23 December 2015

Please note: this news article is in our archive. Articles were correct at time of publication, but should not be relied on for accuracy after the passage of time.

The East Grinstead Access Group, whose offices are at East Court, has been helping out at a video shoot in the Bluebell Railway’s engine shed at Sheffield Park. Chairman of the Access Group, Paul Johnson said. “We were approached to see if we could provide some wheelchair users for a promotional video they were producing for submission to the Heritage Lottery Fund, in connection with their grant towards work they are embarking on in the Engine Shed. We not only provided them with Stewart Cook, one of our members, with his ‘mini scooter’, but we were also able to put them in contact with Emma Bashford who is running an internet service for disabled children”.

The video, introduced by BBC newsreader Nick Owen, will be part of a funding bid to replace the engine shed roof and then separate off a section of the shed as an exhibition centre, with a replica Stepney engine which will be accessible to disabled children, as well as able bodied, and where they can pull the levers, and the wheels will rotate on a display screen. The proposed new ramping and ability to get onto the footplate of the locomotives will change the experience for young and old alike. The photographs showing the children demonstrate vividly how restrictive the present experience is – they can only stare upwards and wonder.