Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

A very good question! To be honest, I suspect - but those with more hands-on experience may have different views - that the number of passengers who get off at KL to to walk to PE and back are probably not that large (and of course there are also those who get off there to enjoy a country walk back to WB) and the loss of such a facility might not have too much of an impact. After all, there are/were other heritage railways that run/ran to temporary termini for many years under such arrangements. However, I would agree that in general it would seem to be a retrograde step :-(

For example, it used to be the case on the ESR that all you could do at Mendip Vale was to get off, watch the run-round, and then get back on again - there was no public road or foot access of any kind. Even when they did build a footpath to the nearest public road they only sold single tickets to people to ride from Cranmore to MV, then get off at MV and walk back to Cranmore via the lanes etc; it used to be (and still was when I was there last) the case that you could not turn up at MV and buy a single to ride to Cranmore.

 

Dave, I'm unsure of your business management experience, but important decisions tend not to be made by guys over a mug of tea or propping up a bar. The Trust is spending £200k on an access track to a workshop which doesn't exist yet, & for some reason £100k in creating staff living accommodation. In the same way it could choose to invest in relocation of facilities from WB (& indeed will have to one day), were that the best course of action (& provided the necessary funds haven't been expended....)

It's simply not rational to make qualitative & subjective claims about business direction. Good decisions are based on hard numbers, and a range of options will need to explored & costed before a sound decision is made.

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I hope you will forgive me if I say that I think your posts can be contradictory. You want “togetherness” but you feel it cannot be achieved. You want to let EA/YVT deal with their own challenges, but have great friends on the ground. Do you not think that all this points quite firmly at two conclusions; that the current set up is dysfunctional as a structure; that the only impediment to a better structure is within the relationships between various boards?

So much energy, time and manpower is being p****d up the wall for want of spending a little time getting the governance right and building bridges instead of walls internally and then externally, so that, the people on the ground doing the job at the sharp end are supported and enabled, not obstructed.

I am quite convinced that this railway can be built. I’m prepared to believe that not only can it be done within 10 or 15 years, but that it must be. But, and I say this without any personal animosity, not by the current trustees, who lack the vision, experience and competence. They have achieved great things, but their race is run. The next stage requires a different approach.

 

Oh and one thing I do agree with @DaveE about is that those on the ground need to be “taken along”. They are and essential component of success.

 

I'm sorry but I think it would be a huge mistake to even attempt it, the attraction Woody Bay is, how people speak of it, the charm and the affinity people have with it, any move beyond extension from there would be disastrous.

I'm my view Woody Bay is now the spiritual home of the L&B for so many.

Look to do things in parallel, but effectively shut WB and move and open somewhere else now is just plain nuts, the cost, the logistics, personnel cost, set up costs, a tea room to move workshop machinery and on and on.

That's without what demands to be done day in day out, year in year out, land upkeep, required drain clearance, fences, and a whole heap more.

 

That’s an emotional response and perfectly understandable, but if you want to see the railway prosper it won’t help.

The line between WB and KL is landlocked. Forget extension to CFL, it’s a not very creative way to burn through more money to no effect.

The choices for WB are:
1. Face the £M bill to go north
2. Prepare a better bid to go south to BG, also £M and with the additional jeopardy of current local opposition.

Tobbes set out a plan worth considering as an alternative. As @Isambard! says though it will need the consideration of options and relative resources to make a rational choice. We shouldn’t race headlong at Option C which just has no obvious return for the investment.

I’m very sceptical about the purchase of OSHI, but as we are stuck with it, and as there appears to be an opinion (reasonably justified I think) that this investment and the railway would benefit each other, it’s worth considering how to make them mutually support each other. Two separate operations doesn’t fill me with glee either, but it is a stepping stone. If the time that there is two operations is kept short maybe it is OK.

We need to step up the tempo. The old adage time is money is true in a number of ways. We need to get on with building this railway. An incremental and piecemeal approach isn’t going to work. We need to do the work to identify the best pathway that we can. And stop doing things because they are “doing something “

 

Here we go again.
"Can't leave Woody Bay, we've got a new tea hut"
Except the geniuses in charge have just purchased a rival eatery several miles from the railway. Everybody who buys a sandwich at Woody Bay is not having lunch at the OSH. Maybe they wouldn't, but currently the railway is trying to operate two rival food establishments within a few miles of each other
Anytime someone suggests operating a different section of line, such as adjacent to the new multi-million pound investment at Blackmoor Gate, you insist it mustn't rival the existing Woody Bay run. It must be an inferior offering, without steam, with inferior rolling stock.
I get it, in your view Woody Bay is the spiritual home of the L&B. It isn't to me. I honestly think the spiritual home will be wherever Lyn and the carriages are running.

 

Surely the arguments against decamping to Blackmoor Gate will be trotted out against extending towards Lynton- eg. there is the locomotive shed built on the formation, machine tools etc. Without a new maintenance and operating base, there cannot be any northward move.

 

We'll have to differ, @DaveE - look at what A1SLT have done with their works, and as @21B (who knows a thing or two about these things, I think you'll find) notes, it's about planning and delivery.

You keep making this point @DaveE, but repetition doesn't make it right. Closing our minds to how to solve the extension problem and banging on with Plan A doesn't make it more likely that Plan A will succeed.

The problems with CFL have repeatedly been aired here. Even if it were possible to get planning permission for it as a stand-alone extension (which is frankly far from clear), it doesn't make any sense for the reasons that @21B captured above. And that's before we get to the VAT issue, and how do we extend from there. It's flogging a dead horse that even if it worked does nothing about the Parracombe issues.

And that's before we appreciate that we don't have the money that the Trust continues to wrongly claim publicly we do: the simple fact is that if we were to get planning permission for Bridge 65 on Monday, we couldn't afford to let a contract becuase Messers Miles and Cowling have spent the money on OSHI (and then lied about it for months, unhappily).

No one here is suggesting that Woody Bay would not continue to have some form of operation. But if in five years' time I were offered the choice of a four mile run from Blackmoor Gate to Bratton Fleming with a works to care for the locomotives and get the carriages out of the weather and a battery shuttle from WB to Killington Lane UNTIL THE TWAO GETS US THE CP POWERS TO ACQUIRE THE ROUTE THROUGH PARRACOMBE (emphasis for the avoidance of doubt that I'm suggesting giving up on Killington Lane to Blackmoor Gate), or CFL then I'd take the former every day and twice on Sunday.

Correct. So why close your ears to any options other than CFL, given that there has been no credible options analysis - the 'Consultation' this spring was nothing of the sort.

I'm much less pessimistic on getting everyone to agree. But to get that agreement, there needs to be a respectful, evidence-led conversation about the options and the way forward. At the moment, six of the Trustees are flat-out refusing to even work with three of the Trustees, so I'd suggest that they need to have a pretty serious conversation with themselves about the sorts of behaviours that are going to lead to the extension we all want. And that's before we get to the troubling reports of bad behaviour by one Trustee towards the wife of another at Woody Bay during the Gala.

Amen, @Isambard! - and that the selected plan is affordable and deliverable. Thank goodness the Minority Report revealed the actual financial position, rather than the spin and misdirection that we get from the Trust.

 

The two are not in competition and that's been said by the folks who are actually there every day. It's quite possible for the two to co-exist. It only becomes competition if you run it as competition.

 

Come on Colin - publish board minutes to members of the public? They don't even publish board minutes to all members of the board!

 

There is much we have to agree to disagree on, and that's the problem isn't it? So many have differing opinions, thoughts, views etc on what is the right way forward and each fight tooth and nail to defend their corner.

In truth there is no perfect ideal way forward and with the money and human resource constraints it is a case of do what we can where we can, the whole L&B family is in that boat.

For the next step I cannot see why we even need to go to battery operated at either OSHI or Woody Bay. Providing we can get the crew Axe is quite capable of hauling 2 carriages at OSHI with a small diesel back up and Woody Bay has Lyn, Pilton and when done Sir George Newnes. The carriages in the style of the L&B but cheaply made toast rack type is to keep the spirit of the heritage alive but keeping those costs down at this time. Eventually they can be upgraded (eg change the body) as time and funds allow.

But we can go over and over all this and it isn't going to really get us anywhere. It isn't just the Trust that's divided, the membership is, and no it isn't divided because the Trust is, it's divided because there are just so many options and so many bits of this railway we now own and so many have invested time and energy in so many of those different areas.

I guarantee whatever strategy you come up with, there will be those who oppose and don't agree with it.

 

EXMOOR ASSOCIATES shareholders are reminded that following the recent General Meeting, online voting ends at midnight on Saturday 7th October. Results will be announced on the EA website shortly afterwards.

 

Thank you, still got to do mine which I will before the deadline.

 

That may be true @DaveE but the best way to get agreement is to have an open discussion with actual numbers and risks and opportunities detailed and thrashed through. It is a sorry testament to the current state of affairs that we have had a more interesting and inclusive discussion here over the last few months than we've (ever?) seen from the Trust.

I appreciate the sensitivities of your position, Dave, but the situation is actually quite straightforward. At the moment, we have six Trustees - including, sadly, Mr Summers - who flat out refuse to work with the other three. Not only is extremely unprofessional, but it is a direct insult to the Membership who elected them; it's disgraceful behaviour. If these six Trustees refuse to work with those elected by the Membership, then they should resign.

That the Minority Report of three Trustees was required by the misrepresentations or worse from the other six Trustees is tragic and shows how bad things have gotten. It makes for extraordinary reading, and the response from Messers Miles and Cowling actually only shows that the Minority Report is correct in its most important concerns. Let us hope that this marks a low point and that there is a pretty significant rethink now to be open, inclusive and cooperative - starting with bringing their colleagues on the Trust board in.

 

Dave, do you want to see the line recreated over a greater length and incorporating more than one of the original stations or do you think it should remain as it is now?

 

I cannot see how its growth can be other than piecemeal without that big pile of dosh... And where is that coming from?

 

If it is to be piecemeal, what is the best estimate of timescales - being realistic?

 

While I am not a member and simply an armchair follower what surprised me when planning consent was granted is that there didnt seem to be any money in place or fundraising and the more I see coming out of this discussion I doubt if the project management skills exist in the management of the organisation either. It is indeed starting to look as though those who might have the ability to get the extension built are actually being excluded instead

 

As I said, it depends on dosh. More dosh equals a shorter timescale than one with less dosh. Furthermore, some pieces might well be more expensive to get than they should reasonably be. For example, to buy the northern part of Bratton Fleming over a million pounds is required to buy a house plus trackbed. The house can then be resold minus the trackbed but all this costs. Then again, there is a 20m width of land required north of Chelfham currently a garden. As for a new alignment to reach a proposed new Lynton terminus, goodness only knows what that might cost. Then there are new bridges required to cross A-roads. A piecemeal but detailed plan is required. What do you think? Perhaps a generation? Less, if a fairy godmother can be found.