Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

The L&B has already been experimenting with various types of bio-fuels. and WB does have solar panels to aid its eco-credentials.

 

Just to 'throw in' one reminder....that when the L&BR started at WB it relied on a diesel engine and the Thorpe Park coaches. But the membership did not walk away and take their money elsewhere, they realised that it was just a starting point and a means to a better end.

 

In the context of the time and objective to prove that a railway could be created at all, that was a very sensible first step.
Personally I think the biggest problem is a complete lack of ambition. Someone else said let’s avoid doing something just because it is something. Others have stated my feelings that it should be a proper recreation or not bother and build a path/cycle way.
Fundamentally what is stopping the full recreation? Ambition. The drive to create not a piecemeal incremental lets add a mile every 15years approach, but a proper plan, which starts with engagement and finding the funding sources. Of course there has to be phases, but let’s get it ALL built in the next 15years. 5 years to plan and obtain permissions and 10 years to build. Unless we show ambition who will want to keep this going?
As to green, my vote would be for a portion of the fundraising to be about sponsorship of a development program for hand fired sustainable fuels and/or further development of the lower co2 coal options.
Do something, but do it well. Let’s stop half arsing this one! It is the potentially the greatest narrow gauge adventure in world and at the moment it doesn’t look like it!

 

Interesting debate.

I think you will find that if the plan is to go to electric and we stray too far from the heritage the we coukd see quite a few walk away as the whole aim thus far is to recreate the L&B as close as it originally was. We have already been through that initial stage of using what we can find, we now have the real deal, going to electric or other alternative means, for many will feel like stepping backwards and by a long way.

Additionally, as far as I recall some of the comments made during the public consultation period of the previous planning was the locals fear of the L&B becoming Disneyfied and a theme park. Non authentic rolling stock being used long term and not as a very short interim while the recreation is being done will not be to our favour.

The target of nearly everyone I know is to reinstate the L&B as it was for the public to enjoy and learn about travel over 100 years ago.

What's being suggested is in my view very far from it and will lose the whole L&B project wider support from the public.

I agree there are issues we need to resolve, but our overall aim must still to be to recreate the L&B as it was and very much downplay any talk of Disney theme park type people movers for the long term and only be seen as a stop gap.

 

I was initially (very) sceptical of the idea of multiple bits of railway, mostly on the grounds that as we struggle to staff the exisiting line, staffing two seeemed impossible. However, in speaking with the people proposing it, and in particular Chris Duffell (a most approachable and sensible man, we're very lucky to have him) I've come round to the battery-electric operation from OSHI to Wistlapound as a first and temporary step in reinstating the line there.

It has a number of advantages: first, we own the necessary land; second, we have the permissions; third, it is good to provide tangible progress; fourth, it should provide additional footfall to OSHI, especially if it were included in the WB tickets - after all, most visitors will drive to the railway already.

I don't think that starting it as an electric - or diesel-electric - railcar locks us into this as the end state - as @RailWest points out, this is how the existing line started, too. My wish is for a rebuilding of as much of the L&B as possible in the form it was in at various stages between 1898 and 1935: I'm all for Manning Wardles over Chelfham viaduct! (I'd even like green coaches to go with green engines, as well as L&B livered engines to go with L&B livered coaches!).

But just as the railway has to follow the contours of the landscape, so it must also follow today's regulatory and political contours. Just as no one is suggesting that we break the law and allow smoking in carriages because it was allowed in 1935, so we need to look at how to reduce the carbon footprint of the railway, and remove that as a convenient (if tangential) argument of those who oppose any reinstatement: the 'eco-coal' experiment and the use of recycled plastic for sleepers represent exactly the right sort of approach that the Trust and the CIC should be congratulated for.

Moreover, we should recognise that the railway will have some negative impacts for some people, and respect that and minimise those impacts where we can; the project lives because the net benefits to the Exmoor and North Devon community as a whole are (much) greater than these costs.

Thehse include economic growth but also training opportunities (for instance in engineering and hospitality), which is exactly the sort of thing that funding bodies will be looking to support. Anne Belsey has been doing some sterling work with young people recently, really worthy of broader recognition. Getting the local schools and technical training colleges involved using the railway to help fulfil their missions is exactly the sort of win-win that will help the railway be seen as a local asset that everyone can be proud of, rather than a source of tension and anxeity being imposed by people from elsewhere.

I'm bullish on the railway's future as a community asset: we just need a plan that all can buy into, and once we've got it, get on with the reinstatement.

 

Tbh Toby, we have already thought of ideas where we could make the underframes of our carriages but for cheapness and also to enable perhaps lighter engines or even battery power to work them between OSHI and Whistlandpound to build a toast rack top body from ply and steel frame.

Once we have extended properly to OSHI those could then have the bodies removed and the authentic body put on.

The bodies are mostly built off the underframe, so that could be ongoing whilst the underframes are used for light duties.

This does a couple of things, one, it gives a robust underframe which is preapproved for running on our rails, and second, it makes use of them while we build the authentic bodies but in a lighter form for lighter motive power which might only be used say once or twice a week in high season and weekly in the outer seasons.

It also gives something of a taster of what's to come.

 

[QUOTE="DaveE, post: 2833431, member: 30110".....
.... Non authentic rolling stock being used long term and not as a very short interim while the recreation is being done will not be to our favour.
.......[/QUOTE]
I would agree, but I'm not sure that anyone here is suggesting battery-electric railcars or similar as a long-term feature, merely something to 'tide us over' on (say) the BR-WD stretch until such time as we can have the infrastructure in place there to support 'proper' operations with steam locomotives hauling heritage stock.

In some ways, the current situation reminders me of the earlier days at WB when the debate raged between the idea of extending the railway bit-by-bit, or waiting until we had raised enough money to do most, if not all, of it in one 'big bang'. The former won - is it not perhaps equally applicable now?

 

Well we fundamentally disagree on the way forward that’s clear.

 

I think I have to echo gwralatea's concerns on the Green aspect becoming the focus and overtaking the original aims of what all of us have been doing thus far. It has already been commented on in previous public meetings on theme park end points, this we must make sure we avoid and any use of "light" stock is only a stop gap. Obviously as the line extends and perhaps we see our original stock becoming inadequate we could look for suitable sympathetically designed stock with modern technology incorporated.

 

Re working with schools the GWSR gets quite a bit of traffic from schools sending children to learn about the wartime evacuation experience. That could work for the L&B, maybe seen from the other end, where they arrive in the country.

 

Excellent @DaveE that's exactly the sort of thing - and thinking - that we need.

 

Could do that, or to avoid treading on another railways toes on the war theme perhaps have it where they learn about holidays in the Victorian and Edwardian era, the clothes, the food, the travel and so on.

 

Feel free to discuss any engineering issues with me.

Sent from my SM-T575 using Tapatalk

 

Ah ha, I see. Must admit I've just reread what Breva put and initially misunderstood. The arrival in the west country of the evacuees isn't a bad idea actually.

 

Thank you . It's not too hard to do really and most of what I call "hard" engineering is in the underframe which we already have approved.

The body is fairly straight forward to do.

 

Except of course a reason it’s so difficult to rebuild the line is because it was gone well before the war… Soldiers on leave in WW1 would work.

 

There are all sorts of things really, the farming link where goods were transported for local farmers that links in with farming as a whole, then the link to markets, the Pannier Market, the transportation and distribution of coal to those along the line, the Post Office... Then holidays in Lynton and Lynmouth, the history of Sir. George Newnes, the civil engineering of Chelfham Viaduct.... Etc etc

 

But then that comes back to needing to fit into the curriculum if you want to attract school visits. FWIW I don't think it's a huge money spinner on the GWSR directly - it makes a profit but no more than a coach party of which I'm sure there must be plenty to go at in North Devon. I still consider it by far and away the most worthwhile thing we do though, and there are secondary benefits around awareness of the railway as a place to visit by the kids and their families, and it benefits our educational credentials when applying for grants and the like too.