West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I think it comes down to whether we want to be a heritage railway or a tourist railway.

If we want to be a heritage railway then I would suggest we apply the Sir John Betjamen test. What would Sir John Betjeman think of a new polycarbonate roof from B&Q being added to a near original 1874 station?

If we want to be a tourist railway then anything goes if it pulls in the punters.

 

Depends on your definition of "heritage".

Steve

 

Passengers expect a 'sanitised' version of the past - and in things like toilets and refreshment facilities, they expect something to modern standards - an evocation of the past perhaps but not a slavish recreation if the result falls short of what they would expect. Of course, you could keep the toilets original and make them a pure exhibit, building modern ones as an alternative. I seem to recall that is what has been done at Darlington North Road ('Head of Steam') - also great for conserving the originals!

As I stated about the new heritage monitoring arrangements, it is vital for them to have credibility that the 'heritage monitors' exercise sensible judgement and are not 'authenticity fundamentalists'. From the pictures on Facebook, the new roof makes as good an effort to appear 'period', with scrolled brackets etc. as the materials used would allow.

Steven

 

The cleverest trick is to be both. Perhaps a compromise could have been a corrugated iron roof and a dim light bulb.

 

WIBN if you refrained from being terminally argumentative too.

 

It's the cider!

 

*If* half of Minehead station is a 'lifeless forgery', what is nearly the whole of Broadway (all of it apart from a few bits of the original that have been dug up and are being reinstated)?
It seems to me that a "new build" station is as valid as a new build loco, and subject to similar considerations: it should look as close as possible to an original while having such new features as are needed for present-day conditions.
The situation is less clear for an addition to an existing structure, such as the Minehead building extension. I think a case could be made either way: either looking just like the original part or obviously modern, but not somewhere in between.
None of which resolves whether a transparent roof on a previously open-to-the-sky gents is a good idea or a bad one.

 

I remember the old BR open top cubicle whereby if you wanted to empty your bladder you got a right old soaking from the rain plus the smell of old urine, they always had that smell, miss all of that in a way.

 

Sorry, having read the planning application, I now agree with you. The problem is not the new roof so much, which is obviously a modern addition, but the removal of the old roof, which should have been kept, not least because it made it clearer that the new roof was new, Personally, I can't see why the male passengers couldn't just use the covered cubicle to pee if it was raining, which, is I bet, what everyone used to do in the past. After all, many small public toilets don't include urinals in the Gents either, these days. Also, it seems from the application, that the main problem with the Gents was that it was in poor condition, in which case why not just refurbish it as it was?

 

Well, no, because Minehead station was not extended in 2017. The style in which it was extended was still the style of the time in which the original was built, more or less. However, in designing a new station building at BL, as has been suggested as part of the plans for that station, there would be the problem of whether to build something that tried to look as if it was always there, to preserve the 1950's image of the railway for the customers and hence, essentially, be faking it, or to build something obviously new and destroy the image of a timewarp. Fake history or none at all?

 

.... and no discussion of the decision to fit urinal bowls when there was a perfectly good slate to slash against.

 

There is a word for it - Pastiche. Some people seem to think pastiche is always a bad thing. I think that is a rather fundamentalist attitude. A good heritage policy would, I hope, accept pastiche in the right circumstances and decry it in others.

 

It depends if what is being put back is what was there before or is simply in the style of what was there before. Crowcombe goods office is a good example of an (unintentional) "lifeless forgery". It is neither a faithful copy of what was there before, nor will it be obviously new, once the stones get some weather on them. If it had been done correctly, it wouldn't have been.

 

Are they on a septic tank or main sewage? If it is tanked then they have to be very sparing with any blocks used, on water meters it cannot be washed down regularly without paying the price, having the roof stops the rain swilling it down. Even with ventilation they will smell worse than ever in the summer regardless of the composition of the urinals, if they have destroyed the slate then they might as well destroy the entire section of the building and stick in a fancy portaloo

 

What is a block?

 

Those delightful blue or yellow cubes of 'odour neutraliser' that are plonked in the urinal channels, if they are on a septic tank the blocks destroy the balance of the contents, over use can actually damage the tank fabric as well

 

Corr people give the Railway a bit of room to maneuver. If the station people believe there is a need to put a roof on their station loo then that is really acceptable. I didn't hear you all cribbing about Flying Scotsman when she came but over 90% of her had been rebuilt/replaced. There is a group merrily building Manchester United and they started, I think, with the original regulator handle. Every building on the West Somerset has something replaced, doors, windows, guttering (plastic instead of cast iron) but it still looks , in the main, as if it was built 100+ years ago. The railway and the Friends invest £100,000s a year in keeping the railway looking 'correct'. Robin is a zealot when it comes to heritage and that has its uses but when you are running a £2.5M business some things have to change or would you like us to collect the fares in £ s d? Nobody mentions good old Washford when the WSR suddenly changes allegiance from GWR/BR(WR) to S&DJR/BR(M) and BR(S) and back in the space of less than a mile. If you are so convinced that heritage has to be nothing but the original then write to the WSR and offer your services as a Heritage Director and then try to manage this wonderful branch line on the very, very small budget allowed for heritage work. Take a look at Robin's beloved Stogumber in particular the Platform Waiting Room. As the then Chairman of FoSS I arranged for the funding to build that structure, it looks right, it looks the part, it fits in but heritage it is not but its a thundering good job. I'm off to my 16 mm steam up now and this should be good enough to engender another 6 pages of rhetoric.

 

there is of course another way, build a new toilet block in heritage materials that looks correct from the outside, so it matches the ambiance of the station, but inside it has the modern facilities customers expect ?

 

I've always thought a Bewdley style facility would fit in extremely well on Minehead Station. The real ale festival participants would certainly have appreciated such an installation.

 

Thanks. How would this have been dealt with at the time the station was built?