What's thought to be Europe’s first solar-powered railway is due to open in the region next year. Chris Webber found out more

HIGH on the hills, in a corner of the country as remote anywhere in England, the future of hi-tech, super-green transport is about to move from fiction to fact.

It is at Alston, where the touristy steam trains chug through the Pennines on the Cumbrian side of Durham border. Here, what is thought to be the continent’s first solar railway is to be created.

The South Tynedale Railway (STR), based at Alston station, has been handed £4.2m by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) towards a £5.5m project which will include two major environmental projects.

And they won’t just benefit tourists happy to enjoy a train trip with their ice-creams. The idea is also to run electric trains, powered by the sun, for everyday, all-year-round commuters.

First the volunteer-run railway will extend the 3.5mile track by a couple of miles to Slaggyford by 2016 and hopes, by 2025, to run trains to the larger town of Haltwhistle, giving people the chance to leave the car behind.

Other money will go towards adapting steam trains so they can be powered by processed wood waste, usually pressed chippings which would otherwise have been discarded. Eventually it’s hoped the STR volunteers will even be able to produce their own brickettes in this heavily wooded area, making the railway yet more sustainable.

Restoring trains, initiating major education programmes, repairing and sustaining historic walls and the Grade II-listed, 1850-built train station including building new roofs and creating four jobs are all part of the plan. However it is the solar element of the exciting plans which is attracting most attention.

Brian Craven, 63, chairman of the railway who not long ago achieved his 55-year-old boyhood dream of becoming a stream engine driver, explained it was economic necessity as much as a desire to help the environment that led to STR lay the foundations of a new course for their beloved trains.

Visitor numbers had plummeted during the economic downturn from about 50,000 in 2003 to just 11,000 in 2011, the attraction’s worst year. Mr Craven and the rest of the society knew that, unless radical action was taken, the station would close in just two years. And the downturn was not only adversely affecting the train but the wider economy, ranked as being in the ten per cent of most deprived rural areas in England, the legacy of the long-dead lead mining industry. The tourist trains were calculated to be worth £750,000 to the local economy.

Something needed to be done and the volunteer train-lovers, who had turned what had been a derelict train station with a ripped up track from 1976 to 1983 into a successful attraction, decided to think big and look to the future.

The success of winning the big money grant is not the end of the fund-raising. Nearly £1.5m has had to be found from other sources and there is still a £370,000 shortfall. Crucially the money for the solar power can not come from state funds so that any excess energy can be sold back to the National Grid.

Brian Craven, confident the money will be found, said the STR team was planning to buy and the install the solar PV panels from September. The four, large solar panels will be placed on the new station roofs and other buildings at Alston Station. They will generate 100kw of electricity at peak times. That will be sold to the National Grid and bought back, at the cheaper night-time Economy-7 rate, when two electric locomotives, donated by London Transport, need charging. STR’s electricity, currently costing between £12,000 and £15,000 a year, will be free.

Better yet, the railway will even make a profit. Costs will be cut, money made and the scheme is creating enough interest and publicity to boost visitor numbers.

“It’s environmentally friendly, and we’re very proud about that,” said Mr Craven who said it was hoped the solar-powered trains would operate from next year, “but it was due to economic reasons that we’re doing this.

“The only non-carbon neutral part of this is the need to lubricate the track. Apart from that, we’re carbon-neutral, it’s a real unique selling point that is attracting a lot of interest.

“If we extend the line to Haltwhistle we could end up with more than 110,000 visitors a year here. It’s such an exciting vision. "

This isn’t even the first time this beautiful area has been at the cutting edge of technology. Nearby Nenthead, one of England’s highest villages at 1,500ft, was the first village in the country to have street lighting back in the 19th Century. Want to know the future? Forget the industrial powerhouses of the modern world and head to the remote villages high atop the Pennines.