotive, Furness Railway Number 20, the Great Western Railway steam locomotives 5643 and 4979 "Wootton Hall", Austerity steam locomotive "Cumbria" and former Barrow steelworks diesel shunter "Fluff". The Trust's first Victorian railway carriage is once more resplendent and in working order, thanks to a lottery-funded restoration, and the Trust has in its possession four further vehicles for what will eventually be a complete vintage train to run behind FR Number 20. The Trust also owns a sizeable collection of railwayana connected with the Furness and other North Western railways. It is the Trust's hope that this collection can be brought together in a sustainable way.
The consulting partners were appointed after the FRT had successfully applied for two grants of £2,500 each. The Trust would like to thank Cumbria County Council's First Aid for Cumbria fund (which aimed to help communities suffering from the after-effects of the Foot and Mouth epidemic) and the Rural Development Programme for their support.
The consultants concluded that there is a real need to provide covered accommodation that can bring the Trust's collection under one roof.
At the time they completed their report they felt that the planning constraints of the Lake District National Park meant that this building would have to be located away from Haverthwaite. However, since then, there has been a shift in policy at the National Park, and after advice from funding bodies, the Trust decided to investigate further whether it was possible to do something within the National Park, which would allow us to be closer to Haverthwaite station. After lengthy discussions, the Trust authorised expenditure from its own funds to enable an independent consulting engineer, Bleasdale Wand Ltd of Ulverston, to undertake some initial assessments and to work up costings for our requirements. Discussions were also held with the Forestry Commission to explore potential synergies with the Commission’s development proposals for Grizedale Forest.
During 2003, the FRT did investigate the possibility of purchasing a former Cumbria County Council Highways Depot close to Haverthwaite Station, which had been offered for sale by open tender. However, the Trust did not submit a tender after learning that the Lake District National Park would oppose the use of the site as a storage and maintenance depot for railway vehicles. The site has since become a coach depot.
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