The
Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has awarded a £95,000 grant to fund a classic train
restoration project.
Railway
locomotive 4930 'Hagley Hall' was retired from service 27 years ago and is now owned by the Severn Valley Railway Charitable Trust.
The
restoration will be completed at the Severn Valley Railway’s Heritage Skills
Training Academy in Worcestershire and Shropshire and the project will provide
students with valuable experience that will help ensure that valuable
locomotive skills are not lost.
Hugh
McQuade, chairman of the Severn Valley Railway Charitable Trust, stated, "Individuals
with the requisite heritage skills, for example steam locomotive fitters or
boilersmiths do not exist in the modern workplace and for the railway to
survive these time served skills need to be passed on to a younger
generation."
In order to
fully restore Hagley Hall students will need to strip the train right down and
completely rebuild it, but although the project will help ensure dying skills
are not lost the train is not destined to be a just a museum piece. When the
restoration is complete the trust intend to run it up and down the branch line
to allow visitor a chance to experience rail travel as it used to be for
previous generations.
Reyahn
King, head of Heritage Lottery Fund West Midlands is pleased that lottery funds
will help get the project on track.
"Visitors
to the Severn Valley Railway will be delighted that a one-time static exhibit
is a working locomotive once more," King said.
The HLF is
responsible for distributing a share of the funds raised by UK National Lottery
Good Causes. HLF grants are awarded to projects designed to sustain and
transform the British Heritage.
