Churnet Valley Railway: Full Steam into the Future
We met with Nigel and John, directors from the Churnet Valley Railway, who were manning their stand at the Leek show with a rather intriguing selection of railway-related photos and a "volunteers wanted" pop-up.
John told us that he is the Head of Signalling for the commercial side and a director of the charity too. The charity is called the North Staffordshire Railway Company, which was formed before the Churnet Valley Railway Company (the people who run the trains), in order to develop the education and history of the line. From that, the Churnet Valley Railway was initiated in 1992.
The CVR runs between Froghall and Consall in the valley, round to Cheddleton, up to Leekbrook, all the way out to Ipstones and back. The railway has recently been expanded all the way to Leek, and they own the additional 4 miles to Cauldon, which is one of John's projects he's currently working on. They also own the two miles from Froghall to Oakamore, which is another of his projects. From the Leekbrook triangle, there is still the 10-mile connection to Stoke-on-Trent, which he's currently negotiating access to.
"At the moment we have a 10-mile railway; the aim is to have a 30-mile network, which will be the largest private network in the UK," said John. They do need to raise money for this and do get bequests from people who have passed away, with the majority of income coming from members' donations.
CVR runs Wednesdays, Saturdays & Sundays daytime, and Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, plus bank holiday Mondays too. On all of the trains, there are meal options depending on the day. So, for example, on a Wednesday morning, you could have breakfast; on Sundays, you can have Sunday lunch. There's a whole variety of options - something to suit everyone.
In the wintertime, they run The Polar Express Experience and are the biggest Polar Express in the UK, with 71,000 passengers last year and are aiming for 85,000 this year, which is the limit on what the car park can handle - the only limiting factor for the event.
When they do the Polar Express, the large Froghall car park becomes one enormous marquee. So the car park for that is across the bridge; it's a colourful festive sight seeing all the people in their costumes on their short walk to the station.
On the charity arm, they run an archive and are currently digitizing all their photographs, some 20-30 thousand of them. In many cases, they don't know who's in the pictures and are currently running a campaign to find out as many of the people in the pictures as possible. Some are quite recent, and some are very old. So if you can help with that, please do get in touch with the charity.
Churnet Valley Railway: Full Steam into the Future
