West Somerset Railway General Discussion

We have seen an occasional sheep at Stogumber...

 

It does take a bit of doing to balance your coffee cup on them...

Robin

 

Wasn't there an idea to park a cattle wagon there?
Would a Lowmac up against the buffer-stop enhance the interpretation without getting in the way?

 

Cows? Not a chance. It’s a Heritage Railway. There’s no way the preservationists would ever agree to which breed of cow has the correct livery to occupy a cattle dock on a Great Western branch line.

 

Depends on the era. Stogumber cattle dock was built around 1895, IIRC.

Robin

 

Could do a ‘Milton Keynes’. Buy some concrete ones and paint them Brunswick Green.

 

On a purely practical note, if you use a cattle dock for sheep then hurdles would be needed to stop them climbing through the simple railings. Sheep will find a way through any simple railed fencing, resulting in the scenes as posted by Robin in the past of sheep being pursued along the line by trains.

 

Talking of liveries, the Quantock Belle is expected to re-enter traffic on 22nd March wearing a fresh coat of Crimson Lake. I'm rather hoping the 'Disney' carriage names will be removed in favour of BR roundels and authentic Restaurant Car lettering, but that remains to be seen. The carriage names are no longer used for ticketing or promotional purposes, so there is an opportunity to turn the vehicles out in a genuine heritage livery. This would be in keeping with carriage owner WSRA's stated heritage aims, although the plc have freedom to choose the rake's livery under the terms of their operating agreement with WSRA.

Tentative plans exist to celebrate 40 years of dining train operation on the Whizzer, hopefully with a special train. It would be nice to see that significant milestone celebrated on QB publicity material this year, including perhaps the on-train menu cards.

The first WSR dining train ran at Easter 1980, the Exmoor Pullman using Met Camm Pullmans. This morphed into the Quantock Pullman, until the current BR Mk1 rake replaced the Met Camms a few years later.

http://cgibin.wsr.org.uk/cgi-bin/snap.cgi?h=Snapshot&p=2019/02/248

http://cgibin.wsr.org.uk/cgi-bin/snap.cgi?h=Snapshot&p=2019/02/241

http://cgibin.wsr.org.uk/cgi-bin/snap.cgi?h=Snapshot&p=2019/02/249

 

We could start doing kebabs at the station.......

 

Hmmm, paneer kebabs would be nice - even if made from sheep rather than goat milk

 

Ah aforementioned 1990s track at the cattle dock, sans coaches. How long before someone comes up with the idea of reinstating the stone loading siding at Crowcombe (again) !

 

They could always ask the IWSR for advice (I hear they know a bit about cowes)

 

Presumably cooked in the firebox of a GWR 0-6-0 tank engine

 

Although an Arts Council Accredited Museum, the IOWSR would not claim any expertise on G.W.R. matters!

 

Very funny, silly but funny.

 

Brown & white, of course.
Where do you think chocolate milk comes from?

 

Anybody visiting this thread hoping to read about WSR Operations is going to be very disappointed.
(Apart from Barries contribution).

 

Nothing new there. About 95% of the posts on this thread have nothing to do with WSR operations.

 

OK
Let's moooooove along.