A new marketing and awareness campaign is underway in the UK to build support for heritage railways. This is something that we should emulate in the US.

https://www.railwaymagazine.co.uk/22030/north-yorkshire-moors-railway-spearhead-new-love-your-railway-campaign/

https://www.festrail.co.uk/love-your-railway/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrqGAoS_4wE

There was also a slightly earlier one (i.e. 2 weeks ago) released on YT with the Love Your Railway theme by the man from the MSLR, duly focusing on the MSLR itself and asking "How Important is Heritage?"......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pohhoaFN6TQ

By the way, everyone here should be watching Lawrie Rose's youtube channel. His stuff is amazing.

I like the idea but where would they be built?

The fund is mostly for gathering resources to “investigate” into building lines that would be considered viable or reinstating viable services. Given the length of lines in Britain, I’d say max 50 miles.

Would be helpful for a line like the Lackawanna cutoff and the line beyond it but aside from that? The lines that could proposed would probably be too large or too rural to be considered “viable”. Not to mention that the purpose of a “mainline connection” isn’t nearly as great here as it is in Britain.

But, it could be useful.

Hmm.... I think you are getting confused by the "Restoring your Railway" scheme which is a UK Government project to (allegedly...) promote the reopening of closed lines....

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... d-stations

...and nothing whatsoever to do with "Love your Railway" which is a promotion scheme arranged by existing preserved lines aimed at getting support in many forms from the UK population.

The "Restoring your Railway" one is actually a glorified way of scoring some political points by making a big show about it all and, at the end of the day, not really doing much about it, as politicians of all persuasions are wont to do.........

Ahhhhhh that’s what I was confused about. Got the two mixed up. My bad.

Love your railway is a great idea. Would absolutely help many preserved lines get more traction.