Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Just imagine the amount of verbiage that would be required for the whole line!

 

Thanks for that.

 

CFL is adjacent Haddon Hall and KL is not. KL is a different location and was constructed on land adjacent (mostly) to the line of the original railway. CFL is on the original track alignment but requires significant civil engineering that will need unwinding before any further expansion. The buffer stop will be something like 12ft above current ground level, which is certainly significant. We shall have to wait and see what the committee makes of the proposal, but the officer’s comments seem pretty reasonable to me. That is not to say that mightn’t be mitigated or that the committee has to follow the advice.

 

As Tobbes puts it, we all need to sit down and work out a business plan. For what it is worth, one thing the Trust could do would be to raise money to buy the sections of track bed currently on the market.. The more trackbed we can own, the better our chances of getting this railway built.

 

Likewise, the officer's comments seemed reasonable to me - "harm" was identified, and the officer assessing that "harm" couldn't compare it to the corresponding advantages.

To me, the comments strike to the heart of the questions about the CFL extension - it isn't straightforward reinstatement, but nor is it obviously a jumping off point for a future extension. That raises all the obvious questions about the value of the extension, but also hints at "just" CFL being too small scale to trigger the wider advantages.

It will be interesting to see how the committee assess the application, on site visit and in committee. That's both from an L&B perspective, and also from a national planning policy perspective - the very restrictive policies with implied presumption against change are at odds with the stated direction of government policy to enable change.

 

My feeling is that, as reinstatement of the L&BR is part of the relevant Plans for both the ENPA and NDC, then the presumption should be in favour unless there are over-riding objections and ones which are long-term and not simply about a short-term issue (eg CFL will be removed as/when we extend to PE (and beyond), so its potential offensive visibility will be short-lived.

Reinstatement of the L&BR is in the relevant Plans of both the ENPA and NDC. IMHO it is self-evident, if you go to WB during the summer, that the railway brings in visitors to North Devon. ND is an area heavily dependant on tourism, so why put 'minor' obstacles in the way of something which helps towards that end.

I'm not familiar with the immediate environs of Heddon Hall, so perhaps someone can explain to me how the railway can be seen to harm a kitchen garden wall? I am reminded of a local example where a traffic bottle-neck has persisted for many years on a major road simply because it is not permitted to demolish a stretch of roadside wall, which was 'listed' years ago as being the last surviving remnant of the city gasworks! Meanwhile all the 'industrial heritage' of the gasworks has been swept away to build houses, which generate yet more traffic to add to the problem, and ironically the last remaining railway link to it is being demolished even as I write rather than be converted into a much-needed cross-river cycle/foot path as originally proposed.

 

@RailWest @35B and @21B are on the money here, I think. The recommendation is (very!) carefully written, and crucially argues that in coming to the recommendation to reject the application, they had considered all of the relevant policy, including the railway reinstatement (this is what I think RT-S2 of the Local Plan refers to). It isn't saying that there are no benefits from the railway, but that these don't outweigh the costs.

So the presumption may be in favour of the reinstatement of the whole railway, but that shouldn't trump any costs of a particular scheme.

 

@35B has it I think. The benefit of this particular scheme was not in the officer’s view sufficient to overcome the objections.

I agree that planning is overly restrictive, but in the context of a National Park that is to be expected and indeed is clearly the will of parliament in the manner in which they are set up. Whilst elsewhere I think the balance should shift towards a greater presumption to allow development unless there are good reasons not to do so, the opposite should probably continue to apply in National Parks?

I am afraid that I have never been able to see this particular scheme of extension as a stepping stone toward a longer railway. My fear is that if built, it will be the sum total of the railway, for at least a generation if not longer. It is a very expensive scheme for so little gain.

 

I can understand that, but...... if one can argue that the reinstatement of the whole railway is beneficial to North Devon and should be supported (if not, why is it a policy in the Local Pan?), then could not the railway in turn argue that - as a infrastructure project that will be implemented in stages over many years - why put the success of the overall project at risk by allowing one of the intermediate stages to be obstructed on the basis of an alleged 'harm' that will only last for a time before being removed at a future stage?

Imagine that there is a viable project to (say) extend the existing railway from Barnstaple (Junction) to Torrington, but it will be done in two stages, the first of which will be to a temporary terminus at Bideford. Assuming that it is widely accepted that the end-result will result in a reduction in road traffic and increased rail facilities between Exeter and Barnstaple, would people be happy for the whole idea to become a non-starter simply because there are some residents at Bideford who would object to the fact that - for an interim period of a few years - trains would stop there and run-round, rather than simply run-through?

 

That argument has merit but I think the problem is that this isn’t a stage en route to a greater scheme - because much of what is proposed to be built will (AIUI) need to be removed to progress a future scheme.

For this to be considered part of a bigger long-term scheme, you would, as far as possible, stick to the correct levels and not build facilities that in future would need to be removed.

Had the scheme been in essence a long siding, with no run round, no station and propelling in one direction (or top and tail operation), I think it would be much easier to make the claim that this was a stage of a bigger scheme. As things stand, if I lived nearby, I’d see this as a big and possibly disruptive construction project to be followed some years later by another project to undo the first.

Tom

 

True. Of course, the challenge that then follows is that both railway and opponents are caught in a bind - a short extension that is not a springboard to a future stage becomes both harder to justify (for the railway) and easier to oppose (for opponents).

 

Spot on Tom.

Indeed back in 2004/05 when the L&BR commenced train operation from the newly restored Woody Bay station as far as Bridge 67, that was exactly how trains operated for about 12 months prior to the opening of the further extension to Killington Lane.

And of course was also how the Bluebell Railway operated public trains from Horsted Keynes as far as the tunnel during the northerly extension towards Kingscote, and from East Grinstead south towards Imberhorne Waste Tip, as well as in the other direction from Kingscote going north to the other end of Imberhorne Waste Tip. Okay all these Bluebell trains ran on specified days only, but all carried fare paying passengers.

 

The second problem is that that Trust appear to have been trying to argue that this was the permanent extent of the railway - to avoid arguments that this was salami-slicing to get to their obvious goal of Blackmoor Gate and beyond, having lost the PP to do so, and having the ignominous and expensive s73 fiasco pulled to avoid a rejection of a Parracombe-only scheme - whereby the differential levels would matter less because they'd never be undone, whilst at the same time as stressing it was temporary - and therefore the debatable lack of access at Cricket Field Lane wasn't a permanent problem.

Oddly enough, this nonsense isn't very compelling.

In my view the whole idea was misconceived - the thick end of £2m for an extension to nowhere in particular that would allow no more trains to run, but would cost more to operate, and that would have to be closed and dug out if you ever got to extend towards Parracombe (or indeed, north from Parracombe). And that's assuming that the cutting for a single line could be broadened to take two tracks, a subject on which those with more expertise than me are not agreed.

Other than that, I'm sure it's an absolutely excellent idea!

 

Quite.

There's a bit of me that thinks that "extension" doesn't have to be synonymous with "ends with a station where you can alight" and nor does it have to be synonymous with "in operation every day". So a line to a dead end operated on high days and holidays might be a better option if it were to prove less contentious, and avoided expensive rework as further track was laid. The Bluebell extension to the south end of Imberhorne tip, ca. 2010, might be a possible model to look at.

Tom

 

Tom. The only trouble with that is this: once the line goes back towards CFL in the cutting and under the bridge, we lose Killington Lane as an end-of-line station, so it has to be an all-or-nothing extension. Of course, the FR used to be like that at Dduallt for ages until the loop had been built.

I am slowly coming around to the idea of seeking a light railway order with compulsory purchase powers (if that is the correct term this day and age) and all that goes with it. I know it has been explained to me that this is something ENPA does not want to see happen, but if in the long term it is going to be cheaper, then it has to be something to be added into the pot