Swanage Railway General Discussion

Indeed it is. Perhaps John was thinking of the Cowes floating bridge, which is almost new but has had endless problems.

Good to see 1346 returning from Rampart. I believe the internal restoration of 1381 is almost complete, and the team will then start work on the interior of 1346.

 

Like the ferry itself. Getting your keel mixed up in those chains doesn't bear thinking about.

 

Although its never the ferry's fault just put 'Bramble Bush Bay' into the MAIB Accident Report site.....................

 

There are images on the Llangollen Unofficial Facebook group of the Swanage 108 unit arriving on that railway. One of the most pressing issues for the Swanage Railway must now be the provision of a carriage shed. Are there any images of the completed interior of the Maunsell Coach?

 

The carriage shed is just as important as the engine shed, if not more so in some regards. As carriages are the main item of rolling stock the public have most contact with. This is the sort of project that any windfall profit from the visit of Flying Scotsman' visit could be used for.....

 

The Swanage railway has been saying for some years that a carriage shed is high priority, but little progress seems to have been made.

Has the Herston carriage shed idea been abandoned, and have any other suitable sites been identified?

 

One of the Herston sidings has recently been extended to accommodate more stock but I think the carriage shed idea has been dropped.

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If only life was so easy. There is just a couple of minor issues to be resolved first like a) finding a suitable site and b) obtaining planning permission. Without these no amount of money will produce the necessary shed.

Peter

 

I thought that I heard an idea of using Furzebrook gas terminal sidings as the carriage workshop with some under cover storage accomodation.

Cheers, Neil

 

And without the money how do you propose to acquire the land, planning permission and materials for any shed? As my third sentence which you chose to ignore suggested any windfall profit from the Flying Scotsman visit could be used to at the very minimum "pump prime" any such funding.....

 

Yes that’s the ideal solution, it even has track already in place. The problem is it’s a SSSI. When originally built by BP, one of the planning conditions was that the land be returned to its original state when no longer required.

I believe DCC understand the need for the SR to have better facilities, in particular for Wareham services. So hopefully a solution can be found.

 

Its also rather remote..................

 

That original planning permission was superseded last year by a new permission granting perminant permission for the sidings for rail use and placing an obligation on perenco to lease them to DCC who will in turn lease them to the SR.

Unfortunately the lease is taking a rather long time to negotiate not helped by the merger of DCC (county council
) with two of the district councils which seems to have bought local government to a complete standstill. Perenco also are to busy with their oil business to waste time dealing with heritage railways. The whole thing always seems to be so close but yet just out of reach.

And without it’s own road access.

 

Another point might be that Perenco's offices are adjacent to these sidings and they might consider having an active working siding is not conducive to efficient administration work. Perenco owe their staff a duty of care at all times.
Storage with occasional movements might be OK but as for having any form of workshop facility might be a step too far.
There are other aspects involved as one might expect.

 

Haven't looked but suspect 1346 has been overhauled externally by Rampart.
Interior works to be undertaken by C&W volunteers as is happening on 1381.

 

Here is a picture of 1346 in Corfe Castle up platform last week after it had been delivered to the railway on 1st Feb, as Buzby noted the interior is non-existent at the moment.

 

Nice picture Bryan.

 

FS tickets update after around three weeks on sale:
Observation Car 14 - Apparently only 2 seats left [1 on 23rd and 1 on 25th]
Rest of the train [5 TSOs and BSO (microbuffet)] - Over 53% of tickets sold with around 6 weeks to go.
During the past seven days the Railway's website was down for a couple of them which hasn't helped I suspect. Don't know reason for this problem.

 

The railway has confirmed that FS will be smokebox first into Swanage, tender first to Norden.
This is the reverse of its previous visit.

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Awesome. Will make a better photo with Corfe Castle in background.