Isle of Wight Steam Railway

I guess it should be a fairly straightforward proposition for all heritage lines to shoehorn your ideology into their reality.

 

This seems a pity, demolition of an original IOWR bridge of 1875. I appreciate that it has no beneficial use these days and is in poor condition, but it's a shame for a steam railway much-lauded for their conservation efforts to be demolishing a part of its history. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-66876087

 

Presumably you will be meeting the costs for repair and ongoing maintenance.

 

Perhaps the railway shouldn't have allowed it to deteriorate to the point where now demolition is the only option?

 

My reaction is similar to that of @Kingscross; if the purpose of the railway is preservation, then structures like these need to be considered part of the whole. It is not enough to just bring out the arguments of economy as justification for the chosen action; at the very least there needs to be acknowledgement of the impact.

Credit in that needs to be given to Peter Taylor, quoted in the BBC piece, who was very sensitive in his explanation of the decision.

 

Especially when the railway is in the rare situation of having the whole line as an accredited museum by the Arts Council, as opposed to just a single site.

 

Is it really? I never knew that, if only someone had mentioned it.

 

While I can appreciate the pragmatism, it would help were you not so didactic in relation to similar choices facing railways on the other side of the Solent! To criticise a railway for allowing a line of carriages or locos to revert to a linear scrapyard in terms of "they should never have allowed that to happen" and then be relatively sanguine about the infrastructure equivalent is not exactly consistent: a carriage stored outside for forty years and now fit only for scrap, and a bridge sufficiently decayed that removal is the only viable option, are differences only of degree, not of kind.

I think the quoted words from Peter Taylor are at least as good as can be hoped for inasmuch as he commits to a full record survey of the bridge before demolition, which is beyond what would be the minimum permissible and shows a level of archaeological responsibility.

Infrastructure decisions on heritage railways do worry me, because the built environment suffers in two ways: firstly it is something of a cinderella amongst enthusiasts (the kind of people that will argue the toss about a rebuilt Bulleid carrying a Southern Railway identity will be blithely unconcerned about a station laid out with non-prototypical bi-directional signalling; or grey signalling equipment cabinets popping up in places that are operationally convenient, but visually intrusive). Secondly, infrastructure decisions tend to be long-lived: a mis-step in a loco restoration can be easily corrected at minimal cost within a few years, whereas infrastructure decisions might take decades to reverse, if at all.

Tom

 

I'll take that concern a stage further - people who will be utterly pedantic about the fine detail of a locomotive/piece of rolling stock will be blissfully sanguine about the built environment, and blind to the impact of (often essential) facilities on a historic location.

 

Despite considerable attention over many years this bridge continues to be problematic. This is aggravated by soil conditions. As it serves no function it seems wasteful to spend thousands of pounds on a redundant structure. As an example of what is arguably a more logical use of resources the replacement of worn out bullhead rail comes to mind. Decent quality secondhand bullhead is not easy to source. So it has to be newly rolled rails at about £1,000 each unless flat bottom rail is used where no-one is though to be looking!

 

And there you start to make a case. Your initial response, even without your strong views on other railways’ coaching stock policies, suggested no such trade offs


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

?

 

You just demanded what a poster would contribute. No sense of what the choices or issues were, just a bald assertion of need.

That sits poorly at the best of times; far worse from someone who has been dismissive of such trade-offs elsewhere.

 

I hesitate to comment, as I don't really have a strong view on this bridge, except for 2 minor points.

Firstly, very few RNR (IWCR) bridges survive.

Secondly, this bridge does sort of form part of the 'back drop' to Havenstreet station in the Wootton direction. It marks where you first see a train emerge or disappear on the bank. Not having it there will be of more significance than say if it were not part of this Havenstreet station 'back drop'?

 

Just to point out that there is a longer write up of the railway's decision here: https://iwsteamrailway.co.uk/2023/09/bridge-12/ which is worth a read for background.

 

Thank you for that link - it's reassuring to see how this decision was reached.

 

Yes indeed, thanks for the link to the IOWSR blog post. It’s reassuring that the matter was so carefully considered; and also that doing a full rebuild now to provide long term stability would have started by demolishing the whole of the existing structure. So demolishing now could be regarded as merely phase 1 of some future rebuild … assuming that funding for that at some far-distant date becomes somehow miraculously available!

What a pity that all the time and effort spent on past repairs has failed to arrest the deterioration of this bridge.

 

When we took over the line in 1971 the ex-BR ganger Sid Newberry told us that we'd always have trouble with that bridge!