THE deadline to secure £3 million funding to reconnect Swanage to the mainline rail network is fast approaching.
Network Rail bosses need to know the money is in place by the end of February, or the project could be delayed indefinitely.
Campaigners, councillors and Purbeck business leaders are pushing for the reconnection, after an absence of mainline services for more than three decades.
Tim Westwood, traffic manager at Dorset County Council, said: “We’ve asked South Dorset MP Jim Knight if we can get the £3m from government funding, as part of a regional funding application for the south-west, for infrastructure improvements.
“If we don’t get the funding, we don’t make the connection.
“We were told by Network Rail if we don’t do it then, it could cost maybe three or four times as much, later on.”
Last December, Purbeck District Council and the county each agreed to invest £50,000 to help upgrade Worgret Junction.
This investment was vital if Network Rail was to include Worgret Junction in their planned Poole to Wool re-signalling work in 2012.
British Rail closed the Purbeck branch line in 1972.
Swanage and Purbeck Hospitality Association vice chairman Julian Maughan, said: “The impact on the town and the Isle of Purbeck of losing the service in the early ’70s was dramatic.
“Reconnecting the line would have an equally dramatic and positive impact on the region from a social, economic and commercial perspective.”
The county and district councils form part of the Purbeck Rail Partnership – a group including South West Trains and Borough of Poole, which is determined to reconnect to the mainline.
A district council spokesman said: “The Purbeck Rail Partnership is still waiting for Jim Knight MP to shake out some underspend from other projects within the south-west.”
Last November, volunteers ran their first steam locomotive from Swanage to London since 1966.
