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.
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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.
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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.
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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.,
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