DEVELOPMENT – Station building at Furnace Sidings (Step 1.3.3) – Page 2

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Things are beginning to move (uploaded 2 February 2011)

It’s amazing how the years slip by. During 2006 a plan for a comprehensive station building at Furnace Sidings was worked up. On 24 February 2007 a file containing the plans was placed before the board and accepted early in March of that year. In April 2009, with development of the railway becoming an important issue, page 1 on this topic was uploaded to our website. Later that year the plans were placed before architects, and were returned with little resemblance to the original. It is significant that the word ‘heritage’ appears not once in the plans, still, anything is an improvement on what we offer at present, and what is more they are marked ‘Proposed’ so yet further changes are entirely possible.

Time has moved on now, and many of the principal elements of the Big Pit branch are in place. That being the case, it is now possible to look at the ‘added extras’ permitted by the original scheme, and its funding. The station building is one of them. The scheme comes to an end by the end of September 2011, so that with the condition that all the funds must be spent by then it is important that rapid progress is made. We are happy to report that a physical start will be made on Monday 7 February 2011, when some rather elaborate raft foundations will be constructed. This is just about four years since the matter came to the notice of the board, which in railway preservation terms is really quite rapid. Although the building is unlikely to be complete before the end of the Summer season, we can forecast with some confidence that our Santa passengers will have something a little more salubrious than they have had in which to shelter. The image below shows how the architects have interpreted the original material given to them. It is worth looking at page 1 to see how things have changed.

After years of deliberation the construction timescale is very short, and the following dates are planned:

· Foundations - Start 7 February for up to three weeks

· Blockwork for walls - Start early March for up to six weeks

· Roof – As soon as the walls are complete!

All of this is depends on the weather, and we are all aware of just how cold Blaenavon can be in the early months of the year. There is also a potential problem with the scaffolding intruding onto the platform when the walls go up, but we have several plans to ensure that any problems to which passengers might be exposed are minimised.

On the basis that construction will be rapid, we will do what we can to update this page every week with new images as the as the work progresses. The first upload will appear around 10 February.

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