Staffordshire heritage steam railway claims it's been left out of pocket after contractor went bust
Bosses at Staffordshire's Chasewater Railway claim they have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket after a training company went into administration.
The heritage attraction which operates between Brownhills West station in the Chasewater Country Park and Burntwood provided rooms for rail track maintenance training business Redstone Training Ltd which closed in January amid an industry investigation. The business was awarded a £1,651,200 contract from West Midlands Combined Authority's (WMCA) Skills Bootcamp August 2024-July 2025 allocation to tackle a gap in the track skills workforce.
Andrew Mould, of Chasewater Railway, said: "We provide training and testing facilities to help bring income in and provide a service to the community. We can train people on a live railway.Due to us having a track here we were approached by Redstone for them to run practical courses here for the WMCA which had funding to address a skill shortage in track repairs.
"We altered things on our premises and made rooms and toilets, along with with other facilities for these education courses which they were going to run until Easter. The alarm bells started ringing when they started cancelling dates or our volunteers would turn up to open up and no-one would turn up. it does have a knock on effect on our finances because we've spent from our reserves to put things in place. There's the care -taking and cleaning plus our volunteer hours. It all adds up.
"They owe us about £4,000 in unpaid invoices which we have tried to chase, but from what the administrator has told us, it's unlikely that we'll get any of that money. We have also written to the WMCA about it."
In response the combined authority stated: "The WMCA no longer has a contractual arrangement in place with Redstone Training for the delivery of skills boot camps which expired on the March 31, 2025 and learners impacted have been transferred to alternative providers.
Manchester based Redstone Training blamed an investigation by the National Skills Academy for Rail and subsequent suspension of skills boot camps payments for it collapsing into administration.
This year is the diamond jubilee of the two-mile steam railway moving its operation to Chasewater on the Walsall-Staffordshire border in 1965.
Trains are running every weekend from now till the end of November. Upcoming events include a nine-day celebration in August to mark the 60th anniversary.
