Heritage railway hosts successful open weekend as it celebrates reopening the route to Bridgnorth
A heritage railway celebrated the crucial re-opening of a section of its route at a successful open day weekend.
The Severn Valley Railway has completed engineering work on renewing track and points at its yard in Bridgnorth which allowed people to travel on the entire route from Kidderminster to the south Shropshire town.
Its Open House Weekend on Saturday and Sunday saw the doors thrown open to give passengers the chance to go behind the scenes to rarely seen areas. These included the building of a brand new 82045 model from scratch, and a ride on a "rattly" brake van in the open air as well as numerous guided tours.
Lesley Carr, SVR's head of marketing and communications, said: "We have seen a really strong weekend of people coming. It was the first weekend we have had the full line open from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth back in action."
Volunteers - including young people - spoke with great enthusiasm to visitors about what they do. And Lesley reported packed trains full of smiling people getting off at Bridgnorth.
The heritage railway hopes that the success of the weekend will help to galvanise a good year.
Lesley said: "It is going to be a very tough year, we know that. The weekend was great and we hope it will be a harbinger of some strong passenger numbers to come."
The railway operators say that when people buy a freedom of the line ticket they get a voucher to come again.
"Using a freedom of the line ticket, visitors can travel as many times as they like on one day on the line between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth. They can get off to see the yard in Highley, visit Bewdley and Kidderminster. They can even use it to go shopping!"
