Bluebell Railway General Discussion

Or maybe it's just connected with the Saturday Pullman charter, bringing in guests for it.

Bryan

 

Out of interest Mr H. I believe still has a minority holding in Crystal Palace football club ! He also owns Gravetye Manor near East Grinstead.

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I doubt it's in relation to Crystal Palace, they're away to Liverpool on Sunday! (Unless he's planning on bringing the players back to London via a private LSL charter, like he did when 34046 returned to steam in 2016). A work colleague of mine is a Palace fan and I think he said Hosking sold his shares in the club a few years back.

 

The signalling and interlocking is already in place, and has been since HK was re-locked a couple of decades ago. But the business case for Ardingly is I suggest challenging.

Tom

 

The business case for any heritage railway is challenging in real terms but, where there’s a Will, there’s a Hay. Or is it way?

 

Indeed, and there are some on the railway (especially my sense is within infrastructure) who are keen to do it, I think seeing it as the "next big project".

I can't see we would ever run it as part of normal daily operations. But one possible use would be that it gave you an essentially isolated section of line for "value added" stuff that you could run independently of operations on the mainline. That would include footplate courses, filming, training services for Network Rail and their contractors etc. At the moment, we can offer those things, but sometimes timings are limited or restricted by the needs to maintain the core service. So having an entirely separate bit of line where you could say to such people "fill your boots" might be a good move.

For public consumption, I think you'd then restrict it to galas. It might also be worth sending one train per week along there (say a Golden Arrow) because if you did, over the course of a year most loco crew and most HK signalmen would end up maintaining familiarity.

Doing it that way would at least mean that the increase loco and rolling stock mileage would be minimised; we wouldn't routinely have to increase the number of rostered loco crews and guards; wouldn't need to steam an additional loco and have an additional set of carriages in use; and hopefully wear and tear on the track would be low. It would be another four miles (two each side) of fences to maintain, linesides to clear etc, so we'd need to find more people in fencing and line side gangs.

Tom

 

I can certainly see the sense of what you say about the operational side Tom.

But the cost of doing it must enormous; surely dominated by the rebuilding in some form or other of the long since removed Sheriff Mill Viaduct.

I'm not aware of any heritage line that has undertaken such a massive civil engineering project - if there has been one I will soon know about it here I am sure! And whilst the Ffestiniog deviation route was incredibly impressive it didn't include an enormous new build bridge/viaduct as would be required to cross the road that seems to either be named New Lane or Station Approach. From the height and span of the old viaduct it's not as though a new single span bridge would work, as I think has been done on such as the GC and others I am sure. (new build bridges that is ).

But then, no heritage railway had removed such a vast rubbish tip before the Bluebell did it.

Maybe a sort of 'intermediate' approach would be to extend the current embankment to close to the road and re-instate double track to the end with a run round facility. And use it as a (much less than) half way house, with the 'far end', courtsey of tree planting not visible from the end of HK platforms 1 & 2 as visitors wait to photo and then join their short branch line train.

Doing that would still be a high cost with no acceptable commercial return, but nothing like the cost of building a massive new build bridge/viaduct. And of course sorting the leaking tunnel etc.

Not part funded with a Tenner for the Tip (I once had the back seat of my car littered with loads of those certificates!), but 'Bung us for the Branch' or something considerably better than that. Plus a massive bequest or similar for that specifc purpose.

Right, back to reality for me now as I think about the best day(s) to visit the Bluebell this weekend.

Bryan

 

I can hear the alarm bells for the historical authenticity police going off even from Kent!
Flat bottom rail, 1980 Concrete sleepers with Panderol Clips
I see they have the drillings ready for the pots on the historically correct dummy third rail which has probably been delayed because its set the alarm bells off in the ORR offices.

 

Bryan, the Ardingly embankment has already been extended as far as it physically can, and that was using the clay capping from Imberhorne. AFAIK, there is no scope for further extension of the embankment, in fact it has already suffered slippage. Probably not the best place to think about building any platform, however temporary.

 

And modern ballast!!!

 

Mm. Yes, it did jar a bit, seeing that, particularly as its immediately adjacent to the platform and quite visible.
Long ago, I used to venture onto the Bluebell's groups.io thread. I found out very quickly that one did not question Infrastructure's choices of obviously inauthentic materials for certain jobs.
If you were a working member, you were tolerated at best. If not, you got the bums rush! "Preservation Standards" was a thorny subject.
So one just has to set back, and admire what they have achieved.

 

Thanks Mark. My suggestion wasn't to build a plaform, just a run round.

A bit sad the embankment can't be extended any more and has suffered slippage; that does leave an enormous gap still to be bridged if there is ever an attempt to get to Ardingly.

Bryan

 

I don't know what the current situation is, though I'm figuring that the slip has been stabilised, at least for now. Trying to remember, and I may well be wrong, but I think that part of the Long Siding had to be lifted in order to ease the situation.
There may well be a longer term civil engineering solution, eg soil-nailing, rock gabions, etc, although it will reach a point where the cost per metre of embankment engineering will begin to close up towards the cost per metre of a bridge, which will have to be, IIRC at least 2 spans, as there is the watercourse just to the east of New Road to be spanned as well.

 

70000 at EG courtesy of Railcam

 

I hope we're rinsing him for track access

He's not the sort of individual the railway ought to be tying itself in too closely with IMHO

 

Why?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclaim_Party

https://goodlawproject.org/the-offshore-bonanza-powering-reforms-far-right-rhetoric/

Extremely dodgy ground for any family-orientated organisation to land itself on

 

Why would you do that to someone who hires you locos for your gala's?

 

Man likes trains. Man has money. Man does not keep his politics secret. You disagree with latter. Hardly a reason to tell him to "F-Off", is it?

"Here is a load of money", "I don't like your politics", "Fair enough I'll give it to somebody else".