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GWSR - Cheltenham Spa and possible extensions

Discussion in 'Heritage Railways & Centres in the UK' started by JMJR1000, May 11, 2012.

  1. JJJ

    JJJ New Member

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    If you take a look at google maps you can see the actual distance from hunting butts tunnel ( i.e end of the rail) to Pittville Park is no more than twice the distance from the Cheltenham race course station to hunting butts tunnel. So relatively short distance but would obviously need a run round loop and platform plus the usual fencing, clearance and a tunnel and an over bridge to make good.

    The issue will be security and vandalism as this stretch would run through a built up housing area. Although pittville area is by no means a rough area.

    The big advantage of getting to pittville is as other have said; the area is a magnet for families. The area is a Victorian Park with boating, fishing and nature ponds, beautiful bridges and walks, three small cafe, several play areas, adventure play park, Avery, pitch and putt golf, skate park and tennis courts. At the far end is the pump rooms and band stand, famous for its mineral water and now used for events.

    Next to the possible station location is the sports centre and the athletics stadium but unlikely to generate much passenger revenue.

    This would certainly give travellers something to make the effort to go all the way up to Cheltenham.
     
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  2. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    It has been said before that there is room for a run-around loop or a platform, but not both. How accurate that is I've no idea, you hear lots of things about extensions into Cheltenham that may or may not be true! The methane/landfill issue is one, but I'd like to hear that independently from more than one source before taking it as gospel.

    Pittville is a lot less rough than it used to be, and people who use this argument tend to have lived in Cheltenham bit not near Pittville so haven't quite caught up with present reality. As you say, not much passenger benefit to be gained from the stadium, but its carpark is often empty when I've seen it as there's nothing on, so some sort of arrangement could potentially be forthcoming there.
     
  3. FearOfManchester

    FearOfManchester Member

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    Whatever comes to pass any extension into Cheltenham will have vandalism and unauthorised track access, unfortunately people just don't take heritage railways as seriously as the big railway. At the moment vandalism consists of drain covers getting buggered about with due to the large metal fortress covering the tunnel portal, the pitville park is the best of the options, for the other options the railways hand has been forced by greedy housing and short sighted councillors, although personally I like the rustic charm of the old Cheltenham high street station, looks like a halt more than anything, which is a nice look, it would in fact be safer from vandalism than a pitville station as it's built up with controllable points of access, it's just getting there that's the problem!
     
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  4. JJJ

    JJJ New Member

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    In the past when you looked at the gwsr route, the extent of their land when no rail has been laid was indicated by a strip of unkept vegetation and trees. If we use that as a starter then the point the corridor of land arrives at Pittville looks like an island platform and a run round loop either side might be possible. Something akin to the Dean Forest railway at Lydney.
     
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  5. RichardBrum

    RichardBrum Member

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    Any extension into Cheltenham needs to be realistically positive, & come up with a plan that deals with all the issues that exist.

    Connection to NR at Cheltenham, or in that area;
    Not going to happen. It's a main line, with 8-10 trains per hour through Cheltenham, & passenger usage is growing.
    It will also be on someones long term plan for electrification, it's ~40miles Bristol Parkway>Gloucester>Cheltenham, & ~30miles Bromsgrove>Worcester>Cheltenham.
    (Honeybourne is 2tph, so even if that doubled, it would still be easy to fit other movements in, & the connection already exists with track & signalling)

    Does the pedestrian/cycle path stay?;
    If it stays, it has an impact on the infrastructure you can build, eg. no loops, any stations prior to Queen's Rd would be single-track, which impacts how you operate if you don't get all the way through to Queen's Rd in one go. (DMUs not affected, but could you push carriages from High St back to CRC, then do the run around? I think that would be a big no!)

    But, it could mean that the current infrastructure stays in council ownership & part is leased (cheaply!) to GWSR. It could mean that major infrastructure maintenance is jointly funded. It also means that you don't turn people against your plan.

    Level crossings for pedestrians/cyclists;
    If the path stays, these will exist, as access to the path at both ends, Swindon Lane/Prince of Wales/St Paul's Rd, & Malvern Rd/Queen's Rd, is from the Malvern side, & the middle has access from the Cotswolds side.

    Three new bridges;
    The first two bridges are relatively easy (Prince Regent Ave & Folly Lane), & may even be cheaper than major works to existing bridges. As above, they could be jointly funded, say as part of extending the pedestrian/cycle route to Swindon Lane.
    Honeybourne Way & St George's Rd, hmmm. That whole area is a mess, & I think realistically any new bridge would be part of major works to fix the mess that the planners made. Could adapt/move the existing cycle bridge sideways, & put in a new single-track rail bridge next to it.

    Toilets (!);
    You are NOT going to be able to discharge onto the track after Swindon Lane. It doesn't matter what exemptions central gov currently allow, it's the local council & residents that you've got to deal with.
     
  6. 46229

    46229 New Member

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    In the timescale that this will happen, you will not be able to discharge toilets directly on to ANY part of a heritage railway. I reckon 5 years or maybe even less before a ban happens. Another looming problem that the HRA recognise is coming along.
     
  7. James F

    James F New Member

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    I went to university in Cheltenham and lived near Pittville Park (Hardwick Halls and then Brunswick Street). I used to go for runs along the line and walk to Cheltenham Spa Station down the old track bed path to go home. I really don't think the extension is worth it - I don't know if the area has got better but I just feel it would be vandalized to high hell if it went over the high street. The station at Cheltenham Race Course has incredible parking, is out of the way enough that local 'wronguns' won't be bothered going to reach it and isn't that hard to get to.

    I'd love to see trains going back through the town and used to imagine what it would be like if that became a reality, but in my opinion there's just not a good enough reason to do so. Also if the railway does link up with the mainline at Honeybourne that's just shy of 20 miles I believe. I believe the West Somerset Railway is a similar distance from Bishops Lydeard to Minehead and that takes an hour twenty. That's a long time for most families! I wouldn't want to add another 20 minutes to that.
     
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  8. mikechant

    mikechant Member

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    In the very unlikely event that both ends eventually happened, I don't think it would be like Bishops Lydeard to Minehead where most people travel the full length; Honeybourne wouldn't be much of a destination. It might make more sense to run seperate services from each end to Broadway or overlapping somehow. Guessing that running round at Honeybourne might not be possible, maybe a DMU shuttle to Broadway would work. Anyhow, I guess it's many years until anyfurther exension would be considered (if at all) unless there's a *very* big legacy.
     
  9. RichardBrum

    RichardBrum Member

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    Cheltenham - CRC would be 10minutes each way, Broadway - Honeybourne about 20minutes, so yes it's very few people that would do the entire round trip.

    What Cheltenham does get you is the non-car visitor who could transfer from the mainline at Cheltenham Spa, & potentially daytrippers to Broadway as it would be just over 1hour each way. Also the potential for raceday shuttles to CRC, a 20min round trip with a DMU means that quite a frequent service could be run.
    That covers your operating costs & general maintenance. The actual reinstatement of bridges etc would need external funding.

    As for vandalism, it would be single track from Hunting Butts to a station after Queen's Rd. No need for any points or signalling etc, so less targets.
    One side is vertical walls, cuttings up to private properties, or easily securable embankment. The other side is the cycle/pedestrian path. With a decent separating fence, & more usage, that side would be relatively secure.
    There's loads of areas where main lines run past paths with not much of a fence separating them, & they don't get vandalised.


    Broadway - Honeybourne is a flat straight line, with no obvious stations to re-open, so you can get a good 4mile run at 25mph. Would be about a 20min journey each way.
    Link with the Cotswold Line services, which are only hourly so simple to timetable around. Currently a 20min gap between services each way, so time to do a loco run-around & water.
    Potential for car parking, & additional race day services. Potential NR connection for charter services, & bringing in locos, rolling stock, equipment & supplies.
    There's also a nice triangle of land that could be secured, potentially for some loco & rolling stock storage.
     
  10. michaelh

    michaelh Part of the furniture

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    Potential for car parking

    There's very little parking at Honeybourne Station, and the village streets are choked on a daily basis with those who park there and commute to Oxford or London.
     
  11. 1472

    1472 Well-Known Member

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    As a now retired Civil Engineer well familiar with the former route of the railway through Cheltenham I recently took a walk along the route styled "The Honeybourne Line". Through Cheltenham much of the formation of this route (now a path) is elevated between blue brick retaining walls. These appear to have seen little if any maintenance since the railway was closed. In places there is clear failure of the formation even under its current very light use. In other places there is clear evidence of ground movement causing cracking and damage to the walls. Even if somehow coexistence of the path (now an important route for locals) and a single line of railway was possible and acceptable the cost of remedial work and ongoing maintenance of these extensive retaining walls would be worse than eye watering.

    Desk top "google earth" type feasibility studies are fairly pointless without on site reality checks and I have not yet mentioned the several missing structures and graded back embankments.
     
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  12. RichardBrum

    RichardBrum Member

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    There is a small field, about 2 acres, immediately north of the station which could have the station bridge extended to, & all the bodies in the area want to improve the parking situation.
     
  13. michaelh

    michaelh Part of the furniture

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    So why hasn't it happened?
     
  14. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    If I were the GWSR, I would be very wary of an extension in either direction, at least until they had consolidated at Broadway and had a really sound understanding of the costs and capability of running the service; by which I mean the real infrastructure, rolling stock and loco costs of running a line potentially about twenty miles long; and the feasibility of finding sufficient volunteers to do so.

    No-one, it seems, makes money running trains, and the bigger you get, the more money you fail to make ...

    Tom
     
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  15. simon

    simon Resident of Nat Pres

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    Given the problems that the WSR, I would have thought the G WR would be looking to stick to its current arrangements for the foreseeable future.

    Tom posted similar thoughts at almost the same time.
     
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  16. michaelh

    michaelh Part of the furniture

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    The GWSR doesn't run on Mondays and Fridays - even in July and August. I am told by friends who volunteer there , that this is down to a shortage of volunteers to cover the extended turns on the extended railway.
     
  17. RichardBrum

    RichardBrum Member

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    Which is why I said
    "The actual reinstatement of bridges etc would need external funding."

    It's multiple councils, Sustrans, central gov & lottery money sized funding.

    At some point in the near future a decision has to be made as to what to do with the infrastructure, before it literally collapses over or onto property & people.
    The elevated part held up by walls is about 1/2km, & includes 4 bridges. So it's either fix them, which could be done over time as a rolling programme, or remove the whole lot down to street level, which would have to be done as 1 job, & then putting in 4 lots of pedestrian/cycle crossings, & dealing with all the properties that used to have a boundary wall.
    There's no way the council could get funding towards the latter.
     
  18. michaelh

    michaelh Part of the furniture

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    The big advantage of getting to pittville is as other have said; the area is a magnet for families. The area is a Victorian Park with boating, fishing and nature ponds, beautiful bridges and walks, three small cafe, several play areas, adventure play park, Avery, pitch and putt golf, skate park and tennis courts. At the far end is the pump rooms and band stand, famous for its mineral water and now used for events.

    It's a magnet for families because most of it's more or less free (apart from ice creams etc) and you can take a picnic. That's very different to paying a fair amount of money for a steam train ride.
     
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  19. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Well, sort of, but that's not, as far as I'm aware, the main reason we don't run at least Fridays during the summer. For the last 2 or 3 years, we did run Fridays during August. I've just had a quick look through HOPS and they didn't stand out as particularly thinly staffed. At the moment Fridays are often used (amongst other things) for footplate experiences. right now it's not particularly easy to do these the way we do them on a normal running day, much as I'd like to see it happen.

    The department that puts up the most protestations over running 6 or 7 days a week to my knowledge though is C+W, for very good reason. At the moment we are not in a position to be able to swap entire sets of carriages in and out of service. We have our first set, which has the most open carriages for coach parties (our bread and butter mid-week) and a fully equiped RBr. Our second set has less open carriages and only an RMB, and our third set even less open carriages, still only an RMB, and does tend to contain the coaches we are perhaps not as proud of as we'd like to be! As a result, on a one train service we always want our first set in use, and on 2 train service, always sets 1 and 2. Our current timetable sees set 1 in use 5 days a week and set 2 4 days a week on public trains. Often one of these sets is in use on footplate experiences too. With no interchangeability we have to have some downtime to do essential maintenance. Running Fridays as we did for the last 2 years really stretched that.

    Mondays are used for cleaning. Although we do clean as much as possible at the end of every day there's only so much that can be done, and certainly not the outsides. Again, if we were able to swap sets around this wouldn't be an issue, as we could always have 1 set on maintenance and deep clean for a fortnight on rotation with the other 2.

    We're a long way off having all sets of carriages equal, and until we reach that point I don't think we can really contemplate running more days than we currently do, irrespective of how many volunteers we have. Indeed, we're currently moving towards split shifts on many days so we can contemplate running earlier from trains from Cheltenham to Broadway and later trains vice versa as that is what our passengers are demanding. Split shifts are already being phased in relatively successfully, and in a couple of years we will be introducing longer timetables to take advantage of this. So if we can do this I'm sure we could, if we put our minds to it, manage to run more days a week if that was the only impediment.
     
  20. RichardBrum

    RichardBrum Member

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    They have stated that there will be a period of consolidation, & existing infrastructure gets worked on.
    I do know that a lot of work has been ongoing on the drainage, & p/way have been laying cwr, to reduce future maintenance requirements.

    It is during this period when there is an opportunity to have a big public discussion about potential future projects, eg extensions & what services they would have, what facilities would be at the ends of them, would they bring new commercial opportunities (1), is there a need for more loco space, carriage space, & if so where is there space available (2), is it worth getting to a mainline station & which one, is it worth having an NR track connection, etc etc.
    By having a big & open discussion, it may bring in new ideas.

    (1) could a Cheltenham station contain a catering venue that runs 7 days a week? Railway ran or leased out? A shop open more than on running days? etc etc
    (2) not really any space at Winchcombe, could Toddington extend sideways & along the track, or do you go for the triangle at Honeybourne, etc etc



    They do run Tues/Wed/Thurs. Would/could it be better to swap 2 of those for Mon/Fri?
    If volunteers were available to do that, would there be efficiencies for the locos, would it be better for non-running departments to have 2 days in a row where there's no trains running?
    Certainly interesting questions to ask.
     

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