The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway

Hi all.

I just wanted to start a long term thread about what is happening down in the West Country on the S&DJR.

I am still not sure that I will live to see it all rebuilt, but I have a feeling that at lease one long section will be up and running in the next ten years.

I do wonder if this project will become the new south western version of the honey pot heritage railway.

Looking at the area itself, you already have a number of non railway tourist attractions such as Wooky Hole, Bath, and Cheddar Gorge to name but three.

Then you have both the Avon Valley Railway in the north to Bristol and the East Somerset line of which both could in time be joined into this project.

A project this size makes me think if we are now going beyond railway preservation?

 

Which project are you refering to? The pipe dream of re-opening all the S&D or the various ongoing projects, such as Midsomer Norton and Shillingstone.

 

Im afraid you will not see any long section opened in your lifetime let alone in the next ten years.

 

Careful, Steve Sainsbury will jump on you!

 

As an introduction for those of us who don't follow this area in great detail, can anyone offer a "primer" detailing all the groups active along the S&D or (such as the Washford group) not on the S&D but with S&D interests; covering

- Where they are
- What their objectives are and
- What they have achieved so far

Would help to prime any discussion with at least a base level of fact!

Tom

 

As you said Lynbarn, a project this size is going beyond simple railway preservation.
It is interesting to reflect that if the S&D had survived, as we probably all wish it had, it would no longer be the entity recognisable by Ivo Peters, but it would consist of a series of single track continuous welded rail, bare modern unmanned stations with bus shelters and ticket machines, colour light signalling, no freight, no sidings, few passing loops, DMUs.....a bit like the line from Dorchester to Westbury in fact. If the objective of these groups is to reinstate the entire route one day as a going concern, somebody may have to make the decision to modernise it all to balance the books.
Just a hypothetical question but would you be willing to lose all the heritage paraphernalia in exchange for a fully reopened commercially viable S&D?

 

Not sure that would have been the case of it all being knocked flatt. I mean the Settle and Carlisle has had the majority of its stations survive one way or another, and at one point in the early 80s all but 2 of them had closed!


Depends on what you are looking for in a line I guess. If the intent is to build a 'modern' railway, well thats of course doable, though I question whether it will ever be financially viable. I will say that the commercial case for it making businesses and towns along the line stronger is I think unassailable logic. Nobody approaches lines shutting today without considering the communities along them, so why do we ignore them when reopening lines is in prospect? Its hard to believe the Waverley line is considered more commercially viable than a modern S and D would be. Most of it runs through the middle of nowhere, yet that's judged a case to help rural communities!

For a feature length STEAM tourist line, well thats a much taller order, though I think ironically it might actually be commercially viable when its operating. The reason for that is simple, it wont be opening all week, and as a tourist attraction it would rather bigger numbers than a bare bones commerical line would get. Against that, it would also be less useful, you couldnt use it as a freight line (well without out a lot of very careful consideration on how to do it which doubtless would cost millions just to do a study) and integrating a modern service would be difficult. After all, Network rail are running away very quickly from operating old signal boxes. How can that work?

The real problem a modern S and D has to fulfill, it falls between two stools. A historically based tourist operation wont be modern enough to appeal to a Goverment case to boost rural communities, or cheap to build and upkeep (or run all year round). A modern line by contrast wont have enough appeal in my view to appeal to tourists, and there is the small matter of getting TOC's to bid on such an operation. Quite how you square that circle will be interesting to see. Settle and Carlisle manages it, but of course they had the inestimable advantage of the trackbed not being closed and built on, and steam excursions being secondary to it being a modern line.

At the very least we can see 2 promising heritage lines based on the old trackbed, and that should be enough to satisfy us even if bigger plans never get off the ground. My guess is they wont, not because a new S and D is a bad idea, just because nobody has seriously addressed how to appease 2 entirely different requirements, historical and modern operations. The requirement to please everyone in the end will probably be its undoing.

 

The main former S&D route is over 100 miles long. Phase 1 of the proposed High Speed 2 line (London to Birmingham) will be a bit longer, at 140 miles, and is costed at £16 billion. Notwithstanding the fact that some of the S&D trackbed is still in place, and a 'New S&D' would be a much lower-tech railway than HS2, I think we'd still need more than half of the fingers of one hand to count the number of billions it would cost to rebuild throughout!

 

[quote="Stuart666, post: 588257, member: 8837" Its hard to believe the Waverley line is considered more commercially viable than a modern S and D would be. Most of it runs through the middle of nowhere, yet that's judged a case to help rural communities!.[/quote]

The Waverly route is being reopened as a commuter line into Edinburgh, much the same as the Valley lines into Cardiff are. If the trackbed was intact then as part of a Bristol/Bath metro the lines from Bristol to Bath GP (or prefereably a diversion into Bath Spa) and from Bath to Radstock and then back to Bristol via the north somerset line might be a runner. But the trackbed has been built on too much for it to be a goer now.

As to the rest of the S&D, most of the towns and villages it ran near are just too small and the freight for which most of it was built has long gone.

 

the problem with the S&D is and always was, it goes against the "grain" of transport requirements...noone really ever wanted to travel from Bath to Bournemouth but the line got built anyway in desperation really and its raison d'etre of invading GWR territory disappeared with Nationalisation. Other lines existed then (as they do now) on which you can do your journey without the necessity (glorious though it must have been) of double-heading nearly everything that moved in both directions. A short restored section which can demonstrate a little of what it was really like is all that is needed.

 

And at the lower end, the Bluebell extension - with significant volunteer input and without the need to pay compensation to any homeowners who had built houses on the land etc etc - cost a bargain basement £2m / mile, which is still putting a complete revival of the S&D into the multi hundred millions sort of category, even assuming you could find twenty times the volunteer input (pro-rata'd according to length) that we had over a period of nearly forty years!

So, assuming complete revival is cloud cuckoo land: can anyone answer my question from above to just give a run down of all the various groups who have schemes along different parts of the line. I've heard of Shillingstone, Midsomer Norton, Masbury etc, but it would be useful for someone to put them into context - what has been achieved, what the plans are, and who is related to whom!

Tom

 

Hi Guys, I think most of you have answered my main question, which was would it be viable? and having spent some time looking around the maps of the area they would need millions spent on it.

Sure I would like to see part of it reopened, but I think you need to do it in the same vain as the L&BR and that is to think about recreating an S&DJR train set from scratch which would include a steam loco and say four typical coaches, that alone could cost about £5 million to do.

Also one other problem which has been highlighted and that is the number of groups all doing there own bit. I think it would be better for everyone if there was just one main body (Charity) with all the other groups being part of that one group, also I thing there should also be only one operating body as well, so all the standards will be the same. I am not sure if it is to late to get all these groups around the table, but it may be worth having a go first of all.

 

ALONG THE OLD S&D ROUTE:
Standard gauge:
http://www.sdjr.co.uk/
http://www.shillingstone-railway-project.org.uk/
Narrow gauge:
http://www.glr-online.co.uk/
Non railway uses
http://www.twotunnels.org.uk/
http://www.colliersway.co.uk/
http://www.greenparkstation.com/

AWAY FROM THE OLD S&D ROUTE:
Washford station, West Somerset railway:
http://www.sdrt.org/

ON THE INTERNET:
http://www.somersetanddorsetrailway.co.uk/

 

Im surprised there has been no attempts to do anything on the Highbridge-Evercreech section. That was arguably one of the most iconic bits after the 'Branch Line' documentary, and from looking on Google Earth looks to be among the least built upon sections.

 

The Waverly route is being reopened as a commuter line into Edinburgh, much the same as the Valley lines into Cardiff are. If the trackbed was intact then as part of a Bristol/Bath metro the lines from Bristol to Bath GP (or prefereably a diversion into Bath Spa) and from Bath to Radstock and then back to Bristol via the north somerset line might be a runner. But the trackbed has been built on too much for it to be a goer now.

As to the rest of the S&D, most of the towns and villages it ran near are just too small and the freight for which most of it was built has long gone.[/quote]

Well as you say, the Waverley is slowly making a comeback, my point is that rural communities there Im guessing cannot be considerably larger than what the majority of the S and D now travels through. I guess the difference is in Scotland, they have an assembly that can push marginal cases like that, whereas we living in the West Country have to go cap in hand to Westminster for anything new.

Dont get me wrong, I think the Waverley route reopening is a great idea. Just that if you were going to decide it on the people who actually use it, im not sure it would have a massive case to prove it. It just illustrates that economic benefits to a community may be fargreater than the apparent fiscal return from the line would apparently demonstrate. We saw the reverse of this demonstrated time and again throughout the 1960s. But then this isnt the place for another Beeching debate...

Re freight, I agree entirely. I will say as others have pointed out, there is a demonstrated lack of North-South railways in the West country to carry container freight from the south coast. Im not sure a new S and D is the right solution to that problem, but my prefered choice of the DNSR or the MSWJR are even less likely for a resurrection....

 

you don't think the millions being spent at Reading might be partly due to easing the South to North container traffic?

 

It probably is, but we dont know how traffic is going to grow on the GWML when it electrifies, particularly when you take Crossrail being finished into account. Im sure they will fulfill required capacity, but if passenger numbers keep rising, for how long?

Thats not to suggest the S and D is the answer. But it does illustrate that having a line heading north through the west country to carry container traffic from the south cost is not all that bad an idea when considering future growth.

 

well there are a couple of alternatives....chief amongst them Salisbury, Westbury, Bath...an almost exact paralell to the S&D in fact. Improving an existing route would be cheaper than buildig what would be more or less a new line.

 

Yes, redoubling Melksham would be a good idea. I gather there has been recent talk of an enhanced service along that line, so perhaps there will be some track improvement at some stage.