Midsomer Norton road bridge.

Now look out possibly next Month for the next engine arriving in the down platform at Midsomer Norton (Doug Hill)

 

Midsomer Norton and the two DMU vehicles have been added onto The Railcar Association's site: Midsomer Norton

If anyone from MSN who has recently been training up or working on the DMU is reading this then you're free to come an introduce yourselves at our convention at the Great Central in September 2012

 

Doug knowing your conections , make sure its not a Swindon Engine (Sorry GWR), Standards accepted ,they are , very non prefered on this route !!
Only LMS or Southern !!

 

Please Andy do not mention G or W or R or at least whisper it. or i might not get my S & D passport signed. It has been very difficult getting through the Chilcompton check point on ever visit that i make without a passport.

 

A quick video to show the DMU in passenger service:
Midsomer Norton - DMU departs on Santa special - YouTube

More news:
Somerset & Dorset Railway - Wall | Facebook

 

Hi, we visited midsomer norton station today and whilst there i stood and looked across the road and wondered how it would be best to cross it. An idea i had was to not lower the road and services but to move the road alignment further over to where the embankment is higher. There is room for this and would maybe be a less costly answer. Firstly the traffic can still use the original road while most of alterations are made. Secondly the oringinal road could later be used by cyclists/motorcyclists at this point. the new bridge being twin arch. If you stand by the station looking down towards radstock as the traffic come up the hill the road curves to thier right, If the road followed a straight course from that point it would head slightly away from the station towards a higher part of embankment. Once the road had cleared the railway it could then swing back on it's original route. This would mean because there are no services to worry about the road could effectivley go lower as it passed under the railway. But because the embankment is higher this may not be a worry. Just an idea what do you think?

 

Hi, I've been interested to read this thread. I live in Bath, close to the linear park and I've visited a lot of the sites mentioned. Having driven through Bath/Peasedown/Radstock/Midsomer Norton traffic on many occasions I have wistfully thought of what a difference the railways would make if they still existed.

But, they don't.

Starting from Bath:

The idea you could connect to the great western at Oldfield Park is an absolute fiction, the connection would have to be steeply graded on a sharp curve from an electrified main line. The road bridge is so close that in fact the curvature is probably not possible (Bellotts Road). If it were possible then terminating at the waste depot etc - also not going to happen, with the frequency of services on that line there is no chance of threading in an entirely new timetabled service between the Bath-Bristol services.

So, a new station terminus in Oldfield Park? Nope, also unrealistic as the whole thing is on a gradient that prohibits a station.

Then of course you have the issue of the cycle path. This could probably be squeezed alongside on widened embankments, bridges etc if the government decides they want to spend millions. But the tunnels will be a bit tricky. I know the 'new S&D' believe that eventually road transport will become impractical and so rail will be allowed to take over from the cycle path. But as most people on here have acknowledged there is no way any authority is going to let you remove one form of sustainable transport (cycling) in order to realise a pipe-dream.

Radstock - totally redeveloped up to the road crossing and again, that will never be reinstated as the disruption it would cause would make life worse for the town's residents, not better. Restoring the link to Frome though is completely achievable for not a great amount of money and would have significant benefits for the town.

So I hope the New S&D get real in their aims - restoring Midford and Spetisbury are worthy projects, but at best they are going to be exhibitions of what was and not starting points for a revived route. Midsomer Norton may be 'locked-in' at present, but in the future with sufficient support from members, visitors and authorities I can see a Chilcompton - Radstock route being possible, Silver Street is the biggest problem (and would be complex to achieve in terms of temporary arrangements while any work took place).

I wasn't born when the S&D closed, I wish I could've seen it in action, but it's gone. The ill-conceived aims of groups like the New S&D can have a negative impact on the perception of heritage/commuter railway schemes by the public and local authorities. Good luck to all the people working to rebuild and restore though.

 

I should have thought sharing a cycle path with a low intensity rail service would be a very small problem. At pinch points, such as a tunnel,you could simply have the equivalent of a (long thin) level crossing to resolve conflicts . Rail shares roads without difficulty all over the world...search youtube and you will find main line freights and express passenger trains running on city streets....in the third world? nope, common in the USA!

 

Good point. However, if the service is low-intensity then what road problems is it going to alleviate? Also, if the company uses steam traction (as it proposes) then smoke in the tunnels is going to be an issue - as it was in S&D days.

Also, even if the tunnels could be operated in the manner you suggest, it doesn't solve the other problem of no station in Bath!

All the best.

 

good points of course. i don't think you will ever make much difference to traffic with a railway line unless it is a very high frequency service and I doubt there is enough traffic available for this however bad r the traffic problems may seem. The reason for this is that very little of that traffic will actually be going to the vicinity of a hypothetical railway station whereas every single one of those cars is going to exactly where their drivers want to be. I guess thats why the line shut in the first place!

 

Great to see work progressing at Midsomer Norton, absolutely beautiful site and a very worthy cause too

 

Realistidealist you're getting your projects confused here! The MSN project is focusing on rebuilding the S&D from MSN station towards the twin tunnel at Chilcompton at which point a halt will be built. The plan being to run regular trains on this section and increasing the profile of the heritage trust. The long term aims are to progress further south towards Chilcompton or north towards Radstock but both are recognized as requiring large sums of funding. I suggest you read the MSN website and Facebook site to see the excellent progress that they are making.

'The New S&D' is a completely separate scheme and has been born out of one persons own opinions and should ot be confused with the S&D or Shillingstone projects, they are not related.

Kind Regards

Paul

 

We visited Spetisbury yesterday and i have to say Dean and his team are going great guns. His attitude towards what they hope to achieve is very realistic and he has a good relationship with the local council and local people. His vision on how he see's Spetisbury is very real and given the way they achieve what they do in a short time i'm sure this will be realised inthe coming year or so. Not wishing to get into an arguement though about the new s&d, i simply can not see the justification for re'instating the whole line inc branchlines. The peak oil argument is tedious and of what benefit the S&D would be i do not know. Can anyone give a plausable reason? I say good luck to the individual groups who are doing great work in preserving their own areas and keeping it real. IF the new s&d pipe dream does ever come to fruitition then i will be the first to admit i was wrong, but i can't see it.

 

So Chris 125 what is wrong with the New S&D- they are a breathe of fresh air. ? They have vision-the kind of vision which made the railway preservation movement what it is today. Big Up for those who wish to rebuild Silver St bridge-go for it guys!

 

I don't see any need to go back over it again.

Chris

 

Well, I'll have a go, as clearly there is a difference between a strategic re-instatement of a line, that could genuinely help with efforts to counter 'peak oil', global warming, and provide a new connectivity (such as the Southampton to the North electrification and gauge enhancement programme) and an enthusiast's preservation project of an historically unique artefact. The S and D preservation movement has now several projects on the go, the most significant of which is the Midsomer Norton re-instatement. Other projects exist that have the goal of preserving or providing a pastiche of Dorset Central stations and a small stretch of line (e.g. Spetisbury).

So within a decade or two we can look forward to representations of the Bath extension (at MN to Chilcompton), memories usefully kept alive in Bath Queen Square station, the cycleway through the tunnels to Midford, and the Dorset bit just mentioned. Icing on the cake would perhaps be something done on the Branch.

There is poor connectivity between Bristol and Bath in the north and Bournemouth /Poole in the south. These are, respectively, the two largest conurbations in the South West. To my mind, the best way to try and restore that linkage would be a new chord across the market area in Dorchester. This a bit cheaper (!) than building what is essentially a whole new line as the 'New S and D' propose (think of all the lost viaducts, the extensive building across the formation and so on).

If it had not been closed, it would not be closed now, although I think the GW scheme of joining up at Preston Bath and then splitting at Midford , for instance, would have been a good one. Towns like Shepton Mallet, Wincanton, Sturminster and Blandford would have benefited a lot of course. It's too late now and there are more beneficial areas for investment.

 

The folk at Midsomer have been busy over winter - 320m of track has been laid and this weekend the first 40 ton delivery of ballast led to a day's jacking and packing .

More info and pictures on the groups facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/somersetanddorsetrailway

 

After 47 years the 'up' line at Midsomer today (21 April) saw it's first public use since closure.

Members of the Wells Rail Fraternity were the first to travel the stretch of line, driving D1120 from platform 2 up to the Somervale point, in the 'Driver for a Fiver' experience.

The driving experience is 2 trips, one to learn and the other where you 'do everything'. It will be available to the public over the both of next weekends open days (27 + 28 April).

We look forward to seeing you try it - described by one today as "Really very satisfying!".





More info: https://www.facebook.com/somersetanddorsetrailway

 

I keep thinking that the Docklands Light Railway has a lot to offer us. A service from Westbury, up the Frome to Radstock line and then hopping OVER the road to an interchange station with the S&D on the west side of the town centre. It might also serve the original S&D line back towards Bath, peeling off just south of Midford Viaduct and connecting with the GWR line to Limpley Stoke.
That would introduce all sorts of possibilities to a heritage line from Radstock interchange through to just north of the Charlton Road Viaduct at Shepton Mallet. then a new chord, built along the hillside, with one bridge, would allow an end on with the East Somerset. Job done - if you say it quickly.