Villagers burn at plan for Wolsingham railway line

Feb 9 2010 by Neil McKay, The Journal

VILLAGERS are fighting plans to transport more than one million tonnes of coal along the route of a tourist railway.

They say hundreds of wagons a day would trundle along roads past their homes in Wolsingham, County Durham bringing the coal to a planned rail depot.

Owners of the Weardale Railway have been in talks with UK Coal about transporting the coal from Wolsingham to power stations in the South and Midlands.

The coal would be transported by rail from Wolsingham through Bishop Auckland to Darlington, and then on to the main east coast line.

A joint statement between Weardale Railway and UK Coal said: “The ability of the Weardale Railway to assist in moving the coal by rail will greatly reduce the environmental and community impacts by reducing highway usage.”

But following an exhibition on the proposals in December at Wolsingham Town Hall, a public meeting was arranged by locals which led to an action group being formed to oppose plans to build the depot.

An application by UK Coal and the railway is to go before Durham County Council planners later this year seeking permission to build the depot to store coal from an opencast site at Park Wall North at Sunniside near Crook. It would be transported in wagons along the A68 to the Harperley roundabout and then on the A689 and into Wolsingham.

But retired history teacher Sandra Charlton, an action group member of Stanhope Road, Wolsingham, said some 150 wagons daily would be transporting coal from the opencast to the planned depot.

The site has the capacity to produce 1.27 million tonnes of coal and 500,000 tones of fireclay over four years. Mrs Charlton said: “The lorries would pass just metres from houses in Attwood Terrace and cause horrendous noise and disruption.

“The action group have no objections to transporting coal by rail, but we say there is a mothballed rail depot at Wardley, Gateshead, and the coal could be transported by road from the opencast to Gateshead away from Wolsingham.

“The coal would be brought along narrow, quiet roads unsuitable for such a volume of traffic into Wolsingham under these proposals.”

Weardale Railway has had a chequered history including a period in receivership.

But when Chicago-based Iowa Pacific Holdings took over a 75% stake in the railway in 2008, its president Ed Ellis announced that negotiations were taking place with a number of local firms to transport freight.

He said: “The Wear Valley has been isolated from the wider rail network for too long. Underpinning this line with reasonable volumes of freight provides a logical and profitable reason to be re-connected to the network.

“A great deal of passion has been invested to restore the Weardale Railway, but it will not survive on heritage journeys alone.”