Trawsfynydd and Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway

Yes he has. Right here:

... as has Rosedale...

As an Englishman happily resident in Scotland for many years, I get extremely bored of the uber-nationalist "It's all naughty, bad Englandshire's fault" brigade.
I love where I live, I contribute to the local economy by earning all my money from clients outwith Scotland and spending it all here, I have many precious, dear Scottish friends and a wonderful girlfriend, all of whom are mature, balanced and sensible in their views. But as soon as anyone I meet starts playing the 'small nation victim' card, my ears switch off.
The point I'm making to this debate is, wherever you are from, be proud of your heritage and celebrate your culture by all means, but blaming the big, bad neighbours (how appropriate) for every perceived injustice is utter nonsense.

 

It's actually for all the reasons above, and I have family from England and Wales, and it's not just heritage, so I know what i'm saying when I state Wales is lacking in spending. Living on hand-outs from the EU is no way to live. Choosing to ignore that, doesn't make you right.

I'm asking people not to be rude (fat chance of that) and condemn others for simply trying. If people are working hard to try and bring, for example, a broad gauge line to Scotland, or a new tram line in England, and the online community attacks them, however self-righteous they may feel, however justified they may assert their arguments are, I still feel obliged to defend those people giving up their time and money to try and make a difference.

Though I do have to ask myself, if people are being negative, telling them they are negative, doesn't help matters. It's stating the obvious isn't it?

 

I agree. Therefore I hope you’ll stop telling people they’re being negative merely because they disagree with you. It doesn’t help matters. If you want to respond why not address their argument, not their attitude?

 

I wonder what happened:

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/health-safety-row-erupts-after-13808344

 

One wonders, but the quote from the railway spokesman doesn’t fill me with confidence.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

A disappointing development.

I support people anywhere who are trying in the face of adversity. And I have to respect the fact that there are drainage issues. Granted this is Wales, we are famous for H2O and sheep, and tiny little EU standard pipes may be adequate for parts of England, are wholly unacceptable for monsoon season in rural parts of the UK (jokes aside) but damage to infrastructure shouldn't have happened. If Network Rail find them to be at fault, they could risk losing their license and any hopes of a return to service for this mothballed line are thereby dashed...

I hope this is not the case and just the Daily Post being dramatic... the vagueness of the article strikes me as odd...

 

Not really surprising IMO - it's been a 'half-baked' scheme from the word "go".
Ray.

 

Colin Dale always seems rather fond of saying they will be running trains by the end of next year - he's been saying that for over five years now and next year never seems to come.

Maybe this was my interpretation, but I felt the Daily Post's reporter developing a healthy scepticism for the feasibility of the plans as the article progressed.

 

Don't worry it won't be long until he disappears of the face of the earth leaving a trail of debt again.

Tim

 

For those of us who don't know, could you please elaborate?

 

Mr Dale had some previous business ventures in the area. Notably a cafe next to Llyn Trawsfynydd. He planned to run pleasure cruises on the lake and reportedly had ordered several boats that never turned up. A few years ago the staff left the cafe after they stopped being paid and it closed down. The local community group who leased the cafe terminated the lease after numerous breaches of the tennancy agreement. Mr Dale then got all defensive in the papers saying he had spent loads of his own money on it when it was actually the group who owned the building who had redevolped it. Mr Dale disappeared off to Essex leaving a trail of unpaid bills. He reappeared a few years later saying he was taken ill.

He's been saying reopening the branch will be easy, and how he's ready to pour money into it for about 10 years now.

Tim

 

Well, let's be thankful Network Rail own the line then.

 

Here's a couple more Daily Post stories.

This from 6 years ago: http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/local-news/businessman-colin-dale-reacts-claims-2681695.amp

This from 5 years ago: http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/local-news/businessman-slams-landlords-seek-evict-2673095.amp

And going back further: over 7 years ago, he was already planning that the line would be open by the end of the following year! See https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/the-traws-train.37328/

 

I think the people running the preservation effort really are living in cloud-cuckoo land. Despite the fact that they have been running for years with no identifiable progress being made other than some basic clearance (indeed, work seems to have stopped since the bridge incident) and being no closer to running trains than they were 5 or 6 years ago, they have announced on their Facebook page that they are launching a feasibility study into running from Trawsfynydd to Cwm Prysor:

https://www.facebook.com/trawsblaenaurailway/posts/352887831788936

Based on the comments already made on their post, they have not approached the Snowdonia National Park Authority or any of the landowners before making this announcement.

Utterly, utterly bonkers.

 

I think you're being overly dramatic, but then, many people have been on this thread, so that negativity is at home here? I digress. On a realistic note: It can't be any worse than the Vale of Glamorgan's attempts. That experience was truly pointless. A short line to nowhere, in a heavily built up residential area, running alongside the national network, no less.

I don't know why they need a feasibility study though. Guess that's all the rage these days with adults and kids. Study this, and study that. You can practically see the issues at Trawsfynydd with your own two eyeballs. The track-bed wasn't safeguarded at that point (Great Britain my arse, what kind of moronic country doesn't protect its transport links? These are the thoughts that really make me want to emigrate elsewhere...sigh...), though the rest of the route is intact, but "farmers" aka landlords obsessed with subsidies in general would rather kiss a horse's backside than relinquish any square inch of their ill-gotten gains when the line closed.

Leasing or buying the land is prohibitive, everything is expensive, makes you wonder how the railways or anything ever got built in the first place, eh?

On the flip side, Cwm Prysor is remote and has beautifully scenic views. The question of ownership and right of way though, is an oddity. There are many people who would be happy to see it brought into use again.

Would it be nice? Yes (if you disagree, why the hell are you posting in a National Preservation forum? Will it happen in our life-times? Unlikely.

 

Would it be nice? I'm sure it would. Is it be realistic? That's where real life starts to bite! The days of setting up a railway with cheap equipment (locomotives, rolling stock, track materials, S & T equipment etc) ex-BR are over and although the "build it and they will come" mantra is often expressed on here I don't really see much evidence of that happening. Plus, it's a scheme in a remote area where volunteers are a scarce commodity and where existing railways are struggling to maintain their visitor numbers.

Many of us on here have either been involved with the formative years of a heritage railway (I've been involved with the NYMR since before it opened to the public and was little more than a trio of industrial tank engines and a couple of coaches) and have also been involved in the "sharp end" of running a railway in that area (in my case, Fairbourne) so whilst I may be negative about the prospects for this scheme it's not without some experience!

 

They've also failed to secure the EMU they were trying to raise funds for.

Reading the Facebook sites for the railway and group trying to buy the unit (same people? Seems to be about 4 separate Facebook groups for it all) it seems very amateurish. Lots of statements being made without thought or consequence. Basic grammar and spelling seems very lacking in all posts made by those who claim to be in charge.

 

It is confewsing trying to see what's goinhg on with all the different pages, there is a lack of coherenecy and it doesnt bode well for fewture prospsects

 

What is desperately needed is a very serious dose of reality to go with the Christmas Sherry. A few observations...

• The group, in various guises, has been promising to run trains "next year" for at least 6 years; not a good track record.
• As others have noted, there is far more involved in getting a preserved railway running now than there was in the 50s/60s; given that the line is owned by Network Rail, I would expect that getting permissions for trains to run would be even harder than a group reinstating a disused railway, assuming of course that there was a realistic prospect of serviceable rolling stock actually being acquired.
• The current structure of the organisation is, well, haphazard is the best word I can come up with. The latest twist is the newly formed "Snowdonia Railway Preservation Group", who have a Twitter account but seemingly little else. There must be some connection to the railway group as they took over fundraising for the Class 414 but as I speculated, they have now confirmed that the unit has now be sold to another group in England. Given that barely 10% of the cost of the unit was raised, this is hardly surprising. What happens to the £1,50o they did manage to raise remains unclear.
• The way the Facebook page for the Company, and its connected Group, is run, is extremely unprofessional. The posts are regularly written in capital letters, and are littered with spelling and grammatical errors to the point where they are also unintelligible in some cases. They even laughably referred to their "PR Department" recently.
• The website is dreadful and hasn't been updated for several months.

Taken together, the presentation to the outside world (or, at least, to this observer) is of a poorly run organisation that is as far away from running trains as they were 6 or more years ago. Hence my posting that it is utterly absurd that they are proposing a feasibility study into re-opening the long-disused section from Trawsfynydd to Cwm Prysor when there is virtually no prospect of re-opening a railway that, if they are to be believed, is largely intact and in good condition.

I know it's Christmas and good will to all men etc., but it does not sit well with me that people are donating their hard-earned cash to a group that, in my opinion anyway, has very little prospect of ever getting trains running.