Bluebell track laying South from EG?

It occurs to me that if the current talk of a triangle being installed south of Horsted Keynes as a means of turning stock comes to fruition, then all this clay material would be useful to make up the (presumably) necessary embankments to support it. Plus there is also the need to close the Ardingly side of the embankment where Sheriff Mill viaduct was demolished, so that a bridge can be installed across Station Approach Road.

Regards,

Dan

 

Clay embankments? Too unstable I would think.

 

No i do not have an axe to grind with the Bluebell. I did at one time but have moved on since then, ( though it appears that some have not), and now sincerely wish them well with their endevours

Christopher I do not jump on anyone in criticism, everyone deserves the right to have their say and have an open debate .

Again will everyone please note that I have made no comment about the Bluebells extension just that Robert Philpots pics are good and he hi entitled to his say.

Where did free speech go in this country?

Best regards
Chris:

 

True, but with the right stabilisation methods it should be possible to prevent serious deterioration over time. Don't forget that the Ardingly spur at Horsted Keynes has already been extended to the road using clay capping from the south end of the tip.

Regards,

Dan

 

...yet when i say say that his blogs, captions and e-group posts havent always been as helpful to the cause as his photo's, i deserve the following?

"And you are such an expert are you?" "Are you a volunteer there then?" "Are you a member of the management team then?" and "Mr Philpott is far better placed to comment than you ever will"

Doesnt sound like a champion of free speech, just a champion of someone who constantly criticises, often unjustly (but not always) the work to clear the tip.

...then why single out my post, and react so aggresively to it? Please read it again.

Someone asked why he deserved so many negative posts. I said he was getting these negative posts because of the picture comments, his blogs, and his input to the Bluebell e-group - thats a fact, whether you agree with those particular comments or not.

I then went on and expressed a personal opinion; that we are all grateful for his photo's, but that his other contributions havent always been as constructive - as someone whose kept up to date with these contributions on the e-group as well as his website since the beginning of WBR, and seen the ire it has created on here and the e-group, i think im perfectly entitled to say that.

Chris

 

I'm no expert in these matters but, if i was a betting man, I'd bet a Mars Bar that the clay is being kept back to cover the remainder of the tip that is seemingly now not being removed. Most landiflls have a clay capping to prevent leaching, which will be the reason there was a clay cap to the original tip.

 

Re the possiblity of a triangle at HK - a recent Bluebell News (perhaps twelve months ago) mentioned the site is designated as a community asset (? not sure, can't remember the exact terminology). Anyway, the inference I drew was that the area was designated/reserved for non-railway use possibly as a future picnic area or such like.

Might be wrong in this, look forward to any corrections.

Regards

 

Don't remember that; I'd be surprised as there was a recent update from the Infrastructure Director suggesting that it (a triangle) was being investigated, using waste spoil from the tip. The exact feasibility is still to be worked out, though anecdotally, it looks like a triangle with a tightest curve of 5 chains should be possible in the available space; maybe another configuration might ease that. (Diagrams I have seen for e.g. BR standard Pacifics give a minimum curve of 4.5 chains dead slow, so hopefully 5 chains should be adequate).

Tom

 

The first two weeks of WBR 5 removed 5119 tons and 5016 tons respectively. With one week of this phase still to go, the total removed so far is now 82,882 tons, so likely to be about 88,000 tons gone by the end of this week.

After this week's trains have run, the situation will be reviewed to decide whether further waste trains will be needed.

Funding is still needed; the "Big Give" match funding offer (which will turn every £10 donation into £22.50) starts next week, for 5 days only. See Bluebell Railway Northern Extension Project a project by Bluebell Railway Trust | The Big Give

Tom

 

Hi all,

Just found that bit on the the Big Give website: https://secure.thebiggive.org.uk/donate/donate.php?charity_id=6464&project_id=13964: "Up to the first £5,000 of your donation to this charity will be doubled". And then on http://content.thebiggive.org.uk/pledgers-page-2/: "All online donations are processed by an external, HMRC approved, organisation named Charities Trust. They will take a 4% administration fee on all donations made, however, the full, original amount of the donation will be matched." To me, that's a maximum of £4.800 extra for the Bluebell from The Big Give after fees. It's the "up to" which worries me more than the "first £5.000". Is the matched funding limited and will be attributed according to the percentage of total donations and could be even less than £5.000 less as a result? Or did I get that wrong, is the ceiling for single donations only?

Kind regards

Christoph

 

As I understand it, it refers to a single donation (e.g. they will double up to the first £5,000 of any one individual donation). There is some complicated mix of exactly how this is funded, but I think (I might be wrong) the objective of the Big Give from the Bluebell's point of view would be to see £30,000 donated which would double to £60,000 plus have gift aid (ideally) on the original £30k - making £72.5k minus the fee. That's 6 big donors at £5k each, or more likely rather more smaller ones!

All online donation mechanisms take some fee (Big Give; JustGiving.com; Charities Aid Foundation; PayPal; Ebay for charity etc). The exact amounts vary - normally there is a combination of a %age of the total plus a one-off "per donation" amount. However, 4% doesn't sound excessive to me from fees I have seen for other schemes. (For example, JustGiving charge 5% + something like £0.13 - £0.17 per donation depending on card type + a £15 per month fee regardless of whether you get any donations or not). It might seem a lot, but collecting donations in other ways also have administration and banking costs (for example, if a charity took credit card donations over the phone, the bank would charge per donation, plus you'd have to man the phone; and you'd have the administration of maintaining signed records authorising recovery of gift aid). So in practice the online methods are quite cost effective even with the fees charged, and have the big advantage of being 24*7 and much more accessible and relatively effort-free for the donor (relative to e.g. writing a cheque, filling in a gift aid form, finding and addressing an envelope, buying a stamp, putting it in a post box etc).

Tom

 

Ever since it was first drawn to my attention I have used the Philpot blog as my main, and often only available, source of up to date information on the vital progress on this mega scheme.

That is NOT a dig at Richard Salmon who runs the Bluebell web site. He can only post information he is given and then only when his full time job allows.

And that is the crux of things. IMHO. The Bluebell, like a lot of Heritage Railways, has to rely a lot on volunteers for many aspects of it's operation. And maybe resources are strained to the point where diverting even a small part of the effort needed to give the sort of regular reporting Robert Philpot gives, would detract from progress with the extension work.

I guess the Bluebell know better than any of us if the lack of very regular reporting has any impact on fundraising. My amateur view is that it probably does. As I would have said, especially at this stage where the end is getting closer, a very regular and official update on progress would raise interest to a level where people dug deeper into their pockets as they got carried away on a wave of excitement that the final breakthrough was not far off.

But what do I know! Just another damned armchair amateur. Albeit one who did very regularly contribute to the tenner for the tip schemes.

So I use the Philpot blog. Reading it as I do such blogs from someone I assume is of my generation who maybe sometimes let's his own underlying enthusiasm for the project get carried away a bit in what he writes. If so, I've been there, done that, got the T shirt! LOL!

So Robert. Keep that blog going. And I doubt that if you are of my generation nothing said here will change your style of reporting. It's a superb pictorial record of the project and to me is of enormous help.

 

@Jamessquared/Tom: Thanks for the explanation. So the Bluebell can get far more out of the scheme than I thought. That's good news for me.

@KentYeti: I would expect that official news will have to go through some clearance process with the relevant Bluebell people. I believe that is normal practice in any organisation of some size. However, that takes time which is not always available. On top of that I would never publish any information I am not 100% sure about and this dig had its surprises. I don't blame them for the lack of official speculation. I do welcome Robert Philpot's photos, though.

Kind regards

Christoph

 

We drove past the tip on Saturday, and it was mighty impressive to see the progress since we last did the same trip early this year.

Regards,

Dan

 

I totally agree with Kentyeti, especially after Richard Salmon came on here and pointlessly ranted at anyone who dared to ask for more information I sighed inwardly and thought here is yet another person who although doing a fantastic job feels like an unappreciated martyr and bridles at any hint of criticism and goes off in a sulk. Believe me that is a problem. It happened on another railway not far away and a change was needed.
The truth as we all know is that in the 21st century good communication is vital for PR (and hence funding) and while the project team have clearly had to make some tactical shifts during the dig they have executed the task superbly. Far better than could have been expected given time experience and resource. I think only the WHR has been a bigger civil engineering challenge in the whole history of preservation. But their communication - informing backers and wellwishers of challenges, decisions, forecasts, geological, technical environmental, operational issues etc has been very poor. Everyone knows - even many involved with the Bluebell though they are too thin skinned to acknowledge it let alone remediate it - that communicating to the casual audience regularly and reliably, has been poor. There is no doubt that assuming the wider casual audience will even know about private facebook or yahoo groups, or members pet pages, or twitter followers .......is also a basic mistake. This thread has probably achieved as much as any of those in raising awareness and hence funds.
There have been sporadic pictorial updates on the official site, but nothing to make the wellwisher go there first - if at all - for information.
I actually went to the site on Sunday and I can confirm that Robert's ongoing pessimism about how much remained to do is in fact correct - because the camera shortens depth and it is hard to appreciate that the length of cutting being excavated is about two full football pitches long and the amount of material to be moved southwards is immense.

 

Pictures from yesterday (29th Nov.) now on Robert Philpot's pages
Imberhorne Cutting Removal - Page 4

 

Interesting photos from Robert. Seems to be an awful lot of work left to do and Robert's view seems to be realistic rather pessimistic. I do appreciate that the railway is run by volunteers but you would think that they would be a little more forthcoming with progress. Bluebell News just gives the 'jolly hockysticks' impression. Keep them coming Robert.

(I do hope the blokes at Midsomer Norton are taking note. They have a good deal more to shift and I AFAIK they aren't rail connected. :faint2:

Regards

 

6 months ago he was saying "abandon now before any more money is spent", now even Robert is saying that he believes the tip will be cleared ;-)

The really key thing is whether we have to remove what remains going north or south. All the mood music seems to suggest we are very close to the finish of stuff going north, e.g. municipal waste, in time for the April 2012 tax deadline. If after that date there is a lot of capping etc, it will take some shifting (wherever it goes) but at least there won’t be a looming tax deadline on it! This is why the official word is that track will not be laid until late summer next year, even though the end of waste extraction will be before April. It’s also why there is a funding requirement for the project beyond the end of the last waste by rail train.

I think the board, and those who have worked on the project (both on the fundraising and the infrastructure side of things) deserve huge credit for how they have had the confidence to push this through, especially when a couple of years or so ago the funding requirement stood at £5m and all seemed doom and gloom about whether we would ever make it.

Tom

 

The Bluebell 'Instant Rebuttal' team at it again. Robert is perfectly entitled to change his mind as are all the other doubters and as for your phrase '... all seemed doom and gloom about whether we would ever make it', your use of 'we' shows, to my mind, a degree of over-commital on your part. My personal view has always been that the extension to East Grinstead was a good thing, but it ran the risk of bankrupting the Bluebell for not much advantage to the railway. The extension to KC was and is the natural extent of the railway.

There is a great advantage to the local authority in having the railway extend to EG, but, that being so, most if not all the cost should have come out of the public purse as has the WHR. The bullying and blackmail from the local authority, ie 'you can go to KC only if you go to EG and at your cost' seems to me now, and seemed to me then, to be unacceptable behaviour.

Regards

 

Damn you Orion you've discovered the secret plot to undermine the Bluebell Railway by posting notes about it. Now we must move on to the Great Central and meet in secret to undermine them instead with our sinister conspiracies.
I disagree about the Kingscote being the natural extent of the railway - running from nowhere to nowhere is the curse of many lines - but at last the Bluebell can join the national network. That surely is the natural extent to the north?