Excellent news - I hope it can be achieved this year. It will be a fantastic boost for the town to see steam trains in the station once more.
Best of luck with the final negociations!

A very positive announcement, the Down platform at Matlock station has been out of use and overgrown for far too long, let us hope the move leads to a positive regeneration of the station as a whole, and certainly to increased patronage by tourists and visitors to the region.

This will be really good news for Peak Rail and for Matlock assuming that an agreement can be reached with Network Rail. Personally i doubt whether we will see steam loco's standing in Matlock Station until the end of the year or early next year.
One of the letters commented that the loop had not been used obviously the writer cannot remember Matlock Town trips to Wembley, Carlisle, Nuneaton, Weymouth, the queen visiting, the steam services in the 1980's or various deliveries of rolling stock to Peak Rail

What a wonderful idea, let's burn pure carbon for the fun of it ?!

I was just thinking we dont have enough carbon monoxide or sulphur around anyway, and we could all do with a bit more acid rain and cancer.

Sorry about the sarcasm but I think you get my point.

I work for Biofuels Media and can arrange a biodiesel study or supply if anybody wants to get the same result using cheaper, cleaner recycled fuel sources, which has nothing to do with Indonesian Palm or deforestation crops...

Its recycled transesterified waste fryer oils which require no engine modification and reduces carbon emissions by 78%, Sulphur by 100% and has fewer carcinogenic particulate emissions too.

Maybe if Matlock became more environmentally friendly, it would boost local tourism and trade for the people of Matlock, not just for Sainsbury's !

id like to answer chris` last comments with some hopefully helpfull responses about the carbon issue.

steam trains dont produce carbon in the same way as petrol vehicles do, the carbon from a steam locomotive is around seventy percent heavy carbon which doesnt mix with airborne constituents like petrol burning engines do,and usually falls within a few metres of the track, considering the vast technical knowledge regarding carbon emmisions of steam vice petrol and deisel steam is both environmentally freindly as well as ecologically far better than petrol, some countries such as germany and switzerland are building new versions of steam locomotives whose benefits far outweigh their deisel or petrol cousins.

not to mention that when matlock station comes up and running the large carpark at rowsley station can be used to reduce the traffic volume in matlock by training visitors into the area,depends on how the planning works on this.

we unfortunately live in a very beautifull place, if we dont embrace a certain level of tourism then the basic facilities we have wont be paid for, wher ei live is better scenery than matlock, but weve nothing really provided for tourism, matlock on the other hand has the potential for a better tourist market that can be planned to aid the locals better,which would you rather have, people jamming matlock up by car or coming by rail into an integrated centre with rail,steam and bus links all together.

congratulations to all involved on the project when it finally runs the first new steam service into matlock station,thats when we start looking at how it all works for the local population,as both tourist line and local transportation system, much as the welsh highalnd railway or mid norfolk railways have become.