West Somerset Railway General Discussion

How quickly we forget.

 

I met the GWSR Head of Drains & had a fascinating conversation, clearly its a far more important & complex issue than you might think

 

If you mean the Ex6+1 I entirely agree with you.

 

Drains and culverts are extreemly important. On the SVR they are inspected yearly and using a drain jetting lorry on a wellwagon are flushed through

 

Pardon my going slightly off topic but . . . .
. . . I work in IT and we often have outside consultants reviewing our systems and procedures etc. While there is a slight element of 'Don't mangement trust us to do our jobs properly?, this is more than offset by the occasions when a report fully agrees with things we have been saying for ages. It sometimes takes an external expert to add their weight to your arguments before an issue is given appropriate attention and any necessary resources (aka money!) allocated to the rectifying the issue(s). On balance we usually welcome such reviews.
And if they find something we had overlooked, then embarassing though that might be, it does enable us to do a better job in future.

 

Whilst I do agree, as someone who has also worked in IT Service Management for many years and has just retired, there is an added comment that I should wish to make whereby ; where an outside organisation are contracted at great expense to tell a business what they already knew, this can have a not-insignificant negative impact on the performance of the incumbent expertise within.

 

It may be that the auditors do not have faith in the internal view of the costs of restoring the WSR trackbed and track to the desired standard and, in order to break the impasse, the Board have decided to employ external professionals to come up with a cost estimate

 

Or, in the spirit of speculation, that the size of any writedowns of the value of the infrastructure (and which would hit both P&L and balance sheet) need a lot more time to work through and agree than would a "normal" set of accounts.

The point being not that you, I or anyone else are right, but that there may be very good practical reasons why the normal lead time for production of accounts is impractical.

 

..... as I discovered for myself at Goat Cutting, Beddgelert, in 1972, when the then abandoned formation proved to be a decidedly boggy thigh-deep ditch!

It isn't all about the glamour jobs like raking out ashpans and smokeboxes, oiling inaccessible inside motions and most important of all, ensuring the workshop doesn't run out of tea bags, is it?

 

Maybe engineering or infrastructure consultants are different by my experience of outside consultants (Supply Chain, Marketing, Component Overhaul) was to agree that very little if anything you currently did was good enough and hence justify their suggestions and fee.

 

An example of that was when we had an inspection at Rolls-Royce of an engineering department. We were confident that all was well and were surprised when the group of inspectors found a problem. They had discovered a can of 3 in 1 oil that was out of date (what?). It transpired that the date on the can was when the oil was produced. The embarrassed group departed rather quickly. <BJ>

 

To ask a silly question?
Several years ago, at considerable expense and disruption to services, the loop at Williton was extended. The reason given was to allow trains to use the whole Up platform. Having traveled from and back to Williton today I noticed that the up trains still stop way back from the end of the platform, where they always did! The last 2 or so carriages off the end of the platform! Progress? Can anyone explain WHY?

 

If the UP train arrives first and there is going to be a while before the DOWN comes in, it has to wait behind the footbridge so as the crossing is free to road traffic. When trains arrive within a few minutes of each other then the the full length of the platforms can be used.
Prior to all the work being done only one train at a time could be allowed into the station, with the new layout both trains can come in at the same time that way train arrival and departures can be completed much more swiftly.

 

Memories of many happy (?) days fighting my way through the ditches, brambles and nettles on the low side of the railway listening for the sound of merrily trickling water, (usually in the biggest clump of brambles), pulling the undergrowth away and saying to myself "There's another one that's not on the plans then" Such fun.

 

My point is , why cannot the engine pull forward to the end of the platform as it does at Blue Anchor? Why wait behind the footbridge? I understand about not fouling the road crossing.

 

For the up train to run in without the gates being shut the signal has to be back where it is behind the footbridge.

Robin

 

Is that just a question of sighting, or something else? It seems an odd constraint.

 

Keith, the issue is with the locking of the crossing by the trackcircuit between the footbridge and the crossing. At Blue Anchor the down signal, BA3, is only 4 feet from the crossing that it protects. At Williton the protecting signal for the crossing is WN4 i.e. the one by the footbridge. The up starter WN5 is the Taunton side of the crossing, in front of the road bridge and is there to protect the points onto the single line.
This whole scenario only happens occasionally as most of the time the down train comes in first. Also it's further for the signalman to walk, so we try not to use this procedure unless it's absolutely necessary.

 

No. For the up train to be able to run in without the gates open if it runs in first, the protecting signal has to be sufficiently back from the crossing that if the train overran the signal 'a bit' it would not end up on the crossing.

Robin

 

I'm even more confused, then. Taking that at face value, how does it square with the layout at Blue Anchor, where there is a significantly smaller "bit" for an overrun, and to what I'd have thought was a riskier crossing.

Please be kind to this non-expert in signalling design and rules!