West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Anyone who has a FB account and has not looked at this should do so now. The PWay gangs deserve all the credit we can give them for ignoring all the rubbish going on around them and simply getting on with the job. Well done.

Anyone clever enough with computers to copy and paste that entry on here for those without FB to see? (if copyright allows etc.)

 

Now that is the sort of question that you think might be justifiably asked and an answer expected. So, what chance do you think of an answer being forthcoming?

 

@Sidmouth kindly posted the link earlier today in post #37635. Anybody remotely interested in the WSR should check it out.

 

Yes, that was the posy I was replying to.

The good news is that I appear to have been wrong in saying you have to have a FB account to view, it wouldn't let me view without logging in initially but now does not require it.. weird!!!

 

I cannot reply to every posting, but there are one or two points here which I'd like to correct. No criticism Martin - you weren't to know. Given all sorts of people read this, I'd just like to put the record straight. The design wasn't worked up by NR, but by professional railwaymen who have very recent and ongoing NR experience. The design forms part of the submission to the ORR. The equipment was not all ordered at the beginning - that is not how these projects work. Some is, for example, ordered by the main contractor, so no equipment has been "sitting on the shelf with the warranty ticking away". The budget was not lost: it was a local authority capital allocation, which can be carried forward (if there is Council approval to do so). Until the signalling technicians started dismantling, the crossing could have been operated under local control: however this is very unsatisfactory and it is impossible to say whether it would have lasted for the 2020 season.

 

For a given water capacity, a tender with a well tank will be lower than a similar tender of the same capacity with a flat-bottomed tank.

There is a comment in Holcroft that the GWR preferred low tenders - and hence favoured well tanks - because it made coal handling easier at coal stages. Subsequently they moved to tanks with flat bottoms, presumably considering that reduced maintenance and ease of interchange of tanks and tender under frames was preferable to the coaling advantage. AIUI, the introduction of the first 4000 gallon GWR tenders also caused problems with some water cranes which were too low to allow access to the tenders - one of those non-obvious factors worth bearing in mind whenever people ask "why didn't X introduce innovation Y sooner?" - often there is a hidden infrastructure reason (low water crane, short turntable) that makes such introduction problematic until lots of other things change first.

Tom

 

I frequently have the same problem, usually when navigating via an embedded link (www.oneofthese.ok/facebook*). Looking out the self-same site, direct from a search engine produces a public FB site, no log-in needed. As you say, weird.

* example only, this site doesn't exist

 

What would be the point of asking? Look, we all know there are real problems, but in the past responding, from within and without, has not changed a damned thing. All we can do is watch and let them get on their way, to wherever it is they are going - I hope to a good end, but I'm not betting on it, sadly.

Noel

 

The ITV west headline news this evening featured the Bank Holiday weather and the masses flocking to the west country.

The cameras were on the front at Minehead with the announcement that 'Business is Booming'. Accommodation bookings were up 250% on 2019.

Unfortunately not all businesses were taking advantage of the fact. <BJ>

 

According to the WSR website the timetable for the day is https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/timetables/view/163. there are 3 services so that probably means all servicable carraiges in use. In the past
they had enough for 2 sets of 8 and 1 of 7. It depends whether the WSR is able to accomodate the tour passengers and prepared to alter the timetable passengers to give enough time in Watchet. I can see why they are talking about buses.

 

Fair enough if so, although I'd say there's a significant difference between being a GM and "just" being a director and being chairman.

 

I had a look again and agree. If a third set was available where would you stable it, after dropping the passengers at Watchet? Could you stable it in one of the platforms at Blue Anchor ? Is the loop bi-directional ?

 

What's the problem with taking the charter train to Watchet?

 

I think if I were the WSR Operations Manager, what would be exercising my mind would be how to handle the charter train during the layover; and the impact on timekeeping. If you go to Watchet, you've got to get everyone off (which will take a while); then get rid of the train to somewhere out of the way where it can be serviced; then do the same in reverse at departure. Trying to do that when you also don't have a functioning terminus: while I am sure it is doable, it adds risk to the operation (everything taking longer than you think it should). At the other end of the line, regardless of what has happened on the WSR, you need to do your level best to present the outgoing charter at the junction with Network Rail on time.

I think I have mentioned it before, but far and away the worst bit of timekeeping I've ever seen on a heritage railway was at a WSR gala about 12 or 15 years ago when there was an incoming charter. The charter arrived late - no fault of the WSR - but that started to cause a busy timetable to go wrong. Some hours later the outgoing train was then prioritised over all other traffic in order to meet the schedule for arrival at the NR boundary, which meant - because it was by then travelling outside its booked path along a busy single track line with long section times - that basically the rest of the timetable descended into chaos. I think we got back to Dunster on the last down service more than two hours late, and too late to get any food in the village. As a gala visitor interested in railways, I took it with a degree of equanimity, but I'd be less certain about the bucket and spade brigade doing likewise. It's worth remembering that the WSR's regular passengers on its own trains are its bread and butter, not those on a one-off charter promoted by someone else.

Hopefully the WSR will work out a realistic plan, but attempting an incoming train when you have degraded capacity to handle extra trains feels like a risk to me. If it were me, I absolutely would not be promising completion of the journey by bus just to ensure Minehead as a destination; that is just adding yet another timekeeping variable into the equation.

Tom

 

Few more photos of interest from our small PW Sunday gang on Washford Bank spot resleepering last weekend.

 

Connecting with the big railway is something that most railways don’t have to worry about. As Tom says, arriving excursions are outside your control yet you have to get them back on time and you have to be able to plan on the hoof. That needs good experienced people in Control. The NYMR quickly learned that such as a signal failure at Manchester Piccadilly can have a knock on effect with departure times from Pickering. How, you might ask? The signal failure delays the TPE train which calls at Middlesbrough which then occupies platform space required by the Northern service from and to Whitby which, in turn delays the NYMR service to Whitby and back to Pickering due to the limitations of single line working and priority of service. Such as this and similar things happen all too regularly and it’s out of your control.

 

There was an article in I think Modern Railways a few years back where they took as an example a single signal check outside Euston (so not even a signal failure) caused delays from Penzance to Inverness to Pwllheli and to Norwich because of all the inter-connected paths, delayed here meant a missed path there, late going for slow to fast/fast to slow, delaying another service which delayed another service, and I think it ended up taking about 12 hours to clear out of the system.

 

A recorded musing of Tom Rolt's (in Railway Adventure) noted that the cause of many a late departure of a Talyllyn train was down to late running on the Cambrian Coast Line and if investigated, could possibly be tracked back to such as a trifling signalling error, or a hot axlebox, many dozens of miles away, larconically noting that the same considerations didn't apply reciprocally, with nothing on the big railway arriving late at Paddington because Dolgoch had a fit of the sulks and refused to steam.