On the evening of Thursday 20 January, solicitors acting for respectively, the West Somerset Railway plc and the Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust Ltd, concluded negotiations which had been in progress for well over a year.
On that date, we officially relinquished our occupation of the station building and signal box at Washford. A new arrangement for the yard at Washford came into play which means that we will continue using the site up until 30 November 2023.
This will allow an orderly exit from the site with many items – including our three carriages – still to be relocated.
Trust Chairman Ian Young remarked, “I could easily use words like end of the beginning, chapters in a story and all of these have a bearing on where we find ourselves. I am content to express my gratitude to all those who have brought us to this point in, sometimes, difficult physical and time-constrained circumstances. They are the Directors, Officers, and volunteers of the Trust who, though too numerous to mention by name here, represent a only a small proportion of the membership.”