West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I have seen no evidence on this thread that Sidmouth or anyone else is trashing the railway or has any intention of doing so. Quite a few of us, however, are inclined to trash the current management of the railway for their succession of actions that have been not only reprehensible in themselves but also bad for the railway.

 

There is a station shop at Watchet. It’s not over large so may be Covid restricted. We don’t yet have a final date for Minehead. There will be a full summary of where we are with the crossing in the next issue of the newsletter due out next week. The information was given to staff, volunteers and shareholders who were on the zoom meeting yesterday evening.

 

I think you might find Watchet has changed over the intervening years. I spent some time in Swanage “some years back” and I wasn’t impressed. But it’s really attractive now. Times change.

 

Meanwhile, large Prairie tank 5199 is inside the paint shop at MD being rubbed down for a contracted repaint to GWR Green.

 

To be fair I'd say it's good manners to inform volunteers on something like that before the general public. Personally for that sort of thing I'd tend to view armchair shareholders as members of the public rather than lumped in with volunteers though as volunteers can be subject to their rulebook in terms of not spilling the beans (in theory, doesn't often work on the WSR). Certainly my general rule of thumb on NatPres is I don't post information contained in volunteer announcements, but if it's stuff in a membership letter I will.

 

As someone messaged "autocorrect has become my own worst enema"

 

Yes.

And I hear there's a special place in Hull reserved for the inventor of autocorrect...

 

Indeed, and we've been told to look at the newsletter due out next week. Personally I think that's a satisfactory state of affairs. It does sometimes feel like there has been so much to legitimately criticise the WSR on over the last several years that we're incapable of impartially assessing whether a thing is actually worthy of criticism. And all that does is further the image of NatPres in certain WSR quarters that we moan at everything, and thus there's no need to pay attention to anything said on here, which would be a mistake.

 

Because the date is determined not by us, but by the delivery date of certain key parts, and by the date our main contractors can complete the job. We can guess, but that would be irresponsible - when we have a date we'll release it. If you go and look at the site you will see that the substrate is not actually salt marshland. And in any case the contractors laying the concrete have years of experience of doing just that including a few yards away. The design of the base was undertaken by a specialist who designs many hundreds of REB bases for Network Rail and the concrete has been laid following a ground survey which has gone down to 30 metres.

 

I appreciate that you are trying to pursue a narrative about perceived mis-management but I can assure you that no date was given yesterday. For information I spoke on this topic and I am the director with overall responsibility for this project. If others have chosen to interpret what I said as a date, that was not my intention. It is highly unlikely that the crossing will be complete before mid September, but we would all be delighted if it was. But nobody should interpret that comment as a date because we simply don’t know the date.

 

I assume the RTC special will be flagged at Seaward Way Crossing as a 'one off' to allow it to reach Minehead station?

 

You get credit for being willing to be frank and open about the timing of the crossing completion. It's unfortunate that it's likely to be then, but, 'it is what it is'.

I expect most of us take your point about how with all the various players involved (suppliers, contractors, etc) you can't put forward a date with a good certainty of being able to make it, so you all feel it's better not to make a prediction, the likely accuracy of which you cannot assess well. Any information you can provide, as the future comes to pass, will be very welcome though.

Noel

 

I’m not sure he had much choice in that. Very much his parents’ decision.



Simon

 

They do!