Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

I guessed it was Railway National Preservation - i.e. this forum. I had to think about it though!

 

On the Grampian Conditions, I think that they are reasonable as a protection for the local community about whether the cash exists to carry the whole of Phase 2 through. The focus (rightly) appears to be on getting the TWAO completed to allow for the extension of the line across the roads, and then to acquiring the land required. It seems inevitable that there will be a Public Enquiry, but the benefit will be that there will be an unambiguous legal position to underpin the extension, leaving us to raise the money.

Based on the demonstrable success to date, you'd not want to bet against the L&B, especially with the various funding bodies after a successful public enquiry. It's not glamorous and it won't be quick, but it should work. And if we can't convince a Public Enquiry or raise the money, then we aren't going to extend the railway anyway.

 

I think others have answered this.

 

I think you're correct - I had to give it some 'deep thought' too.

 

Exactly. We must not forget what has been accomplished by the powers that be over the last few months.

 

As I understand it the Grampian Rights require a very large sum of money to be deposited as well as a set of conditions before the project can start .
The issue is very simple , whilst the enthusiasm is great there are to my knowledge no funders of the magnitude that is required . There is no bussiness plan of a company that would generate such funds as an operational return on investment . There is no pot of Gold waiting to build the L&B, the social structure changes comming to the UK EU /World are so substantial that even maintaining what currently exists will be a serious challenge IMHO

The Engineer 27/10/2021

The L&B you see excepting the locos and the heritage coaches..The infrastructure Surrounding Woody Bay to Killington Lane was built using individuals giving loans and a bank loan on the property and land. Those loans were mainly paid back from operating revenue between 2004-2014 not all but the major cost which I will hazard a guess at £ 1 million . Thats based on buying second hand rail second hand sleepers new track fixings and ballast , plus all the infrastructure wagons plant buildings etc . It would not have been built had we have adopted Andrew Dows plan to raise 1 million before we start .
It only happened because it was done in small bite size chunks ( eating the elephant) so to speak ..a lot of people some now passed on gave or lent money against certain costs , on the basis they were part of and trusted the people who were trying to do it for the good of all .
With Grampian conditions it is almost impossible anything will happen because those conditions terminate the possibility .
Its impossible to raise that amount of money in the current world circumstances .
Get real !! Stop sitting in armchairs and dreaming . The ENP dont want the L&B to extend . Or at least not as its currently structured , If they did it would be happening . Just because on paper you jump some hoops you were way back before the starting line and those hoops did not count !!

After being out of it and watching 12 years of progress ?? Apply some logic !!

 

Wow! Insulting and offensive in one line .... congratulations on your impressive skills in multitasking. To even those among us now confined to the 'armchair support' you denigrate, it's also nothing we've not heard before. We heard it often enough while we were still physically active and it was just as wide of the mark back then.

Dreaming alone, by itself produces no results (no sh*t, Sherlock!), never has and never will, but does that describe our movement collectively? Or the L&B in particular? Does it hell as like. In over six decades, I've lost count of the sheer number of "impossible" projects which have come to fruition, none of them by handwringing and lamenting the impossibility of the task at hand.

The argument being advanced there rather overlooks the inconvenient, yet unarguable fact that our movement is built on the collective efforts of precisely those folk who point blank refuse to follow such counsels of doom, get on to overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles, develop and nurture the conditions (re)create heritage lines the length and breadth of the land. In case anyone had either not noticed, or had forgotten, that has been happening these past many decades. Those lines successfully created by sheer human effort within this movement have, let's not forget, invariably gone on to contribute many many millions to wider local economies wherever they exist.

I recall no suggestion, here or elsewhere, that rescussitating a railway is either straightforward or simple, yet for all that, it's somehow been accomplished on repeated occasions.

 

You may be right, you may be wrong. But the planning conditions represent a deal between the L&B and the planning authority. I despise property developers who renege on the deals they make to get planning permission, and for the L&B to try to vary them now would show a similar lack of trustworthiness.

 

Thanks to you and @H Cloutt.
Pat

 

Up until this point, I was prepared to give you some credence, but you've managed to blow that completely with a rant too far.
To answer most of this, apply 3 letters- RVR. There is such a thing as due process, which you seem to think can be circumvented if the price is right. Not so
By the way, regarding your statement "the social structure changes comming to the UK EU /World are so substantial that even maintaining what currently exists will be a serious challenge IMHO" I have to agree with. 2022 is going to be an eye-opener, and may well put all these discussions in the basket. I just hope to god I'm wrong, too.

 

Some of the recent work being carried out by volunteers at Woody Bay. These three SR painted ex MOD vans live in a very exposed spot. Also in view to the arriving vistors.
All three have had chassis derusted and treated. Wood work rubbed back and treated and painted and roof repairs as needed. Photos show various stages of the work.
Bit more work to complete next time we have a dry day.
Excellent work by great team
(Imagine a few pictures of wagons, before and after painting)

Other hidden work at Woody Bay in recent times. Coach 16 will be next coach in to our paintshop ( currently also have a few improvements carried out ) over the winter for its top half repaint
The 'Tuesday gang' have made a great start on cleaning/ derusting/ treating/ painting the chassis and underside of the coach while there was pit access.
Dirty and unglamorous work but all carried out with enthusiasm and many cups of tea and biscuits.
People make the railway
(Imagine some pictures of Coach 16 and men dressed as traffic cones)

Some of you may have noticed a site outage today. For those of you with an interest in such things, the root of the problem was that Let's Encrypt root CA expired back in September and this has caused a number of older operating systems and web browsers to stop seeing the certificates as valid. The whole situation is explained in the following links:
https://letsencrypt.org/.../dst-root-ca-x3-expiration.../ https://letsencrypt.org/docs/certificate-compatibility/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/lets-encrypt-root-expiry
This from our web hosts “To prevent this issue from affecting our customers we are gradually replacing the existing Let's Encrypt certificates with cPanel's AutoSSL ones. This process reached your site today and I'm afraid that was the actual cause of the problem, as the combination of Cloudflare's Strict SSL mode and a global HTTP to HTTPS redirect blocked AutoSSL from generating a new certificate to replace Let's Encrypt with, and this was the core cause of the error.”
Our web hosts have apologised for the inconvenience, and added "We've reported this to our management and engineering teams to ensure this won't happen again.”
We much appreciate the work done by our web hosts in getting the L&B website back up in what was a very short time as well as those L&B members who contacted me to let me know FYI - whenever the site goes down we do receive a message advising us of this, but it is still heartening to see that others notice when the website is no longer functioning.
(Imagine computers not being a pain in the bum!)

 

It does appear that 'problems' of various sorts are beginning to affect many heritage railways for a variety of reasons. Maybe that has always been the case, but it seems to be getting worse and more troublesome as time passes. Those familiar with all matters related to a railway in Somerset will understand the problem

In the case of the recent AGM voting fiasco, I am content at the moment to put that down almost entirely to what might be described as a basic administrative c***-up, rather than the emergence of some underlying conspiracy, but time will tell. As regards the Phase 2A extension, yes it will take a lot of time and effort and much money, but AFAIK at least much of the former is being expended - to what extent the fund-raising is bearing adequate fruit to proceed seems less clear. Meanwhile in another county not much further away a railway has been in possession of a large amount of funds (mainly from donations), land and equipment necessary for its own expansion, its members have been champing at the bit, yet the Directors have given the impression - whether rightly or wrongly is hard to tell - of finding excuses not to proceed, selling off assets that could be invaluable in the future, and ignoring offers of help from experienced people on other lines. I've not heard anything yet to suggest that the L&BR is anything like that......

 

it would seem something that left the L&BR when it closed for a long visit to Kent and then subsequently returned and is now in a poorly state is now being assessed as to whether it can be refurbished to solve the problem of a full runaround loop

 

I agree with @RailWest - I think some people look for conspiracies - although maybe they have had first hand experience. With regard to Phase 2A - a lot of the trackbed is owned - but the TWAO process has the potential to be expensive if RVR is anything to go by. With regard to raising the money - I feel sure that there are many who will contribute when the time is right. After all the L and B is the 'last narrow gauge adventure'.

 

Too cryptic for me, I'm afraid. Why not just say it?

 

i have heard it said that the purchase of a major building will be the key to unlocking the TWAO,if and when that happens the TWAO will be applied for but it seems that might be in the new year,why the majority of the work for the TWAO wasn't done in tandem with the original planning application work i guess we will never know but if it had it would have saved a lot of time,which now is in very short supply,there is less than 18 months before the planning runs out it would seem and all it will take is a well timed spanner to be thrown in the works to cause a real issue,although i dont know the ins and outs of it i believe the WHR went to 2 public enquiries so time really is of the essence

 

Sorry, @TheEngineer but I think that the lessons you're drawing here are nonsense.

First, I can see no evidence that the ENPA are opposed to the extension of the railway - quite the contrary, in fact; they've been prepared to take a lot of heat from objectors to support the railway. But it is quite right that ENPA have to balance the benefits of the scheme with the costs (which include costs to people who don't like steam trains - they do exist, however surprising this is to NatPres Members), and make sure that there is no risk that the line ends up half-built or open to a 'temporary' terminus at, say, Parracombe that proves to be a traffic nightmare and then never gets extended. The Grampian Conditions ensure that that can't happen, and that is ultimately to everyone's benefit - including the railway, as it makes it clear what the funding ask is of the grant agencies, amongst other things.

Second, on the capital required, I think that everyone understands that this will take a combination of fundraising, grant aid, and generous legacies, such as the one that recently allowed for the (critical) purchase of the Parracombe station site. More than that, the issue is surely that you break the problem down into the smallest possible chunks - which as far as I can see is what the L&B Board have done in making the next phase to Wistlandpound. For the Board to be wrong, you'd have to be able to show that ENPA was open to allowing a terminus inside the National Park, (presumably initially at Parracombe) and that the L&B Board didn't take this option. Given the importance to ENPA of the Grampian Conditions, I'm confident that that isn't true.

Well, the progress is there - what do you propose instead? Just start (illegally) laying track from Killington Lane? I don't think so.

 

The Pilton Turntable was sold at the auction in 1936 to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. Restored parts of this were on display at Chelfham during the recent gala...

Restored parts of the turntable are shown here, next to Bridge Post 54, also repatriated from Kent, along with 34, now at Bratton Fleming

 

swiftly changing the subject for now,does anyone know where i can get the correct LSWR brown paint as used for buildings/wagons @ 1920s ,must be satin/eggshell finish,must be in 1 ltr upwards quantities,have benches and weatherboards at Snapper Halt to paint

 

Realising it wasn't the purpose of the L&Bs turntable (which was to even wear on the wheels of the carriage and goods stock), were any of the locos ever turned for any reason? I can't recall a single image of any loco 'facing Barnstaple' .... not even the little contractor's loco Excelsior