£40,000 LOTTERY GRANT WILL COVER BULK OF WSR MUSEUM COSTS
A revised bid for Heritage Lottery funding by the West Somerset Steam Railway Trust has borne fruit with £40,000 for Bishops Lydeard station museum.
The grant under the HLF’s ‘Our Heritage’ scheme will cover the lion’s share of a £60,000 improvement programme for the ‘Gauge Museum’ in the former goods shed at the WSR’s southern terminus. The remaining £20,000 will come from the trust’s own fundraising.
The museum will close during the winter of 2019/20 for the work, which will include new audiovisual
During the West Somerset Railway’s Spring Steam Gala on March 28 2017, resident S&D ‘7F’ 2-8-0 No. 53808 pilots visiting classmate No. 53809 through Bishops Lydeard station with a goods train, passing the former goods shed housing the ‘Gauge Museum’ which is now to receive a revamp, thanks largely to a Heritage Lottery grant. equipment and Wi-Fi to provide extra information about exhibits such as locomotive nameplates. A part-time learning officer will also be recruited to involve local schools and colleges. New displays on the GWR and Southern networks in Somerset will be created, and special exhibitions held. It is also planned to create an oral archive of the railway’s pre-closure and early preservation history.
The building, which was designed by Brunel and dates from the opening of the TauntonWatchet section of the line in 1862, will reopen in time for the 2020 Spring Steam Gala. The trust’s 1897-built GWR sleeping car will remain the principal exhibit, and the existing model railway will be retained. Improving the museum was originally intended to be the first stage in a £20m redevelopment of Bishops Lydeard, dubbed the ‘Southern Gateway’ project, but the trust’s initial bid for lottery funding was rejected (SR464/469).
Trust Chairman Chris Austin said: “The ‘Southern Gateway’ project is currently being reviewed following the consultation last year. So the museum project is a free-standing proposal, within the existing building, but would fit in with any wider development. “We are very excited about the HLF grant, the first such award the railway has achieved for over 20 years” – the last having been to the Diesel & Electric Preservation Group for a similar museum project in Williton goods shed.