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October 8, 2025 | Latest News8 October 2025 Our partners at the Railway Heritage Trust are celebrating 40 years of transformation. The Railway Heritage Trust has given us generous funding for five major projects. Starting in 2006-7 with £75,000 for Larpool Viaduct and most recently £635,000 for Bennerley Viaduct, opened in 2022. It was the steadfast nature of the Trust’s support for Bennerley, with six grants, that kept the project going. Although the sums at Larpool were smaller, it is a structure associated with the joys of holiday excursion trains in the past, and leisure-time cycling and bungy jumping today, so we’ve chosen it as the featured image in this short celebratory news item. Both viaducts are included in the Trust’s new publication 40 Years of Transformation 1985-2025.
» Full Story May 2, 2024 | Latest News2 May 2024 We love a good heritage railway. Colleagues at Railway Paths have been volunteers and trustees at heritage railways. We’ve transferred our land to heritage railways, and we have more we’d like to give. Some of the land we have not yet leased as cycle paths still has track on it. We’re sometimes asked to sell or give the rails to heritage railways. Yes, yours for a £1 if you get the right permissions for safe removal. Miles of our track has been lifted so we were surprised when it was suggested that for one of our sections of land, ‘The line has never been formally closed.’ What’s the proper process for closing a railway? Apart from the absence of trains for decades and the fact that British Railways was happy to sell it, how do we know it is closed? We asked the DfT for their opinion. Their reply considered passenger and freight services. Passenger Services There is a statutory process for withdrawal of passenger services. It has changed several times so one needs to identify the act of parliament that applied at the time. The Secretary of State for Transport has to give consent for passenger services to be withdrawn. Such a consent is a matter of public record, so that’s not hard to prove. Freight Services After passenger services had been withdrawn lines sometimes continued to be used for freight. The DfT is clear on the cessation of freight services, here’s their succinct reply: ‘Unlike withdrawal of passenger services, this termination of line availability for freight services did not require a formal public process but was an internal BRB [British Railways Board] decision.’ Closure When passenger services had been withdrawn by ministerial consent and British Railways had terminated the line availability for freight, the DfT says, ‘the railway was no longer operational and the track could be lifted’. Ah yes, but if the track is still there, how do we really know? When Network Rail was formed, there were demarcation agreements for the sections of closed railway that had track connected to the operational railway. These agreements specify where the boundary lies between the operational railway on land owned by Network Rail and the closed railway on land retained by the British Railways Board. In conclusion, you won’t find a certificate or a DfT announcement that says a railway was formally closed. You need to look for a sequence of events: passenger service withdrawal; termination of line availability for freight; and a demarcation agreement for the boundary with the operational railway. Public domain photograph by Adrian Pingstone via Wikimedia Commons
» Full Story May 1, 2024 | Latest News28 March 2024 The address for our registered office has changed to: 4th Floor, St James House, St James Square, Cheltenham, GL50 3PR. It’s just an accommodation address, we don’t work there, just as we didn’t work from our previous registered office address in Bristol. If you send things in the post they will takes ages to reach us (assuming they don’t get lost…); please contact us by email or the online form here. You can verify our new registered address by checking Companies House, the Charity Commission, the Information Commissioner’s Office, or using the HMRC VAT number checking service (our VAT number is GB713343269).
» Full Story July 7, 2023 | Latest News7 July 2023 Today Railway Paths sold Levenshulme Station to Manchester City Council. The lease to Station South transferred unchanged with the sale.
» Full Story January 19, 2023 | Latest News19 January 2023 Broxtowe Borough Council, supported by the Friends of Bennerley Viaduct, have been awarded £16,539,214 for their Kimberley Means Business bid to the Round 2 of the Levelling Up Fund. The summary of the award says: £16.5 million to make town centre improvements in Kimberley, including transforming the Bennerley Viaduct, creating step-free access to the viaduct and boosting the cycle path network in the region.
» Full Story May 12, 2016 | Latest NewsTo find the land for sale below type the land names, without the references, into the search box in our online map We are preparing to sell: Oldbar, Paisley (SC062) East Grinstead (L008) Port Talbot (SW019) Appleby-in-Westmorland (NE026) Great Musgrave (NE038) For more information about land for rent or sale please use the form on the Contact Us page
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