Good Afternoon to all of our supporters. Today we bring some news that we hoped never to have to publish.
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The CEPG is, after much effort, stepping back from its efforts to preserve a Class 321, which we now can confirm would have been Unit Number 321440, at this current time. An agreement for a site, which would have had the capacity to hold both 309624 and 321440, was in place but sadly due to circumstances beyond our control, this agreement had to be terminated at the final stages. We subsequently have not been able to identify a suitable alternative site in the remaining time we had left, therefore we are having to pause the plans for our vehicle based community cafe project, which is a disappointing outcome for everyone at the CEPG after hundreds of hours of planning and preparation that have gone into this project.
The CEPG would like to thank Eversholt Rail, who have worked collaboratively with our team since day 1 and have done everything they could to assist us in this process and have engaged with all of our requests and gone above and beyond to identify a solution. We would also like to extend our thanks to Network Rail for their support, as we also had an agreement in place for the donation of track materials to this project.
Right now, this will allow us to focus on 309624, As we are still actively working on multiple viable options for the 309's future home, and while our long-term funding strategy will have to be replanned, we will have a short-term boost as it has been agreed that all funds raised on the 321 farewell tour, originally ringfenced to pay for movement costs associated with the move of 321440, will be diverted to help complete the overhaul of the brakes on 309624.
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We are sorry to disappoint after the initial excitement, but there comes a stage in every project where you have to take a realistic review and end a project with dignity instead of dragging things out. We ask for comments to try and remain respectful at this time. Not every preservation story is a success, and it will be a shame to lose this icon of EMUs over the past 30 years.
Stay tuned for more updates around the 309, as this project is still very much alive.
-CEPG
📸The unit seen here underwent inspection in November 2022 when it was chosen as the candidate for preservation.
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