Saturday 29 October 2011

Friends of the Cotswolds

The Broadway Area Group has an unexpected and very generous donation of £1000 from the Friends of the Cotswolds  for bricks and materials.  As a charitable trust the Friends of the Cotswolds made the donation to the GWR Trust who will arrange for the funds to be made available to the Broadway Area Group through the GWSR Plc.

Friends of the Cotswolds is a charity, formed in 2006 to support the conservation and enhancement of the environment and landscape of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. They also seek to raise awareness of its distinctive qualities which make it such a special place to live, work and visit. Bravo!

 I would like to thank David Courtney of the FOC for the time taken to facilitate this donation. It is a great deal of money to the BAG and will allow us to continue with our endeavours.

The FOC have an excellent Website at http://www.friendsofthecotswolds.org/

13 comments:

Toddington Ted said...

What a superb gesture. This shows just how valued the Broadway extension project, together with the proposed rebuilt Broadway Railway Station, is to the local community. Well done to the Broadway team again!

Anonymous said...

Did you spot my tip on this slab material at the abandoned Goodwick station?

surfsuprich said...

Excellent news Bill, as Toddington Ted has said, it shows just how valued the Broadway extension and station project is within the Cotswolds - So well done to Everyone at Broadway & Thanks to everyone at Friends of the Cotswolds.

By the way, on my way through Reading the other day, i ended up speaking to a few of the NR Engineers working on the 'rebuild' project and interestingly they too agree on how much of a shame it is to loose some of the last proper remaining GWR Architecture and that the station will end up as yet another characterless Derby...Anyway, the company you might want to get in touch with is Devon based Gilpin Demololition - Theyre the company responsible for the demololition of Reading, so plently of potential bricks going there - theyve unfortunatly already made a start on the canopies and waiting rooms on Platform 4 & 9!

http://www.gilpindemolition.com/main.asp

Anyway, good luck with the project, always on the look out for more bricks!

Richard

Anonymous said...

I have seen in my local press that a big chunk of disused railway land around Taunton station is to be redeveloped I believe that the old GWR goods office is going to be demolished and a railway bridge is also to be removed for a new access road be worth looking into as lots of of old railway materiel to be had. Hope this info is of use I been reading your blog with much interest over the last few months you guys are doing a wonderful job rebuilding the station keep up the good work. Pete from Taunton

Anonymous said...

There is undoubtedly a lot of surplus material available around the network. The problem is in the cost of moving it to Broadway.
Silly as it seems, perhaps we followers should offer some money towards a lorry and "hiab" fund?
But then you'd still have to find an operator with the time to offer?

Anonymous said...

Great news about more money to the fund but it would be nice if we readers had an indication of how much money is required and the amount received todate. With Platform 1 proceeding nicely I am assuming thoughts must being given to Platform 2 and its associated costs. If this is so perhaps an indication of the level of funding required for its rebuild should be also displayed.

Anonymous said...

You can check on the "thermometer" on the Broadway Station website to see the target & amount collected so far in respect of platform 1a. The web address is http://www.broadwaystation.co.uk

Bill may not have yet updated it with this donation, I think it showed £2600 raised last time I looked.

Anonymous said...

Echoing the 6th comment, it would be great to have an idea of the "project plan" and key milestones.

It is wonderful to observe progress with this inspirational project, however more pictures would be welcome to feed my twice a week fix. Feeling very flat with a single low resolution image after yesterday's efforts.!

Dave said...

Anonymous, the BAG group does have a proposed project plan which was submitted to the Board several months ago. No response so far.

Anonymous said...

Pretty shocked to hear that Dave. It doesn't sound very businesslike to have had no response to your project plan for that length of time.

It's a pity because if readers had a greater sense of the structure of the project, they may have more confidence to contribute funds.

The Broadway project clearly has attracted a lot of interest judging by the growing site hits that the Blog is receiving. Providing a little more up to date and richer detail of the project could well be a good means of keeping and attracting visitors and inspiring donations.

Ken said...

What wasn't, feed back to Bill regarding yesterday was that it started off with no power.

Someone nameless, cut through the cable on the SDS drill and everything went off. Which resulted in much mutterings about having no kettle.

However, a 'walk out' was avoided!

Bill said...

All,
I have been away from my computer this weekend and have been unable to reply to the comments which are all welcome.

Remembering that they are threaded to the Friends of Cotswolds Post, let me repeat our thanks for the generous donation.

On the question of detail within the Blog, please remember that this is intended to be my light hearted diary of weekly events at Broadway. It cannot be all things to all men. The BroadwayStation.co.uk website does cover many of the more detailed info.

As far as having project plans, and costings are concerned we, on the project team at Broadway are all from business backgrounds where these things are second nature to us, but please realise it is not always appropriate to put this info in the public domain. The plans currently show the project completion date in 2015, but this is wholly dependent on funding. Needless to say I happy to provide any nervous benefactor with as much info. as they would like!
Bill

Anonymous said...

Bill,

I echo your sentiments that the blog is probably not the right place for the budget to be, it would be more appropriate that it appears on the Broadway Station website.

On that site, the thermometer shows the position for the current project (1a)but needs updating, and perhaps this could be continued for each new project.

I would assume that it would not be possible to give an overall project figure, as things change as you proceed.

Anyway, I add my thanks for this generous donation and to all the volunteers that are working so hard towards its completion.

Terry