PLANS to sell off a piece of land which could prove pivotal to any return of the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen railway line have been panned by a local councillor.

Ceredigion council’s Cabinet has been recommended approval of a plan to place the boatyard on Felin y Môr Road, Trefechan, on the open market to turn it into homes.

The area formed a part of the old Aberystwyth to Carmarthen railway line, closed in the 1960s, that is now the subject of a campaign to reinstate it and a Welsh Government feasibility study.

Cllr Ceredig Davies said that no decision on selling the land should be made before the results of the feasibility study are known.

“The assumption that a new railway would not follow its original path is a valid one, but for the cabinet to pre-empt an expensive publicly funded feasibility study is rather disingenuous, not only to those campaigning for the new line but also of those councillors who back in January 2015 passed a motion to support the feasibility study,” he said.

“The Cabinet report refers to the fact that the Welsh Government is still to publish the feasibility report on the reopening of the line,” Cllr Davies told the Cambrian News.

“The same Cabinet report goes on to second guess the findings of the feasibility study by suggesting that the restored line would not traverse the area taken up by the boatyard due to the built up nature of the surrounding area.

““Would it not be better to wait for the feasibility report before any decision was taken?

“Is not the uncertainty of the situation not going to influence the potential value realised from the sale of this bit of land?”

See this week’s south papers for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition tomorrow