Gornal News & Goings On

NEWS

Gornal Funicular Railway Shock Last night, councillors at the West Dudley Area Committee meeting gave final approval to the long-mooted funicular railway linking Upper and Lower Gornal. The plan forms part of the Castle Hill redevelopment, as the upper terminus, to be situated on the present Vale Street recreation ground, will deliver visitors onto a revamped 558 bus connection direct to the renewed Dudley Zoo. Ruiton Mill will unfortunately have to be demolished, as its circular base will be used as a turn-table for the locomotive, which will be sponsored by McDonalds and named the McFlurry Agenoria. The track will follow Duke Street and cut through the Black Country Urban Forest and Ellowes School before emerging on Bird Street. Controversially, the lower terminus will be constructed on waste land behind the library, playing fields that had been ear-marked for village car parking. The project has met with a mixed response from the local community. "I welcome the jobs it will generate" Councillor Darius Stanley told Yampy "but it will inevitably lead to the gradual breakdown of Upper and Lower Gornal's sense of separate identity and therefore, while not going so far as to suggest passports, there must be some system of border control".