Severn Valley Railway hails 'amazing' public response to landslip as it faces up to huge repair bill

The heritage railway, one of the West Midlands' most popular tourist attractions, was dealt a major blow last week, when a large amount of earth gave way on a section of track on the northern end of the line, near Astbury, between Hampton Loade and Bridgnorth.

Since the discovery, which was phoned in by a member of the public, major investigations have been taking place to identify the cause of the landslip, how to repair the issue, and how much that might cost.

The railway has also had to wrestle with a number of other unintended consequences.

With its fleet of locomotives housed in Bridgnorth for winter maintenance, the landslip has meant the railway has had to move a locomotive by road to its Kidderminster base to allow it to continue services.

While the full cost of repairs has not yet been confirmed, the railway expects the final bill to run to hundreds of thousands of pounds - and to take months to complete.

Although a dedicated fundraising appeal has not yet been launched the railway has already received more than £50,000 in support through its existing resilience fund - with the organisation overwhelmed at the level of support.

It comes after a tough period for the heritage attraction, which has suffered through the effects of Covid restrictions and the cost of living crisis.

Services will continue to run from Kidderminster when it restarts after a winter break, with the railway very much open - with 12 miles out of 16 still operational.

The organisation is also in the process of arranging services and footplate rides to run from Bridgnorth station in the interim, while that end of the line is cut off.

Jonathan 'Gus' Dunster, the managing director of the Severn Valley Railway (SVR), said they hope to have a full plan in place to tackle the incident in the coming days and weeks - once engineers have fully assessed the site.

He said that the state of the landslip does 'take your breath away', and thanked those who have already donated to support the repairs.

Chris Bond, the railway's head of infrastructure said the incident had been shocking, and came only three days after the bridge had been inspected.

He said: "It is quite obvious from the scale of the damage that this is not going to be a quick fix, and we are talking months I think, and probably in the terms of hundreds of thousands of pounds to repair."

Mr Dunster added: "Even though I had seen the images beforehand, when you actually get to see it in reality it does take your breath away slightly, because obviously it is not what anyone wants to see."

Asked about the current status of the landslip the managing director said: "Well we are still at the stages of assessing the damage really, and that has moved onto the point today where we have got some contractors onsite who are drilling some boreholes through the railway formation - and also into the the ground adjacent to the railway to understand the ground conditions in the area.

"That will tell us quite a bit about probably what caused the issue in the first place and also tell us some of the real critical information we are going to have to understand to know how best to repair it."

Both Mr Dunster and Mr Bond said the problem was hugely disappointing in light of the recent difficulties faced by the railway.

The managing director said: "Of course it is really, really disappointing and people on the railway have worked really really hard for the last 18 months, well really for two years actually since 2023, to stabilise the railway's finances and start to build it back up again, and we saw some really encouraging signs last year.

"We were busy and we had a relatively good financial result at the end of the year so to be faced with something like this is disappointing.

"But there's no point being downbeat about it, we have got to get on with it and do what the Severn Valley Railway always does, and that's dust ourselves off, repair the railway, and get ourselves back up and running again - and that's what we are going to do."

Mr Bond said: "The railway is very dear to my heart and we have seen some quite difficult times lately with Covid and the cost of living crisis and all tourist attractions are having to fight for each pound, and this really is something we could have done without at this time.

"We started to get back on our feet financially in the right direction so this is a bit of a blow to those efforts, so you know we have had a lot of generous support financially so far with donations coming in, it is obviously going to be quite a large repair bill for this so the more money people can donate to us, the quicker we can get this done and restore the railway."

Mr Dunster thanked all those who have stepped up to help so far.

He said: "It is just amazing, we always say that a lot of people, many many thousands of people have a special place in their heart for the SVR, but it is absolutely true. 

"We have been part of the local economy here and part of the tourism scene in the West Midlands and Worcestershire and Shropshire for 60 years - you know it is our 60th anniversary year this year - but it is really, really encouraging to see the length at which people will go to support us.

"Without us doing anything very much in terms of fundraising we have received over £50,000 towards the repairs so I can't thank the people enough who have donated to us because it shows very much how much they think of this railway and we really appreciate that."

He added: "Obviously we will do a bit more of a structured appeal when we know how much it is going to cost to repair but in the meantime if people do want to donate, if you go onto our website you will find a link on there to our resilience fund and please, if you can make a donation we would be really, really appreciative."

Mr Dunster said the railway is also talking to MPs and politicians, as well as looking for other potential sources of grant funding to pay for the repairs.

The railway is no stranger to issues with landslips, having suffered 'catastrophic' problems back in 2007, which ended up costing £3.6m to repair.

Mr Dunster said: "2007 was a complete catastrophe, if you remember the line was affected in many many places, and in fact the only operational section of the line we were left with was Kidderminster to Bewdley, which is the first three and a half miles, so we had many, many more locations that were affected in 2007.

"The root cause if you like was the same, extremely heavy rainfall over a short period of time, but also if you remember there was a distinct difference in that a lot of the issues in 2007 were caused by the original Victorian drainage systems on the railway becoming completely overwhelmed.

"This particular failure was not a failure of drainage. It looks to be something to do with the level of water in the brook underneath the bridge there and the effect that has had on the retaining wall but we don't know that definitely yet, but it certainly wasn't a drainage issue."

People can support the railway by visiting https://svr.co.uk/resilience/.