Artist’s impression of the interior of the planned carriage gallery
The DCDR have had a further meeting with Heritage Lottery Fund this week and are confident of successfully progressing this project to securing a Stage 2 pass.
The project, which would see the vast majority of our vintage carriages stored in a visitor accessible building where they could be visited outside running days, as well as protecting them against the weather, acheived a “Stage 1” pass in September 2008 for £450,500 grant.
We hope now to put the “brief” out for the building in the coming weeks to interested consulting engineering and architectural firms, which is the next stage in the process. While this is happening slightly later than we had hoped, we are glad that this is proceeding as planned and are confident of securing a Stage 2 pass.
At this present time the proposed link to the St. Patrick’s Centre has been put on hold due to the timescales of construction involved, but the possibility remains open for this to be explored again at some point in the future.