Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Thanks for clarification.

 

The viaduct at Chelfham is owned by the successor to the BRB, whatever that is called now. I suppose it might be an arguable case that as the land-owner is the current successor to the original railway then they might still have a right to run trains across it, and could then delegate the operation of such trains to the L&BR, but that would seem doubtful. Of greater concern with be the fact that the current 'BRB' probably would require the L&BR to take over ownership of the viaduct first, after which of course the L&BR would have the ongoing - and potentially very expensive - costs of maintaining it, hence no desire to get to that stage until the actually need it in order to run trains to/from Barnstaple.

There might be some scope for short demo runs northwards from the station, but then one has to to think of the practical issues of where and how the loco and stock will be stored and maintained, coaled, watered etc. In short, would the benefits outweigh the costs and effort involved?

 

I was thinking along the lines of a small Wren loco like at Kew museum. A small Wren sized loco could travel on a small lorry with a ramp?. There is also the Lorna Doone Wren (currently in Derbyshire) which has Devon connections and has visted before. Running at say Chelfham or Snapper on special days could generate good publicity and funds for the L and B? But understand the current emphasis should be on the Wistlandpound extension.

 

When the Puffing Billy Railway in Australia were building their extension they laid some track at the terminus they were building towards and took a small Peckett engine and coach there every weekend to give rides - it gave them a presence there and generated useful funds.

 

I would suggest that any sort of 'gala day' at Chelfham or Snapper might well cause traffic problems etc with all the visitors.

 

Some detail about the Chelfham Viaduct:
http://engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=126

 

It could be phased hourly across the day with pre booking?

 

Chelfham, possibly. I'd not want to park my car on the road at Snapper.

 

Agreed! Just getting in/out of that tiny 1-car lay-by near the Halt is a nightmare :--(

I suppose it might be possible to borrow/hire a nearby field for the day, but to be honest I'm not sure that it would be worthwhile.

 

I ducked the challenge... As they're so close, my own thought would be to run a minibus from Chelfham for such an event, but I'm not sure how much value it would get. When I do my annual trips down, driving the trackbed above Bratton is far more satisfying!

 

we actually have more parking space at the Snapper stretch than there is at Chelfam Station

 

Wow!

 

From the L&B website:

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE JUNE 28th

We are currently working through the details of reopening the railway and hope to make an announcement regarding potential services for 2020 before too long.

 

Following a second offer from another potential buyer, the station was taken off the market and shown as "SSTC" on the Stags website. The fundraising was subsequently halted, but I notice today that SSTC has disappeared from the sale page at https://www.stags.co.uk/properties/12843867/sales and the Justgiving page is once again accepting donations, so all is apparently not yet lost. EA, via their "Friends of BFS" Facebook page, have posted "A more positive development concerning the station is currently ongoing. We hope to make an announcement on the next steps within a few days.!!" Fingers crossed

 

My understanding is there are several ways forward now, and we need to wait a few days to see what the fundraising team decide is the best route to the goal of acquiring the station!

 

Fingers crossed, it is really good to see the progress of the "New" L & B.

 

I've contributed to the Friends group, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed as Bratton has always been a favourite station of mine. But I do feel that EA could probably do with improving the coordination of their appeal. EA's own website hasn't been updated in nearly a month, and seems to be playing second-fiddle to a Facebook page, which a lot of people aren't going to see, while the website doesn't include a downloadable Friends form and the JustGiving link isn't pinned on the Facebook page. I realise that much will have been going on in the background, and things won't have been helped by the previous offer coming immediately after the Heritage Railway article, but as I mentioned to the appeal's coordinator at the beginning, as soon as you start making people search for things, you start losing potential donations.

I do hope that this will be a case of third time lucky.

 

You are right, but in mitigation I would say that EA and the BF appeal is just a handful of guys trying to swing this, so bear with them. I think they are also looking for an extra director, due to retirement. It's not a big company at all, just some great people who, rather than regret that all the land was sold 80 years ago, decided to get up and actually do something about it.

They deserve our help to back them.

 

Oh I realise it's a small setup, I actually knew two or three of the directors in passing a good few years back. The thing is, when your resources are limited, you really want to make sure that the minimum amount of effort results in the maximum impact. I'm not trying to downplay the success of the appeal, which has done really well, and it may be the only occasion where they have to raise such a large sum in a short period of time. But when all's said and done, I think they would benefit from having a review of things once the dust has settled. Nothing fancy, just a good old fashioned SWOT analysis round a pint, maybe in Bratton Fleming station garden...

...socially distanced of course.

Anyway, lets see what the next few days bring.

 

The Justgiving total is now well over £8,000 with over 200 donors.....That is in addition to the Friends fundraising.