Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

You having your own opinion is not the problem here, why would it be? Everyone is entitled to have their own opinion.


However, for someone that claims they are involved with aspects of the railways extension plans to say things like, "Pedantic note: maybe there is no problem at the moment, but IMHO there is a high risk that there will be one come March 9th :-(" such a claim doesn't exactly spark confidence in said railway.


Let's take a step back for a minute. Let's say we are an outsider to the railway, for the sake of an example let's say we are an objector to the railway. Reading through your posts on this forum it would not be out of the question for someone to come to the conclusion that you believe the railways extension plans will fail, evidenced by your personal belief that there is a "high chance" of the railway encountering a "problem" (which it is heavily implied that said "problem" will involve the planning arrangements). Now, let's say we find your post where you outline some of your duties in the railway. Again, it would not be out of the question for someone to come to the conclusion that you are some major player in the railway by how vague you sometimes are with the difference between "you" and "the railway", evidenced by your use of "we" when referring to planning details (If you were able to convince me that you had some authority over the railway before I knew any better, then it is certainly not out of the question).

From this, it is not out of the question for an outsider to come on here, read your comments and come to the conclusion that the railway is doomed to fail, based on opinions presented by someone who claims to be involved with the active extension of the railway. Now I'm not saying that this is or ever will be the case, but it is certainly not out of the question that someone could come to this conclusion. As you can understand, this is perhaps not the image that the railway would want for themselves.


The point I was trying to make yesterday is why would you continue to sustain that possible take-away from this page, as laid out above, when the fate of the railways extension is at such a crucial (and as such, sensitive) point?

 

So we can all start from the same page about Chelfham Mill school, the site was up for £1,000,000 pounds to start with, however depending on which website you go to this has now come down to £750 -850,000 pounds and is now split into two parts.

The next thing is the ownership issue and for this there are just two routes one the L&BR Trust buy and run it or 2 a new Charity is set up to buy it. Now I get that not everyone would sign up for adding yet another group to the family. But the advantage for that is it is light and does not have any baggage and it will have a fresh approach to the problem. The downside is however that it will not have a track record on any previous work, so it will be an unknown risk and it may be hard to raise the funds its needs to buy the site, if you can't get a HLF Grant.

Speaking about the Heritage Lottery Fund this mill site has a more than a better chance of obtaining a grant as they have not yet had many grant application in the South West for such bits of Heritage. There would be a couple of things that would help and that is to fully restore the old water mill itself and secondly if it is possible to install some sort of Hydroelectric power planet in the same building at the same time.

 

A million here and a million there, and you soon get to real money. There's a lot to focus on to reopen the railway and, yet again, a new project is being put forward as the answer. At a time when some - including you - are busy criticising Trust leadership, here is yet another initiative to swallow up their time.

I'm not disputing that it's desirable, but am wondering just how much of a priority it is.

 

No, and even a fag packet calculation (or a very quick google) would indicate that the answer is wrong by between two and three orders of magnitude.

You'd improve your credibility if you thought a bit more and posted a bit less, I think.

Tom

 

Only way Colin would increase he's credibility on here isn't by posting less ...its by posting nothing at all.

Between him and rail west ...there just feeding into the hands of the opposite team and giving them ammunition.

 

[QUOTE="21B, post: 2787826, member: 7670".....d. For example this s73 application to vary the planning at Parracombe. Why bother?.....[/QUOTE]

Quite simple really.

AIUI without the Sec73 applications approved to vary (and hopefully) remove the Grampian Conditions attached to the existing planning consents, the L&BRT will have until March 7th this year to buy ALL the trackbed for the Phase 2A extension within the ENPA, including the part(s) whose owner(s) refuse to sell under any circumstances, raise ALL the money to complete the construction, place ALL the contracts and stick spades in the ground to start work. And any such approval - if it comes at all - will not come until the next ENPA meeting sometime in February. 'Cutting it fine' is putting it bluntly.

I am sure there are other L&BRT members on this forum who will confirm that if you doubt me

PS: and the key objectors know all this anyway....the more they keep finding things about which to object, the longer they drag out the approval process until (they hope) it will be too late.

 

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Hi 21B. lets try this then, when the planning for the extension came out about five or six years ago it was not jumped on straight away by others that something was wrong. I don't know who it was that brought it to whose attention but keeping this simple it happen

Difficult to say on that point as any land or property associated to the railway is important and needs to be purchase either today or tomorrow or next week or so on basically when it becomes available is the simple answer here.

Funny you should talk about money, but when I have mentioned the cost of certain things in the past, they look at me in shock and never realise the true cost or value of the assets we have. 1 million pounds + for Chelfham Mill School site is cheap in relation to the price of trackbed.

In an ideal World the Trust could have built up a trackbed purchasing account over the years, but as far as I know I don't think one exists. It would be easy to criticize for missed opportunities but these things happen and could still be put right if they wanted it to do so.

The same arguments where put forward to stop the support of Exmoor Associates when it was set up at the time. But again that happen because some of the members did not want to wait for the Trust to act.

What I can tell you is there is never enough money in the pot to support everything that needs to be done today. Sometimes you just need to buy these things and hold on to them for a rainy day. As I have said before putting the L&BR back together is not something that is easy or straight forward, you can't simply rebuild this in a straight line. I think you will find that this is the only railway that has to go down this tortious path as there is no alternative way to do it.

With over 100 landowners to deal with it can and does get very frustrating, some may own a mile of track bed, where as there are others that might just only own 20 meters or so. But each one is just as important as the last, some are willing to sell, where as other don't want to know. Sometimes it does not matter how much money you throw at the wall as it does not alway stick. That said you alway get at least one who has an inflated vision of just how much there bit is worth.

 

Quite simple really.

AIUI without the Sec73 applications approved to vary (and hopefully) remove the Grampian Conditions attached to the existing planning consents, the L&BRT will have until March 7th this year to buy ALL the trackbed for the Phase 2A extension within the ENPA, including the part(s) whose owner(s) refuse to sell under any circumstances, raise ALL the money to complete the construction, place ALL the contracts and stick spades in the ground to start work. And any such approval - if it comes at all - will not come until the next ENPA meeting sometime in February. 'Cutting it fine' is putting it bluntly.

I am sure there are other L&BRT members on this forum who will confirm that if you doubt me

PS: and the key objectors know all this anyway....the more they keep finding things about which to object, the longer they drag out the approval process until (they hope) it will be too late.[/QUOTE]

I understand the need to remove the Grampian conditions which are overly onerous. That doesn’t explain the need to include a turntable, and thereby apparently give opportunities for further objection.

 

Sadly they know more than that. As far as I know when was the last time you sat down and had a chat and a cup of tea with the Trustees and they passed on some good news to you?

 

No tea involved but about 4 weeks ago .

 

Colin, IMHO there is no reason why the railway need procure any of the buildings on the former school property beneath Chelfham viaduct.

I know that you are a long standing member of the L&BR, so you should remember that 12-15 years ago the railway submitted a planning application to open Chelfham station as a "private railway". Permission was refused, primarily because of the lack of car parking for visitors. So there would however be some benefit if the railway could purchase just a smallish plot of land to provide the missing car parking on the former school site, thereby removing a now known obstacle that we will hopefully encounter again sooner rather than later.

 

I understand the need to remove the Grampian conditions which are overly onerous. That doesn’t explain the need to include a turntable, and thereby apparently give opportunities for further objection.[/QUOTE]


This has got me thinking and to all the people I have asked, no one knows who put the Turntable option in to the mix in the first place after the original planning had been granted.

 

So that was at the Santa specials then?

 

Hi Chris I remember that and that is why I find it so hard to believe that the current owners has got outline planning permission for the proposed development. My gut tells me that one of the reasons it has not been sold yet is that those in the know, know they will never get fully planning permission for the site. If it was that much of a bargain it would have been snapped up by now I think it was sold for £500,000 to the current owners if I recall correctly.

 

The person or conversation don't need to be chucked all over this page ...but it was just before Santa's started or just after , cant remember

 

I hope the L&B doesn’t go down a tortious path, as my subscriptions are for the railway, not lawyers. If however you mean tortuous, then you are incorrect - a number of railways (Buebell immediately comes to mind) have had to purchase back trackbed sold in penny packets, and reassemble their land over time.

I work on projects, and have seen some succeed and others fail. One major factor in those successes and failures has been the degree of focus they’ve had.

My concern about what I’m seeing in your suggestions is about the dilution of focus, and the addition of more and more items of expenditure, if they were to be followed. Sometimes you can’t do everything, and have to prioritise; I suspect that this is one such occasion.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I get very concerned about some of the comments on this and other publically accessable forums when there are planning applications being considered. Opposers do look at these sites to glean details for their submissions to the authorities.

 

Therefore Harry, do tell what you might propose to prevent this occurring?

 

A section 73 is used to vary or remove conditions attached to planning permission, in brief the conditions attached were that the railway must own all the land and have all the finance in place to extend all the way back to Blackmoor gate before it could start any work, the railway is now seeking to break the planning into sections to make things more realistic but for some reason also included an alteration to the passed planning permission to include a TT, which it seems cant be done under a S73, it would seem the main issue with opponents is that Parracombe becomes a terminus rather than a through halt as propossed in the original planning