Rother Valley Railway

I believe Llangollen maybe in the same boat as yourself Alex

 

Oswestry is pretty long as well but I'm not sure how long.

Steve B

 

Bury?

Steve B

 

Not sure how many it would hold but Grosmont is fairly long too?

 

There's a gap of about 1.5-2 miles of unusable track between Gobowen and Oswestry at present, and a couple of bridges that need repair. Give them time though!

 

Does that include Schrödinger's Crossing, at the A5? (It may have been a level crossing, it may yet be a bridge)

 

Just to confirm. Oswestry platform can handle 12 coaches. How they get from Gobowen is still an open question.

 

It’s not just platform lengths - afterall, with corridor coaches, people can walk through (and stewards can ensure people don’t try to get out in the wrong place). The bigger worries are around loop length and siding / loop space not needed for the core operation. For example on the Bluebell, the platform at Sheffield Park is about 5 3/4 coaches long, but the loop is only really big enough to cope with 7. And then what do you do with the train, because if it stands for a few hours in the platform, nothing else can run round. By contrast, the platform at Kingscote is not much longer (so you still have to de-train by walking through from the back) but the loop easily holds twelve carriages, plus on a normal service, holding one platform out of use while service trains use the other in both directions is not too difficult on quiet days.

Hence the example of Minehead: it is not just the fact that Minehead platform is very big, but also that they have a second long bay platform with run round loop so that service trains can keep running while the charter lays over for a few hours.

Line occupancy can be a pig, because whatever else happens, you have to guarantee the outgoing service is at the Network Rail boundary on time, regardless. The worst timekeeping I ever saw on a heritage railway was about 15 years ago on the WSR when they attempted to have an incoming charter on one of their galas, with line occupancy already basically maxed out. The incoming service was late (no fault of the WSR) which started to throw the timetable off because they prioritised its passage down the line over the gala trains. That meant things were starting to get out of sequence, long waits to cross trains etc. Then for the outgoing trip, they prioritised getting it to Norton Fitzwarren on time (correct decision from the point of view of Network Rail I guess) but that meant it essentially destroyed whatever vestige there was of trains following the right path. We were on the last down service from Crowcombe and I think got back to Dunster about 2.5 hours late, too late for food at the pub - not a happy bunny.

I could understand the rationale of prioritising the charter timings over anything else, but to my mind it was discourteous to hundreds of gala passengers - who had all paid good money to visit - that they essentially became second class citizens to enable running of a train they couldn’t even catch. An hour or more in the dark at Crowcombe waiting for a succession of up trains before heading down ourselves - I wouldn’t do it twice, put it that way.

Charters look nice, but I don’t think they are all they are cracked up to be for the host railway: certainly my I would think very carefully about running them on a day when the host railway was busy.

Tom

 

That's bizarre? Surely trying to run an incoming charter along the length of the line on a gala day is asking for trouble!

 

It’s not on the RVR blog yet but there’s photos on a KESR associated Facebook group of the turntable bridge craned into place.

 

Hi any chance of a link - I've not been able to locate it.

 

For what it's worth a friend of mine dropped in at Robertsbridge yesterday late afternoon, for a quick look. He told me the turntable deck was nowhere to be seen, but from the yard gate, the pit was not visible, particularly with plant in the way, so we figured that it must have been craned in already, as such a thing is pretty difficult to hide!

 

On the "Kent Railways Past and Present" group - I'm sure it will emerge on the RVR blog in due course.

 

Says Not Availiable at this time.

 

RVR site will be updated just as soon as the guy who runs it gets a mo. Meanwhile:
View attachment 66736

 

That's spectacular progress within just a few days. Respect.

 

Great Picture - Thanks.

 

Probably a silly question but, is there some kind of rigid link between the pivot and the outer ring?
Just to maintain their relative positions.

 

I don’t believe there is, but the turntable bridge is constrained by the ends running (on flanged wheels) upon a circular rail, fixed to the outer concrete ring.

This turntable is unusual, at least amongst surviving uk examples, in that it has outriggers from the sides of the bridge also running on the outer rail. A photo of the original installation at Cannon Street (linked from one of my previous posts) showed the turntable pit completely decked over with the decking presumably supported by the outrigger beams. The outriggers were retained when it was moved to Hither Green so, I wonder, are they structurally essential to this design or was there originally decking at Hither Green too?

And will the Robertsbridge turntable pit eventually have full decking? Might not be essential but wouldn’t it be nice

 

Here's a couple of the table in situ at Hither Green, taken 10 1995 (I think).
Pat