Campaign to save historic carriages at Swanage Railway dorsetecho.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dorsetecho.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Arts, culture and heritage organisations in Dorset will share in a funding lifeline of more than £3 million. The funding, from the second stage of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund, is designed to help organisations recover from the pandemic, start to reopen and continue to serve communities into the future. Performing arts venues including Weymouth Pavilion, Bridport s Electric Palace, The Lighthouse in Poole and the Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne will benefit from funding through the Arts Council as well as dance and combined arts organisations, many of whom specialise in outdoor arts such as Dorchester-based Activate Performing Arts and Portland s b-side festival.
An appeal has been launched so that work can resume on building a £240,000 shed where carriages at Dorset s heritage railway can be stored and protected from the weather. Swanage Railway volunteers hoped to have the remaining £65,000 raised by the end of June so that the steel structure of the building can be ordered before being delivered to the site and constructed in November. Work on the structure – on the outskirts of Swanage near Herston Halt – began in January last year but had to stop at the end of March when the country went into lockdown. A big sum had already been raised towards the cost.
ENTERPRISING members of the Swanage Railway finance team are staging festive ‘Steam and Lights’ trains hamper raffles to raise money for the popular heritage line’s Coronavirus survival appeal fund. The large festive hampers have been put together thanks to kind donations of items and money from Swanage Railway supporters, members of the Swanage and District Chamber of Trade as well as the public – with proceeds from the raffles going to the Swanage Railway’s ‘Save Our Service’ Appeal. Raffle tickets are sold from a festively decorated booth on the platform at Swanage station before the departure of the two ‘Steam and Lights’ trains - with the hampers being presented to the winners on the return of the trains to Swanage.