What's your dream obscure railway restoration project?

Paul,

You really do need to look at the title of the thread.
This is a fantasy thread - no one is saying any of these lines should or could be rebuilt. You need to stop being so dogmatic about every thread on NP. Not everything on here needs to be based in (your) reality. We are allowed to dream sometimes.


Keith

 

i think he has selective hearing, and reading, my point, that he did not answer was that at one time the IOWSRwas a wouldnt it be nice dream, luckily it became reality and has blossomed to become one of the best preserved railways in the south east, that can only get better, someone once looked at a closed railway site, and thought can we do it? someone then looked at a derilict loco, either in a scrap yard or a collery etc, and thought can we do it, now several years on that site is now Swanage, or any other preserved railway station, who would have thought that about 50 years after the last steam engine dropped its last fire on BR, that if you want to you can go to a railway almost anywhere in the country and experience working steam
rant over, lets get back to day dreaming

 

The stage for dreaming is long past.The IOWSR started by owning very little. It now owns everything but it has taken forty years or so. Other places need similar consolidation not more dreams (or internecine disputes such as we have witnessed).

PH

 

I do like Paulhitch's post above, as I cannot argue against the need for consolidation (at least in some areas) and certainly not against the need to stop internecine disputes within heritage railways (one in the West Country springs to mind). However, I would liken our man from Hayling Island to that trusted servant who stood just behind the Emperor on his chariot on each of his triumphant entries into Rome after yet another conquest and, just above the adulation of the crowd, constantly uttered into the Emperor's ear, "Remember you are only mortal."

 

Meanwhile, and to the original point of the thread, my dream project would be the full restoration of the West Somerset Mineral Railway.

 

Just interested, but was the cutting about 1/2 mile west of Shanklin completely dug out or was it part of a chine, as it is a massive opening.

 

I am fairly sure that it is a man made cutting, it is mighty deep in places!

 

Thanks for that, maybe they shifted the soil further down towards Wroxall for that big (and wide) embankment. I walk this bit fairly regularly and am always in awe of the amount of earthworks that were carried out for the formation, when seen from close up, and this was all done with spade and barrow I assume, phew!!

 

The Haytor Granite Railway. Still lots of granite up there for the sets.track guides. Besides Dartmoor is a popular visiting place, it could work, imagine tourists in the tumbrils being hauled up and down from Hay Tor.

 

The Princetown Branch.....reopen the Prison as a new Big Brother/reality show.....Escape From Dartmoor, get the contestants to pretend to be prisoners and they re lay the track back down to............Oh dear I better go take my tablets.........

Nick

 

I've just found this one, which seems to be sufficiently obscure not to have been mentioned so far on this thread (as far as I can see).
Van Railway - Wikipedia

 

For me it is still the same two I posted early in the thread - the Scarborough & Whitby, and the Manifold Valley. Not a cat in hell's chance of either, for all sorts of practical reasons, but what a pair of lines they would be if provided with the right rolling stock - e.g. NER/LNER coaches and locos for the S & W, not MK 1s!

 

The missing part of the Callander and Oban, having stabilised the rockfalls of course My ultimate would be blasting up to Glenoglehead behind a Black 5 in a LMS 12-wheel diner!

Dave

 

Budleigh saltertons to newton pople ford would make an excellent steam railway from a new station at the big car park it could be narrow gauge but would make good competition against seaton tramways as this would be a proper railway by the river

 

Likewise the Mawddwy Railway, the scenery looks better too.
Mawddwy Railway - Wikipedia

 

Dolgellau - Morfa Mawddach (Dolgelley - Barmouth Junction in English) with running rights into Barmouth, using 'Manors' , 63xx and panniers.
Scenery is unbeatable.

Bob.

 

Lyme regis branch, impossible but it'd make a nice challenging line.

 

Small world. Found this (along with many other disused lines) a few weeks back. Google Earth does some strange things to rail formations ... especially viaducts! Clip totals 4'33":

 

I do like these threads, an unadulterated celebration of turbo charged WIBN!!

Sent from my moto g(8) power using Tapatalk

 

Kingsbridge branch from South Brent. Operating as it was, a classic GWR branch line with lovely scenery and easy access from Kingsbridge on into Salcombe.