SWANAGE Railway volunteers are celebrating after winning a major civil engineering award for the restoration and upgrade of a three-mile section of railway enabling a trial passenger train service to run from Swanage to Wareham for the first time in 45 years.
![](https://www.mortonsdirect.co.uk/heritagerailway/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2017/09/HR-233-p27.jpg)
The Purbeck line has won the annual Institution of Civil Engineers’ South West Engineering Award 2017 in the projects costing less than £1 million category.
The £950,000 work is part of the Swanage Railway’s Project Wareham and took place over two years between Norden station and half a mile short of Worgret Junction, on the main London to Weymouth line west of Wareham, from 2014.
Enjoy more Heritage Railway reading in the four-weekly magazine.
Click here to subscribe & save.
The transformation saw three miles of little used former Network Rail line restored to a passenger-carrying standard, overgrown embankments and drains cleared, a quarter-mile long embankment upgraded, while half a mile of new track was also laid.
![](https://www.mortonsdirect.co.uk/heritagerailway/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2017/09/HR-233-p27a.jpg)
The project also involved the installation of a state-of-the-art level crossing, aimed at protecting Perenco’s Wytch Farm oilfield access road near Norden station, and the creation of a nearby road-rail interchange for locomotives and carriages.
Quarter-mile long embankment
The interchange construction involved the excavation of 2500 cubic metres of earth that was recycled and used to extend a quarter-mile long embankment near Furzebrook. A diesel-hauled,
two-year trial train service to Wareham was launched on June 13, operated by West Coast Railways.,
Read more in Issue 233 of HR – on sale now!
Advert
![Subscribe to Heritage Railway Magazine](https://b1944490.smushcdn.com/1944490/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2022/01/HR-970X250-copy.jpg?lossy=2&strip=1&webp=1)