Bluebell Northern Extension - so what's occurring then?

Let's move on from debating the pros and cons of Robert Philpot's website (although I must admit, I appreciate his pictures) and acknowledge what a terrific week this has been for the Bluebell - If, as Tom says, the final figure + gift aid amounts to almost £200,000, that's one quarter of the outstanding amount raised - or 2 1/2 months' worth of work paid for. True, there's still another £600,000 or so to go, but hopefully the momentum built up by this week will help bring this money in. Really, you would hardly think our country is still struggling to escape recession the way this appeal has been supported. A fantastic achievement. Well done to all concerned.

 

No psychology, his is the only regularly updated photosite in town, thats the reason I prefer it. I don't read his words, the pictures tell me everything I need to know about the great progress being made and the professionalism of the project management. I sent another modest donation today and am very much looking forward to having a ride over the viaduct next year.

 

I visit the 'what's new' page of the Bluebell web site at least once every two days. The level of information 'that comes from the project itself' is simply, hugely inadequate.
I haven't sat down and kept a log but it certainly seems that updates are
1) much less frequent than 'the uninformed spectator'
2) contain much less information

As far as I'm concerned, you only have yourselves to blame if people prefer 'the uninformed spectator'.

If you want a benchmark to compare yourselves with, please look at the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire railway.
Their p-way team has a photo blog - Flickr: GWR Permanent Way's Photostream. You could see what was going on with extending the line towards Broadway and watch them relaying the track after the Gotherington embankment slip. New pictures are typically uploaded within a couple of days of every weekend.
They also provide detailed reports like this one - GWR - Gloucestershire's mainline heritage railway - Chicken Curve Update 19th March 2012. It's a bit heavy on the civil engineering jargon in some places but it gets the message across.

Since I'm sure someone will ask, I haven't given money to the Bluebell, in large part because I simply don't feel involved in what's going on.

 

Why? Have you considered visiting less often? You'll get many more updates per visit if you check-in once per fortnight rather than once every two days…

Simon

 

I assume this post is an April Fool !

 

If your interested enough to visit the 'whats new' page at least every two days, is it really such a hardship to visit the e-group and Robert's extension site as well?

Chris

 

Why? It's a large infrastructure project being run by a relatively small team. It's not reasonable or realistic to expect that there is reportable news every two days, nor spare resource to report on it. Compare, if you will, with smaller, less significant projects like, I don't know, the Olympics Site or the Shard. I doubt they're faffing around with daily progress updates, although no doubt they're moving a good deal faster than the Bluebell on a project with far greater impact on a lot more people (a reflection of the size and cost of the respective projects, not criticism of the Bluebell).

I've just chipped a small donation in; hopefully it'll cover the cost of the bandwidth consumed by the every-other-day web visitors… ;-)

Simon

 

I'll assume this is a serious response and not an April Fool ......

In Firefox, you can bookmark a set of tabs and load them all at once.
I have a set of tabs for the what's new page of a set of preserved railways that interest me.
It's one click to load the set of tabs and then trivial to look at each one in turn & see if there's anything interesting and close the tab if there isn't.

The e-group has 15 postings so far today. That's far too time consuming.

I very much doubt that the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire have a big team on their Chicken Curve project.

JP

 

Stop Press! There is another update on the extension in the Bluebell newsletter that landed in my inbox tonight.

 

If you want the news, subscribe to the e-newsletter! We're aiming to have Extension project news in every edition, published fortnightly.
Even if there's nothing to be said beyond what was written two weeks earlier, we hope we've persuaded the project manager to say something!
Bluebell Railway - sign up for our Email newsletter
And the extension News Page has been updated 4 times in the last week and a half.
Richard

 

More pictures at the bottom of the page

Imberhorne Cutting Removal - Page 5

 

Presumably the contractors are raising the base level of the cutting with the clay capping that is unlikely to be required elsewhere on the railway, ie at Horsted Keynes. If this is the case, it appears to be an eminently sensible option to dispose of as much of the surplus material effectively "in-situ", leaving only the remainder to move to other locations. Must have an economy in cost.
Also will provide loco crews with a little "added interest" along the way, but presumably nothing like the "ski-jump" on the East Lancs!

 

This is exactly the plan that has been explained on the Bluebell website for several months.

 

It will also please photographers. I would guess that the cutting, and for that matter, all the line north of Kingscote will be out of bounds even to people with the PTS, but the bridge at the north end of the cutting is a good and publicly accessible spot (as long as you don't park in the lane leading to it). Trains running south will have been subject to a speed restriction crossing the viaduct, but if the original alignment had been retained, would be starting the descent at 1 in 75 to Kingscote somewhere about the spot where the bridge is situated. However, if the realignment will result in a slight uphill gradient at this point, then the locos should still be working. Sadly, with 80151 coming out of ticket soon, that only leaves B473 facing south out of the current operational fleet. There's a picture of a C class taken from this bridge in Klaus Marx's book on the line, page 232, and a C2X on a football special (No, I'm not joking!) on page 95.
(oh whoops - correction : 323 and Baxter also face south)

 

sbt: Thanks for that. I have diligently read the updates on the Bluebell website as the work evolved, but I didn't see it explained as such, ie raising the level of the cutting. What I did see was comment that the clay capping material, which latterly was piled to one side of the works would need to be rearranged, with much being transported to HK for the triangle and embankment on the Ardingly line. However I will defer to you in that it was "exactly" explained about the cutting, my mistake of course, and repeat that as far as they can use the material on-site, and provided effective drainage can be installed, then it has to be a sensible use of the material. Even running spoil trains from Imberhorne to HK will have a cost.
Makes my modest donation go a little further!

 

How much more spoil to be moved to fill in the realightment once they are the other side of the bridge? it looks like quite a lot of the capping that was stockpiled on the southen end has been used now, so i would imagine that the gradient change would be just after the bridge? at what point will the track bed be back to its original depth?

 

46118: My fault. Should never post when annoyed by something else.

Most of my info was gleaned from the Project Page:

Bluebell Railway - East Grinstead Extension Progress

... but the data is fragmented and I now realise I may have added info from other online sources to create a belief it says more than it does.

Its certainly been my understanding for some time that the plan was to leave as as much as possible at the cutting, ever since the news that the requirement (by whom? I think the Environment Agency) that the entire tip be cleared had been dropped came out (I don't have a reference but have understood that for some time). I added the information that the southern approach was to be re-profiled along with the cutting and came to the conclusion that the level was going to be raised, as this seemed to be the only thing that would require something more than fairly trivial work.

In any case, sorry for being so snapish.

 

sbt: Absolutely no problem! We all have days like that now and again.

regards

46118

 

I'd heard a suggestion that it might become 1-in-60 for (at a rough guess) 1/3 mile up to Imberhorne Lane Bridge instead of 1-in-75. I would hazard a guess that there will not be any significant climb from the other direction, just the falling gradient from the north might start later, or be eased. There will still be a lot of capping to move to Horsted Keynes. The vertical re-alignment will only consume a relatively small quantity - its purpose being to reduce the depth of the cutting (and thus make it possible to leave more of the waste in place along-side, since the cutting side will not need to be as deep, and the horizontal alignment can be moved further East) rather than to make more than a small dent in the capping mountain (which I think was in the region of 100,000 tonnes). But as it says on the web site "designs for the final cutting shape are still being developed".
(P.S. the other operational loco which currently faces South is No.323 - but once we have a turning triangle, of course any of them could easily be.)

 

Richard: Thanks for that info.

With that much clay capping to dispose of, do you think that it can mostly be utilised at HK for the triangle and Ardingley embankment, or is it likely some will still need to leave the railway for landfill?

regards

46118