{"id":324215,"date":"2025-12-19T07:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/324215\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T07:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:24:10","slug":"couples-83-year-combined-dedication-to-heritage-railway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/324215\/","title":{"rendered":"Couple&#8217;s 83-year combined dedication to heritage railway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Originally built during the 1840s railway mania, the ELR was closed to passengers by British Rail in 1972.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Richard was among the preservationists who rebuilt the line in the 1970s and 1980s. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It reopened between Bury and Ramsbottom in 1987 before extending to Rawtenstall and Heywood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Today, this 12.5 mile (20km) heritage route runs through the scenic Irwell Valley, passing industrial relics, factories, fields and cottages. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It remains a popular tourist attraction, particularly at Christmas when it runs Santa Specials, only made possible by a team of more than 800 volunteers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Originally built during the 1840s railway mania, the ELR was closed to passengers by British Rail in 1972.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-324215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}