A Beeching-style axe will fall on Liverpool’s "children's railway" under plans proposed by Mayor Joe Anderson.

It will mean the end of the line for the miniature railway in its present home at Calderstones Park after running services every weekend for 65 years.

With a line gauge of just a few inches, trains have been transporting children and their parents through an enchanted wooded landscape since 1950.

The city council wants to release a huge slice of the estate at Calderstones and Harthill to make way for luxury housing. It will mean be the railway being moved, along with Beechley Stables and the charity Calder Kids who occupy two sites adjoining the railway.

The volunteers who run the miniature railway are hoping a new site will be found for them in Calderstones Park, but say the loss of the current rural layout which meanders for hundreds of yards through wild forest, will be tragic.

Friends and Harthill and Calderstones have urged park lovers to attend a meeting of the city council at the town hall this Wednesday when the fate of the three sites will be debated.

 

All aboard for some luxury housingAll aboard for some luxury housing

In a move reminiscent of what has happened at Sefton Park Meadows ("incidental land in Park Avenue") the council describes the Calderstones site as "land in Harthill Road".

Described in the council meeting agenda as a "Fresh start for organisations on Harthill Road" Mayor Anderson is calling on city councillors to welcome the initiative to free up the land on Harthill Road currently occupied by Beechley Stables, Calder Kids and the Miniature Railway to support a housing development scheme on the combined site. Some of the proceeds will be used to fund new facilities for the displaced organisations.

The mayor insists Liverpool City Council is not selling any part of Calderstones Park.

The report to the city council meeting states: “The three sites sit outside of Calderstones Park and were not available to the public without authorisation.(the miniature railway’s entrance is in Calderstone’s Park, and it is freely accessible every Sunday afternoon).

“New housing built in the city has directly resulted in an additional £3m a year of Council Tax revenue, which can be spent on crucial services,” adds the mayoral report.

 “The mayor’s submission says the scheme will allow the capital receipt from the sale to provide and pay for much needed premises and development for all three facilities on sites they are happy with.

Both Calder Kids and Beechley Stables are desperate for modern facilities and investment to provide support to children with disabilities and are delighted with the proposals as a way of securing their future.”

Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Richard Kemp plans to challenge the project and called on the city council to go even further by pledging to protect all city parklands from being developed. He will be putting forward an amendment.

 


In it Cllr Kemp says: “Council believes all public open space owned by the council such as Sefton Park Meadowlands and Walton Hall Park and all land owned by the council which has habitually been used by the community for sport and recreation such as the Harthill Estate of Calderstones Park and the former MANWEB playing fields in Childwall/Wavertree should be permanently kept for public use.

But even he accepts his move stands little chance, commenting: “Labour councillors in Liverpool do what they are told. The sale of our green spaces is bitterly resented by the people of the areas that surround them.”