Plymouthian Sprinter

[Garry Morris]

There is a class 159 on a Salisbury - Plymouth tour April 16th with some of the proceeds going to the East Cornwall Railway. Anyone know anything about this tour or the ambitions of the ECR?

[surfsup]

If it's the one that I'm thinking of - Advertised something like 'The Plymothonian' or something on that lines, then Cancelled. More because it appeared to be a very unfounded group (mostly made up of schoolkids apparently), who were to run it with SWT on a Hire Now Pay Later business. And unsurprisingly didn't sell enough tickets.

 

As for the East Cornwall Railway - they posted something about it a while ago. Having ''unsuccessfully made an offer'' on the Heathfield Branch to turn it into a preserved railway, the group then went on to propose a narrow gauge railway from Gunnislake into Callington. I'm all for start up projects, but I feel that have to have a certain amount of viability to them. Not least when you read things such as only contactable outside of school hours, and we propose to borrow land from local land owners to run our line through rather kills it for me!

[Garry Morris]

Thanks for clearing up the query. I suspected it was not progressing as it was so hard to track down. Not a surprise that tickets weren't selling, 159's aren't very exciting in my book though there have been a couple of successful runs to Kingswear. Interestingly there used to be narrow gauge railways in the area of Gunnislake for the mines but it's a very 'off the beaten track' area for making a go of anything touristy.