Dorset rail line back on track after 45 years

REGULAR passenger trains are to run once more on a railway line ripped up in the “Beeching Axe” thanks to an army of volunteers who have spent 40 years rebuilding it.

From next month, Swanage in Dorset will be reconnected with the main rail network in a scheduled service for the first time since 1972.

West Coast Railways will run diesel trains four times a day for four days a week along the 10 miles of rebuilt track that runs from Wareham to the Victorian resort. Swanage was effectively cut off from the mainline after Dr Richard Beeching, a railway adviser, recommended it be one of hundreds of loss-making rural lines axed.

Volunteers and rail enthusiasts have worked to restore the track and build signal boxes, a level crossing and embankments. They were supported by a £5.5million investment from the railway’s stakeholders, including Purbeck district council, Dorset county council, BP and a £1.8million grant from the Government’s Coastal Communities Fund. The volunteers first used old British Rail materials to install 5.5 miles of track to run the Swanage Railway, a steam heritage railway, before upgrading three miles of track from Worgret Junction, near Wareham, to the heritage railway line.

Trevor Parsons, of Swanage Railway Company, said the service would be “historic” because generations of volunteers had worked to return passenger trains from Swanage to Wareham.