Tributes are being paid to Monavyn Moss, a determined woman who formed a pressure group which prevented a by-pass from being built on a disused railway at Corfe Castle in Dorset.
Monavyn Moss, who has died aged 94, ensured that the Swanage Railway could be rebuilt through the village during the 1990s to connect with the national railway at Motala near Furzebrook in 2007. Mrs Moss formed the Corfe Castle Eastern Preservation Group and was its chairman from 1982 to 1995 when the Swanage Railway opened its three mile extension from Harman’s Cross through Corfe Castle.
Says Swanage Railway Trust chairman Liz Sellen, ‘Without Monni’s determined campaigning work, there would not be the Swanage Railway that so many people enjoy today because the line would only have been relaid the three miles from Swanage to Harman’s Cross.’
From a Purbeck family which farmed the land next to the Swanage branch line from 1939, Monni Moss lived for many years at Challow Farm, within sight and sound of Corfe Castle’s railway station. Trains on the line will remain her enduring legacy.