Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway

A 1910 Railway Clearing House map of railways in the vicinity of Gloucester and Cheltenham Spa

The bowstring bridge, built on the alignment of the former GWR trackbed into Cheltenham by developers in 2002 to allow continued bicycle access to Cheltenham Leisure Centre, when they constructed a supermarket on the site of the former Cheltenham Spa St. James station

Encouraged by support from Cheltenham Borough Council, who have given both the railway direct funds as well as placing protected status on the former lines trackbed south from Cheltenham Racecourse to Cheltenham Spa, the railway could at some point connect to Network Rail in the south.

The Council have backed the long term scheme, as this would allow the railway to:

• be reinstated as an access point for race goers from all across the UK to easily access meetings at Cheltenham Racecourse, and reduce resultant current traffic congestion[10]
• build a new halt in the Wyman's Brook area of Cheltenham itself, to serve an adjacent Prince of Wales sports stadium
• run tourist and excursion trains to access the railway and the town

Although the GWSR have extended track to (and through) Hunting Butts tunnel, a few hundred yards beyond Cheltenham racecourse station, it owns the trackbed as far as the Prince of Wales stadium at Wyman's Brook. It is likely that after completion of its extension to Broadway, laying track further into Cheltenham will happen to this point; a distance of about 1 mile. However, beyond here major and costly engineering works would be required to extend the trackbed further south.

The primary impediments are a bowstring bridge (located at 51.90245°N 2.086434°W / 51.90245; -2.086434), built in 2002 to allow continued access by bicycle along the old track bed alignment to Cheltenham Leisure Centre when planning permission was given for the redevelopment of the former Cheltenham Spa St. James station site as a Waitrose supermarket in 2002;[11] the resulting bowstring bridge follows a section of former railway embankment, which was removed to provide road access to the new store.[12] and the reduced height pedestrian specification bridge carrying the footpath—rail bed beneath the very busy St Georges Road, which would have to be replaced to allow trains to pass beneath the road. There is land space beside the bowstring bridge to allow a railway to be built beside it, but there is no way of avoiding the work necessary to reinstate the road bridge beneath busy St Georges Road.

When the GWSR was first formed, it intended to purchase the entire line from Cheltenham Racecourse to Stratford Racecourse. However, when applying for the required Light Railway Order, the group was informed that they were unlikely to be granted the order for 25 miles when they had no experience of running a railway. A reduced application for the 15 miles from Cheltenham Racecourse to Broadway was submitted. Since this time, the section between Stratford and Stratford Racecourse has been utilised to improve road access around the town, especially the A4390, making reinstatement of rail to the main station at Stratford extremely difficult.

In April 2010 the GWSR suffered a landslip of an embankment near Gotherington.[13] Train services continued despite the Gotherington landslip, but over a reduced route. The landslip forced the closure of the line south of Gotherington, including Cheltenham Racecourse Station, which was effectively cut off. The railway continued to operate services from Toddington to Gotherington, with a locomotive at both ends of the train ("top and tailed"), as it was not possible to run the locomotive around the train at Gotherington at the time (there is now a run round loop just south of Gotherington). The railway launched a £1m appeal, both to fund the rebuilding of the embankment, and also to undertake preventative maintenance to ensure that similar problems do not happen at other points along the line. It was deemed unlikely that the line south of Gotherington would reopen before July 2011, but donations ensured that the work could be carried out promptly, and it was reopened on 22 April 2011.

In January 2011 the railway was damaged by another landslip just east of Winchcombe station at Chicken Curve. The landslip severed the railway in two; it was very similar to the one at Gotherington, but closer to the middle of the route. It was estimated that the cost of the repair work would be £850,000; funds for the repair were successfully raised. During the repair period a DMU service was run from Toddington up to the extension at Laverton; since the earlier Gotherington slip had been repaired, steam trains ran from Winchcombe to Cheltenham Racecourse, the steam locomotive maintenance facilities temporarily being transferred to Winchcombe. The Chicken Curve landslip was repaired over the summer of 2012, and the GWSR was once again operational as a single unified line from Cheltenham Racecourse to the site of Laverton Halt, a total of 12 route miles in length at that time.

Following extended heavy rain, one side of the embankment south of Gotherington station slipped. This was first discovered in November 2019, and worsened to the extent that no trains could run in January 2020. Following remedial works, the line reopened on 7th March 2020, in time for the regular Cheltenham race trains to run. Work is still ongoing to finish off the site. The total cost of repairs is expected to be £500,000; an emergency appeal has been issued to raise £250,000 towards this cost due to the closure of the line following the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak.[14]