Planning Application Submitted For Ashover Railway Site
The Moseley Railway Trust, formerly based in Stockport, Cheshire, has applied for planning permission at Ashover Butts Quarry near Clay Cross, with a view to providing a permanent home for it’s extensive collection of industrial narrow gauge railway equipment. The Trust’s collection is currently in storage at its restoration base in Buxworth, Derbyshire pending a successful conclusion to the site negotiations – which have been in progress since the early part of 2000. Should the application prove successful, plans will be progressed to provide suitable facilities to house and develop the museum. Negotiations with landowners and the local authorities are well advanced, and an understanding has been reached as to how the project could be integrated into local plans for tourism and infrastructure.
The Trust’s main objective is to open a museum with a short running line in order to show how narrow gauge railways were used in the diverse industries they served. The museum will provide educational material to show how goods and materials were transported and how industry benefited from this form of transport. Models and photographs will be used to interpret the artefacts and exhibits in the collection in relation to the industries in which they could be found.
The former Butts Quarry in Ashover is situated at the terminus of the Ashover Light Railway, which closed in 1950. The line was built primarily to transport stone from Butts Quarry and Milltown to Clay Cross – for the Clay Cross Company.
Initial plans would allow for a line of around a quarter of a mile from the proposed museum to a station adjacent to the car-park access, in addition to a suitable museum building in the Butts quarry itself to house the Moseley Railway Trust collection. The short passenger line would follow a section of the former Ashover Light Railway turning-triangle in the quarry area, and it may be that in the future, a passenger boarding point can be provided at the site of the old Ashover Station.
