West Somerset Railway General Discussion

If money was no object, and there was land available, Yes i could agree, its a no brainer to provide covered accommodation for your stock, and Had land been available, then i would expect there would have been more railways with them, but as ever there are contrasting needs do we modernise our toilet blocks, build better refreshment rooms, extend platforms, build waiting shelters, to attract more custom and retain it, or do we build something that does not immediately add to the visitor experience? generally a carriage shed is some way down the priority list, and its generally once you have provided better customer facilities and workshop capabilies that thoughts turn to having covered roads for your coaches,

 

Paul, whilst I agree with your point about undercover accommodation I really have to ask you, have you personally been involved in fundraising or applying for planning permission for such a project?
It so easy to say x,y and z should be done when you have the 20/20 hindsight that someone like yourself has.

I say this as someone who at first hand is seeing the grey hairs shoot through on their friend having to jump through so many hoops on one planning app and having a relative who’s also involved in planning.
I only have to look at the work across the way from me involving the remodelling work at 31A and how bloody straightforward that was…

 

Nothing to do with railways is ''easy'''. Planning issues are something I've had little to deal with, thankfully

 

The incident that occurred on Sunday looks as if it was just mindless vandalism, broken windows and smashed toilets, not specialist thieves trying to get equipment or materials. Majority of heritage railway incidents like this is because the rolling stock is on display. Put it in a shed and hardly anybody thinks twice.

 

Carriage sheds are normally permitted development if the shed is within the boundary of the LRO. Local councils hate this and resist it and will tell you otherwise, but….

 

It was moved down the station end for a week then recovered in tarpaulin at the driver’s end which was open to weather put back in stone sidings. Then moved back to the station End and now back to the sidings, There was a plan to Repair it but I would think that’s huge chunk of money to do and long project.

 

Then rather pontificate about what ‘they’ should do maybe just keep it to yourself?
In a perfect world we’d all have covered accommodation for locos and stock, but as I say having seen at close hand someone having to deal with planning it really isn’t as simple as you think.
Some people deserve a little bit of slack being cut.

 

In a number of instances ''slack'' has been given for decades. I never said it was easy.

 

Vandalism has increased over the decades. I can give some slack.

 

Possibly so or a recurring human sin perhaps which needs effort and and expense to moòerate?

 

Me too and my comment here is not aimed critically at any HRs per say.
I'd just say that wanton vandalism has always been a thing and I recognise how we might imagine things to be worsening as we age. I'm not so sure and there's far less 'younger' generation wandering the streets as there once was IMHO.
The one thing that has changed over the decades is the cost of using security cameras and ease at providing to either deter or catch criminality. I doubt there's a car showroom that isn't peppered with cameras these days to protect their assets and many homes such as mine have multiple cheap to run cameras to capture anyone on my property - all viewed remotely via smartphone technology. No panacea but possibly an advantage in some situations.

 

Smartphone accessible CCTV does raise issues about who has access to the images, and how that is controlled - including how that's used.

 

Carriage sheds are not easy and are expensive, but I would strongly disagree that should be low down the priority list for any railway.
It's a false economy to pour loads of money and volunteer hours into restoring rolling stock only for the weather (& vandals) to undo everything in just a few years. This is especially fast in sea air. The youngest Mk 1 is around 60 years old now, there aren't any more coming, railways need to look after what they have. Carriages for years were the Cinderella items of heritage railways, in the shadow of more glamorous locomotives. But now there is no longer a cheap supply of replacements or parts off the big railway. But, the reality is, rolling stock is where customers spend most of their time. Scruffy carriages promote a poor image.
The SVR's enormous shed was quite unique when it went up and few eyebrows were raised at the time, but it must have saved the railway 10s of 1000's pounds by now. I'm glad they put it up when they did.

 

Quite literal example of fixing the roof while the sun was shining that was. Unfortunately, and it's not just preserved railways but pretty much every aspect of life, not much of that actually goes on. Must be human nature.

 

I would hope every railway has a data protection policy by now. CCTV can be added to this with a fairly straightforward risk assessment and suitable mitigation. Ensure nominated persons are in charge of the data, it is only kept for a certain amount of time and used only for the purposes of crime prevention where there is an evidenced risk. I have not long had to do this at my own workplace.

 

All fine - but access by smartphone app breaks some of the controls that might otherwise exist if someone had to see it "on site".

 

It’s also on a brownfield site in an urban environment without anybody to complain about it spoiling the view… those in Hayling Island please take note…

 

An excuse for not doing anything? Hopefully not.