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The Swanage Railway's plans to operate regular service to the mainline at Wareham station have been thrown into disarray because of a fault due to circumstances out of its control.
The railway had planned to run services from Swanage to Wareham using a heritage diesel multiple unit on Tuesdays to Thursdays and on Saturdays until the 10th of September.
On Tuesday the 4th of April, the Swanage Railway operated a trial run to Wareham.
It was planned that services would be operated by the railway's heritage Class 117 diesel multiple unit, with the option of attaching an additional heritage Class 121 diesel multiple unit attached if extra capacity was required.
Together, they would have provided a capacity of 292 seats. To enable the units to operate onto the main line and through to Wareham, both units were restored and upgraded by specialist contractors who installed the necessary technical, signalling, and safety equipment that is mandatory for all mainline trains which operate on the national rail network.
Swanage Railway fitters are now working hard to rectify the problem with the heritage diesel multiple unit. However, until the fault has been fixed the railway has reluctantly had to take the decision to cancel the through service to Wareham.
Although the Wareham services have been cancelled, the railway's other services will be operating as normal. Throughout each day there will still be five return steam trips between Swanage and Norden hauled by the railway's resident Bulleid Pacific Eddystone.
The Swanage Railway will post regular updates on its website at
https://www.swanagerailway.co.uk/wareham-services when the Wareham DMU services will restart.
