Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway raises £250k for 'last mile'

GWSR is run by nearly 900 volunteers and carries almost 90,000 passengers per year

An appeal for £1.25m to complete the "last mile" of a heritage railway line has raised £250,000 in one week.

Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway (GWSR) currently runs between Cheltenham and Laverton but wants to extend to Broadway in Worcestershire.

A public share scheme raised more than £500,000 in 2014 and GWSR said "over £35,000 per day" was coming in.

It is hoped funding will enable the opening of a station in Broadway in 2018.

Ian Crowder, from GWSR, said money was "coming in at an unprecedented rate".

Broadway station opened in 1906 and was closed by British Railways in 1960

The Cotswold station of Broadway is due to open in 2018 - 58 years after it closed

He said investments had come from a "mixture of supporters and local people as well as railway enthusiasts".

"We've come to the end of the era of the trainspotter image, this is a serious business and a significant contributor to the tourist economy of the Cotswolds," Mr Crowder said.

The public share offer - called "Broadway: The Last Mile" - aims to raise funds to buy rail and ballast, complete civil engineering works, and install the infrastructure.

It would enable trains to be run into Broadway for the "first time in more than half a century".