New Heritage Coach Grant

L&B Trustee, Membership Secretary and Company Finance Director Ian Cowling today sent the following note:

I am pleased to announce our success in applying for funds from the Coastal Communities Fund which will be announced today (Monday) by the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP. We have been granted £150,000 for the construction of a Heritage Carriage and the creation of jobs at the railway. We commenced work on this application way back in March 2012”

The penalty of success at this level of grant application was the embargo that prevented us from passing on this good news to our members until after Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, had made his announcement earlier today - by which time most of you will have heard of the award via local and national news channels.

As we now have funding available to undertake a further heritage carriage, at the Railway Company Directors meeting last Saturday it was agreed to recommend to the Trust – in line with our previous discussions with them based on the railway's needs - that the additional carriage should be L&B No.11, a seven-compartment 56-seat all-third. We were not the only railway to receive funding as our friends at the Swanage Railway also received a substantial amount to extend their railway which bodes well for our future plans and the future of heritage railways in general.

Credit to Ian Cowling for once again achieving a sizable chunk of grant funding for the L&B - proof if proof were needed that our efforts at Woody Bay are now widely recognised, understood and valued.