Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

It would be a brave, or foolhardy, guard who did not apply his / her* hand brake during such a manoeuvre.
Brakes do leak off, there have been a few instances on heritage railways recently, haven't there? 20ish years ago a Class 56 and its train ran away from King's Cross Goods Yard, which led to instructions (in EWS, at least) to always apply hand brakes on stabled trains, in case the air leaked off.
Pat
* If anyone wants more genders, they can help themselves!!

 

The 'rule book' (whose ? the L&BR or WHR?) would contain whatever is pertinent to the operation of its railway. At the moment the L&BR does not have a terminus sited on such a steep gradient, but if there were then appropriate instructions could be added as required. But this is all speculation if we do not know the ORR's view of the L&BR's proposal......

However, given that much of the PE site will have to be dug out in order to reach down to the original track-bed, maybe the answer for the meantime is simply not to dig out more than is absolutely necessary to get clearance under the over-bridge and build at a higher level (and hence easier gradient) than will be required once the line is extended onwards?

 

The gradient profile in Catchpole's history shows the location of Parracombe Halt as on 1:100 (rising towards Lynton and flanked by stretches of 1:50).

 

There are no traps on any of the WHR passing loops. They are operated automatically by TOTP (train operated trailable points) so no ground frame is installed.

Trains were not allowed to terminate at Beddgelert until track had been laid towards Porthmadog as far as the Snowdonia National Park boundary. This was a stipulation made by the park authority to allay fears that the line would only be built as far as Beddgelert and cause potential traffic problems in the village (sounds like Parracombe!). The initial trains ran through to the loops at Hafod-y-Llyn and then Pont Croesor.
It was nothing to do with the gradient, although the FR must have gained an approval (from HMRI?) to terminate since. I would imagine special instructions must apply -guard's handbrake plus wheel chocks?

 

(deleted)

 

The Mrs T quote was my wife's recollection of a TV quote. As regards trains standing room only, but empty at other times, surely the same argument could be advanced at London Bridge or Charing Cross. People generally are at work 9 til 5, so it's not surprising they are not able to travel on trains during that period, but it does not follow that the service is not justified and should therefore not be subsidised during the hours of few passengers. The Government sought to stop the losses in any way possible - perhaps that's why the freight receipts were left off the Isle of Wight Railway results when closure of that system was mooted. Did the SR reflect the traffic fed by the L & B to and from the main line when calculated how much the branch was losing ? I doubt we shall ever find out the basis the losses put forward to justify the closure. Passenger Railways were a public service; at least they were from 1948, and even more blatantly than the water companies which were set up by enterprising local authorities which wanted to benefit their citizens, then sold to private interests whose brief is 'running an organisation with a view to a profit'. No wonder water bills skyrocketed on privatisation and the companies taken over by the French. The illusion that professional railway managers were Civil Servants and therefore incapable or too lazy to run railways properly has surely been debunked since privatisation. If BR was less than perfect maybe that was because BR got a fraction of the subsidy that has been provided since privatisation. A member of my family was working on the railway at privatisation and recalls the new staff taken on having to ask the existing workforce how to do the job.

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...otive-at-beddgelert-north-wales-16-april-2019

 

The difference, and I used to commute through London Bridge, is that those trains weren't "empty" even off peak. There's a trade-off about subsidy levels, and the numbers travelling are an important part of justifying those subsidies.

As for post-nationalisation public service, reading Gourvish has convinced me that the requirement to be a public service became an excuse for too many at all levels to neither deliver an effective service, nor run them affordably.

Coming back to the L&B, what impresses me is how the SR were willing to grasp the nettle of some of their worst performing railways, and take some difficult decisions. It is a compliment to the SR that I wish that the L&B had been run by an FR like company, and existed in suspended animation.

 

This sounds pretty close to the main premise of Come Midnight Monday! (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about it’s definitely worth a few hours of your life on YouTube)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The gradient reverts to 1 in 50 about 20 yards north of Churchtown Bridge (No 61), the one just beyond the halt, so even more reason. Is anyone else finding it a pain to read the messages on this site and respond to them with adverts that have just started covering parts of them on the screen ?

 

Sounds similar to The Flockton Flyer. I'll give it a look. Sounds good.

 

The standard service was Barnstaple Town to Lynton, but there were a few trains over only part of the route - there were the trains to and from Blackmoor to connect with the horsedrawn connections with the Blackmoor-Ilfracombe coaches in the late 90s/early 00s (details available if helpful) and the early morning mail train started at Pilton Yard until May 1904, and similarly the goods trains (largely running as required) in the 20s/early 30s. And there were the maintenance crews with wagons, at least until stopped following the 1913 accident with one of these. And there were special trains in connection with specific events such as Barnstaple Fair in September each year and local football matches, flower and pony shows. And, of course, special services usually replacing the standard timetable at Bank Holidays and Christmas time, in the latter case catering for shoppers in Barnstaple.

 

Looked at forgetting the changes in life that have passed in almost 100 years, the SR never publicised the line and its scenery. They seemed to regard it no differently from their passenger-carrying system - a method of getting from one place to another. But maybe the Great Western didn't do much of it for the Vale of Rheidol either - maybe someone knows. The L & B occasionally advertised its scenery in guides such as Ward Lock, but the opportunity for advertising in the two Barnstaple weekly papers was only taken up by the L & BR for excursions (including to the livestock market at Blackmoor Gate) and bank holidays and by the SR in its later period for special trains to Lynton from elsewhere on the system on Sundays. (when the L & B was usually closed)

 

Out of curiosity, what was SR publicity like more generally at this time? I'm thinking particularly about advertising targeted at tourists, as opposed to that designed to drive additional local traffic within the relatively small north Devon population.

I take the challenge about what's changed in the last century, but the other side of that coin is to consider how the L&B compared with other railways in its own era - which is why I complimented the SR on their efficiency, when so many other companies allowed lines to maunder on until the mass closures of the 1950s and 60s.

 

I see from the latest bunch of responses that yet more people are objecting inter alia about the need to "turn the train" at PE and the perceived increase in pollution apparently contributing to climate change problems.

In practice:-
1. You can not turn a train on a turntable anyway, only an engine (or individual coach)
2. No one is proposing to actually turn the engine anyway, the TT will be merely a form of sector plate
3. Given that the engine will be stationary while the TT is being moved, and in practice the engine will travel less distance when running round than if a point and spur were used, then actually there may be less omissions.

Hopefully this sort of nonsense will be robustly corrected in the railway's response to ENPA, it's just a shame that in the meantime such speculative rubbish continues to flourish....:-(

 

I think the SR was not averse to publicising the areas they provided services to for leisure purposes, particularly walking guides - they were prolific publishers of books by S.P.B. Mais of the general format "Walks in ..."

Anyone got a copy of this to check what they said about the L&B?



Tom

 

That was my assumption, but as the L&B went before John Eliot took on publicity, I wondered.

 

I think you are wrong on your dates for John Eliot - he was appointed publicity manager in 1925. Of course, for a while, there were bigger fish to fry than publicity of a very small railway 200 miles from HQ ...

Looking at SPB Mais output, possibly the Devon book was too late (published 1938). The earlier books were more London-centric, i.e. looking at leisure destinations that were within an easy journey from London. Whether the LSWR before them published such works I don't know, though I do have in my possession a guide to the South Downs published by the LBSCR, so such things weren't completely unknown.

Tom