Swanage Railway Case Study
The ten-mile branch line from Wareham, where it joined the London to Weymouth main line, to Corfe Castle and Swanage was opened in May 1885. The new railway brought tourists to Corfe Castle and Swanage and also enabled ball clay and Purbeck stone to be exported out by train while coal, for domestic heating as well as gas production in Swanage, could be brought in by train.
The Swanage branch line thrived from the 1880s to the 1940s but increased car use in the 1950s saw train passenger numbers start to decline. The last train ran from Swanage to Corfe Castle and Wareham on the evening of Saturday 1 January 1972.
After several years of hard campaigning, a small party of volunteers moved in to start restoration work on the station buildings in February 1976, with the first tracks being allowed to be laid in 1977. The summer of 2017 saw Swanage Railway run a 60-day trial diesel train service from Swanage and Corfe Castle to the main line at Wareham.
Winning several national awards, the rebuilding of the Swanage Railway shows what the human spirit can achieve. Swanage Railway now contributes more than £15 million a year to the Isle of Purbeck economy.
The Challenge
As with many UK organizations Swanage Railway was faced with shutdown 2020/21 as part of the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. They were also faced with the burgeoning 21st century threat of ransomware, a malicious and selfish means to attempt to extort money which lay in stark contrast to the community effort of Swanage Railway. In tune with their 45 year history, Swanage Railway needed to build back better so that they could meet the needs of their passengers, staff and stake holders when they reopened to the public.
The Solution
Swanage Railway turned to Keyfort to develop a solution that would use best technology to meet their burgeoning IT productivity, resilience and cyber security requirements.
In addition to secure Internet Connections the old site servers and services were migrated to the cloud implementing software upgrades, additional resilience, additional backups and additional cyber security in the process. All the work was completed to budget, quality and time, ready for the reopening of Swanage Railway to the public 2021 and the return of Eddystone locomotive, a classic 1946 West Country Class Bulleid Pacific No. 34028 after a three-year refit. The commitment to using the best technology to full advantage has set Swanage Railway fair for this year’s fares and beyond.
“Keyfort worked with the railway to understand their quite specific requirements – incorporating 21st century IT with century old transport technology. The work has seen greatly enhanced resilience with fast secure connections from various locations to upgraded servers in remote data centres. Customers have noticed the difference with greatly improved online booking systems. Swanage Railway is delighted that the work has helped them to achieve Cyber Essentials accreditation in 2021.”
Peter Milford
Company Secretary
The Swanage Railway Company