SEVERN VALLEY BORN AGAIN!
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Severn Valley Railway (SVR) running its first public passenger trains. However, 2020 could so easily have been its last.
In common with heritage lines big and small throughout the country, the SVR issued an emergency nationwide appeal for donations – in its case £250,000 – merely to survive the coming months, because of the abrupt loss of income caused by the enforced suspension of services and special events due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
However, history has shown that here is a heritage line which has inspired the public imagination – and again in its darkest hour, ordinary people over and above the line’s 13,000 members and shareholders have rallied round to save it.
The requested money was raised within three weeks – and as we closed for press, donations were still pouring in by the day, highlighting the fact that for the past half century, people have taken this magnificent railway to their hearts.
SVR chairman Nick Paul CBE said: “We are deeply grateful to every single person who away the immediate threat to the railway’s future. We have received thousands of donations from across the region, the country and the world. The wonderful messages of support which came with them t e l l us we’re doing the right thing in working so hard to keep the SVR dream alive.”
That was a dream which began 55 years ago, and which, somewhat miraculously, took less than five years to see steam trains running again on part of the GWR cross-country route from Shrewsbury to Hartlebury.
Opened on February 1, 1862, it was closed on the recommendation of British Railways (BR) chairman Dr Richard Beeching to passengers on September 9, 1963 and to through freight services on November 30 that year – the closure moves having begun before the publication of his seminal report The Reshaping of British Railways on March 27, 1963.
It is also a dream which the public at large allow to slip away and die. Far from it.
Formative meeting
The revivalists’ story began on July 6, 1965, when the now-demolished Coopers Arms pub that served Kidderminster’s Habberley housing estate held the public meeting which led to the immediate formation of the Severn Valley Railway Society.
Keith Beddoes, a local maintenance fitter in his early twenties, was annoyed at the loss of the direct service from Kidderminster to London, and in conversations with friends at work talked about the Beeching closures – and whether anything could be done to save them.
Looking at the ground-breaking first revival of a closed section of the national network
