Foremarke Hall set to star with Broadway Easter duty

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FLAGSHIP locomotive WR 4-6-0 No. 7903 Foremarke Hall is rostered to haul the historic first Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway public train out of the Cotswold tourist honeypot of Broadway on Good Friday.

Heritage Railway Association president and line patron Lord Richard Faulkner of Worcester will signal the opening of the new Broadway station by unveiling a plaque marking the achievement of volunteers who have built it on the site of the original.

WR 4-6-0 No. 7903 Foremarke Hall passes Hayles Abbey Halt in December. IAN CROWDER

Modfield Hall No. 7903 will depart at 9.40am for Cheltenham Racecourse.

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The station building is substantially complete, using new heritage bricks and materials so that it closely resembles the original. It even has a riveted (as opposed to welded) steel roof and platform canopy superstructure, to the original 1903 design, made by volunteers in the railway’s steam locomotive department.

BR withdrew local train services and closed the original station in March 1960 with the buildings and platforms subsequently demolished. The line itself, once a vital link between the West Midlands and Wales and the West Country, remained open for through freight and passenger trains, but was closed in 1976 after a derailment at Winchcombe damaged trackwork, and in 1979, the line was lifted throughout.

Read more in Issue 239 of HR – on sale now!

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