PLANS to shunt 24 new homes into a long abandoned railway siding near Christchurch station have been unveiled two years after a previous scheme hit the buffers.

Landowners Network Rail want to demolish a house in Clarendon Road to pave the way for developing a narrow strip of disused land alongside the railway line between the station and the Barrack Road bridge.

The vacant and largely overgrown site has lain empty for decades and was at one time safeguarded as a corridor for a controversial Christchurch inner relief road, which was abandoned more than 20 years ago.

In recent years it has suffered from invasion by travellers' camps, but a bid for permission to build 30 flats and houses there was rejected by Christchurch council's planning committee in January 2005 on grounds of overdevelopment and lack of amenity space for future residents of the proposed homes.

Now Railtrack has scaled down its proposals, with outline plans for 17 two, three and four-bed houses in two and three-storey terraces clustered either side of the central access road and a block of seven one-bed flats at the station end of the site.

The plans also show a central communal open space area, 39 parking spaces, a footpath to the railway station and road access from Clarendon Road through the present curtilage of a detached house to be demolished opposite the entrance to Christchurch Junior School.

In their supporting design and access statement, Railtrack's planning consultants argue the new scheme will "provide the opportunity to create a new community within a good mix of family houses".

The application is currently being assessed by town hall planning officers and will be referred to the council's planning control committee for a decision in the autumn.