West Somerset Railway General Discussion

"An Engine House on the WSR would be pretty useless and not worth the cost of construction, as locomotives there are either in service or under overhaul."

..and also there's hardly any left on the line!

 

You were just nitpicking at my comment, sorry. I'm not having an arguement, I'm having a discussion.

Yes Buckfastleigh is open 4 days a week I know, but they aren't running any trains at all for visitors to view. Would the SDR not need a lot of the things you have pointed out too in order to resume operations?

 

The least you could do is tag me in this post if you are going to poke fun at me.

 

Well that would make a change, there's enough on here about the WSR!

It's funny how after that incident though the SDR seem short on carriages.

 

Why though? Ultimately they nearly were responsible for the death or serious life changing injury of a child. Sounds harsh I know, but it is true.

 

Was that the experimental Kreigsmanor?

 

Passengers numbers and percentages in themselves do not vindicate a decision to operate in season 2020 or not. The only real test is the management accounts for the period in question. Given that most railways have only operated for a few weeks it is perhaps early to draw proper conclusions. Of course some will argue that there is more to running trains than simply covering legitimate costs but whatever that "more" is can only be justified for a short period if the reality is that money is in fact ebbing away faster by operating compared with a period of "mothballing" to the lowest possible cost base (as is the case with the WSR).

The SVR long ago gave up chasing headline passenger figures, instead it has concentrated more on the true "bottom line", a much more meaningfull way of assessing whether or not your heritage railway operation is in fact sustainable.

Today the main holiday period ended. What happens next might not follow a predictable pattern.

 

There were no nuclear bombs before women got the vote. Sometime coincidence is not causality. Yes the WSR is in deep financial doodoo, yes the WSR is one of the longest heritage railways. That doesn't mean the two are cause and effect. That the management of the WSR proved unable to sustain an income sufficient to maintain the line does not mean it can't be done, it just means that they were unable to do it. I think we have established in these many many posts that almost no heritage lines are able to sustain an income sufficient to maintain their lines using the method chosen by the WSR: the farebox and the collecting tin rattled at existing supporters (or currently just the collecting tin).

 

No one is accusing you of that, it was someone else.

Might that just be because the WSR is no longer an attractive place at which to overhaul or restore your loco? That is hardly something to crow about.

 

They were, and they've been judged for it.

 

The post I made wasn’t responding to you. Not everything is about you.

I think WSR has moved beyond the Bourbons and are into the Committee of Public Safety era.

I’d suggest that the Ffestiniog has a number of things against it. Not near anywhere. Not good access. Portmadog is only a tourist hub because of the railways. BF is a destination of marginal appeal. I don’t think Port would have become the Padstow of North Wales without the railways.

But what it does have is - a wide range of tourist attractions in the area: mountains, beaches, castles, etc so enough that there is enough of a residual tourist market to pick up people who want a morning out. It is a good wet weather alternative. It can give you a range of trips from the short to say TyB to the full WHR.

The point here is that every line has been dealt a hand of location, market, access, where the line can go, what it connects into etc. I am sure that if many lines knew when they were setting out what they know now they would have done things differently. Maybe some would have tried to extend in different directions, maybe some might have located to different places (would the IOWSR have been better being Shanklin to Ventor or Brading to Bembridge - a short somewhere to somewhere). Maybe the MHR should have been the Meon Valley line, the WSR the ilfracombe branch, etc etc. But the reality is that they are what they are, and the trick is making the best of what you have.

What Covid has shown is the lines big and small that have been quick on their feet to adapt to the challenges and opportunities that Covid has presented to them. It shows the lines that have shown good management and communication. Sadly, it has brought into sharper focus the railway managements that more closely resemble a Diplodocus pausing from its mouthful of leaves to look at the meteor that is flying over its head.

 

Indeed they were and its was costly. They asked for time to pay the fine, which from memory was made into installments. It might be one of the reasons for not re-opening as some might still to be paid.

 

How many locos at the WSR? Three operational, though one is an industrial. How many locos being overhauled? Two, one of which is too heavy to leave by rail, the other is too small for normal services. Awaiting overhaul? An absolutely knackered loco in a shopping centre 100 miles away. Not a good situation to be in.

 

I think that’s what most of us think, even those of us who have no practical experience of railway ops know what the basics are to operate some sort of service on a 00 gauge layout.

 

It hardly seems necessary, given the time you spend answering every post...

Robin

 

There is a difference between 'Dirty ballast' and ''Contaminated ballast'.
I'm looking at the EWS Ops Digest to refresh my memory (and in 20 years of attending renewal sites as a Site Operator I had to deal with Contaminated Ballast abou 3 times). A site survey during planning will identify whether any nasties are present - if not then the ballast will be recycled, as at Norton, Eastleigh, et al. If it is contaminated then it will be sent to Crewe (as at 2006) for disposal. The wagons all bear special labels; TOPS appends special load codes to the wagons; a raft of forms have to filled in (for the driver and the contractor) which include the Carrier Registration (EWS).
Dirty ballast, on the other hand, while often unpleasant(!) is not dissimilar to the filter beds at sewage farms. (Incidentally, as a late colleague, Chris Bitton (remember him, @martin1656 ?) once asked 'why are so many sewage farms beside the railway?')
Pat

 

In view of the lack of any activity on the line, I thought it might be worth sharing this photo from the good old days when the WSR was not only a red route but also cleared for double red.
(Photo by David Trim).

 

Their biscuits were OK though...

Coat - hat....

 

Thanks for the clarification... I wasn't sure because I belong to a time when loco's seemed to put more oil (or diesel) on the track than they used to run, asbestos was common in the brake pads of the early DMU disc brakes and no-one had even heard of total retention toilets (Pull the handle, look down the hole, see the sleepers whizzing by...).
Oh, I used to work for Thames Water too. Those 'filter beds' weren't actually filters, they were a biological war ground where the goodies (in the ballast) attacked and ate (!) the baddies (in the liquor) leaving it, if not actually 'clean' then a lot nicer than before. I believe a similar thing happened (allbeit completely unintentionally) on the railway trackbed.
Used to get lots of nice tomatoes on that job too..