Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway scoops over £150,000 for essential work

More than £150,000 of funding has been secured to ensure essential electrical work can be carried out at Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway.
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Historic Environment Scotland (HES) has awarded the Scottish Railway Preservation Society (SRPS) £158,654 so work can be done on its visitor and train maintenance buildings.

Since 1981, several historic buildings have been obtained and re-erected to provide a traditional railway setting at the site, one of which is Wormit station building, the traditional booking office.

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Relocated from the south end of the Tay Bridge, it is just one of the visitor buildings that will benefit from an electrical upgrade – which won’t detract from the nostalgia of a golden age.

More than £150,000 has been secured for essential electrical works at Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway. Picture: John Devlin.More than £150,000 has been secured for essential electrical works at Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway. Picture: John Devlin.
More than £150,000 has been secured for essential electrical works at Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway. Picture: John Devlin.

The funding will also cover enhancements to the interior of Bo’ness and Kinneil’s fleet of historic train carriages, with screening installed within to aid social distancing for passengers.

The remaining money will help the society to carry out a business review with consultants to enable them to make the most of the award-winning heritage railway which normally welcomes more than 60,000 visitors to Scotland’s largets railway museum and aboard nostalgic steam and heritage diesel trains.

Steve Humphreys, SRPS chairman, said: “The Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway and Museum of Scottish Railways have been developed by SRPS volunteers for over 40 years.

“We were unable to open to visitors at all last year.

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"SRPS Railtours LTD, our mainline tour subsidiary, was not able to run tours in its 50th anniversary year. As a result, we did not raise the income we would normally get to put back into our preservation of Scotland’s railway history.

“We are grateful that HES has assisted us at this time of great difficulty. There are many traditional skills which will be lost if we cannot pass them on to the next generation and the upgrades to our existing infrastructure that this grant will cover will assist us greatly.

“The enhancements we have been able to make due to this funding mean passengers will be able to travel once again behind a mighty steam train at Bo’ness or on a SRPS rail tour around Scotland as soon as we can return safely to running services.”

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