SVR General Discussion

Don’t get me started on this. It’s not a great choice at all, and I don’t feel is representative of the heritage railway we are.

 

Rain in the W Midlands has been very patchy - a few heavy downpours of short durations in Worcester (15 miles from Kiddy) and some more prolonged light stuff but nothing that has changed the ground conditions in any meaningful way.

 

Are there any photographs of the completed bridge repair out there? Plenty of the completed track, and a fair few of the job half done, but with a quick search I've found none showing the actual bridge arch completed.

 

The face of the arch and the stonework is still on going

 

Its not too late to alter it.

 

If only you knew how many times I’ve tried this week to put the view accros that we should

 

Timelapse of track laying here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c80pz0prvl3o

 

Deleted

 

Deleted

 

Wouldn't be surprised, though can't see how you stop access to the stations on the weekend with a public running day.

 

They could stop people turning up at the station who just want to take a photo. Make access to the platform only for those who have purchased a ticket (either a ticket to travel or a platform ticket). At least that way the line will get some income from families who turn up to just to take a photo.

 

Well done for illustrating that where there's a will there's a way! I can think of at least one other heritage railway that could usefully adopt such an attitude!

 

It could be done by holding people outside the station until the FS service has passed. May need to fiddle with the timetable but other lines have had station restrictions from memory either a high priced platform ticket or at Swanage only being able to access the platform with an FS ticket at that time, plus screens to stop station "freeloaders".
Depends how many you think will turn up just to look and how you plan to control them in this sue anybody world we now live in.

 

Said no one ever !!

 

Good luck with that at Arley, given the layout!

In any case, I'm generally of the opinion that complaining too much about "freeloaders" is likely to be counter productive. Restricting access on the most crowded days for safety reasons, no issue with that. But so much of the SVR is visible from rights of way anyway (more than at some other lines) that it all seems a bit pointless, especially as making families disappointed and annoyed at the railway seems a bad idea if that's the market you're trying to attract more of in terms of future business...

 

Maybe it about practical logistics and need to have more volunteers available to manage potential increase in numbers, if you cant get more volunteers on the day what option do you have but to restrict access. If you have an incident ORR will react and if you haven't had enough people to manage the station then there will be consequences. Observers outside the railway boundary are a different matter.

 

While you're all trying to spoil the enjoyment of everybody who wants a mere glimpse of Flying Scotsman steaming past, I'll just mention that I have two abiding memories of steam trains from when I was a kid - one is of my Dad lifting me up to see over the bridge at Loughborough Central (I think the loco was an 0-6-0ST of some sort) and the other, much clearer memory, is of Flying Scotsman on the demonstration line at Steamtown. The latter is the first steam-hauled train I can remember going on - I was about three years old - and is probably the thing which fired a life-long interest in railways, more than anything else, leading ultimately to a career in the industry and many thousands of hours spent volunteering in various capacities. So while you're talking about keeping the riff-raff out, just ask yourselves whether you're also potentially cutting off the supply of young engineers and/or heritage railway volunteers in 15 years time.

I get that there are crowd control issues... but talk about freeloading? Seriously?

 

Is fire risk really that much of an issue on a pretty flat line? Unless its coming out of the ashpan for which a diesel assisting wont make a difference?