SVR General Discussion

An agreement has been reached between the SVR and Highley Parish council over the future of Route 45 cycleway between the Country Park and Hampton. Both Sustrans and Shropshire Council had pulled out of the agreement due to financial problems.
https://kidderminsterstandard.co.uk...lway-loved-riverside-path-saved-from-closure/

 

15 minutes ago. 4150 reached Kidderminster for the first time with a loaded test run.

 

Does anyone happen to have and be in a position to share a version of SVR timetable D which includes arrival times as well as departures? I'm really struggling to ascertain section times etc when trying to type out the timetable 'fully'. For example I feel like I read somewhere that the 1055 from KR actually leaves at 1100?

 

I doubt you’ll find many willing to share the operations document with the WTT. Not really for public viewing.

Fairly straight forward though KDR-BY is 12 mins, BY-AY is 13, AY-HY 8, HY-HL 10, HL-BH 15

 

Correct, and the public times for Highley are in fact the arrival time, not departure time.

 

@2857Harry Thank you that will be very helpful and make my life much easier
@Kje7812 Thank you also - that solves many more issues I've been struggling with

Hopefully now, I should be in a position to pretty much construct the full timetable. I appreciate people are unlikely to want to publish the WTT - it's a shame it's no longer on the website, but understandable though.

 

I wonder if their financial problems are local to this particular situation, or more general? If the latter, that could have implications for several heritage lines, where Sustrans is in charge of sections of their track-bed.

PS: The OP was depending on the story in the Kidderminster media; maybe that reporter got some details wromg.

Noel

 

Thur, 13.30 & 17.00 off Kiddy, facing Bridgnorth.

 

I've heard elsewhere that Sustrans isn't flushed with cash.

 

The planning team for the 1940s weekend have posted this morning that the decision has been made higher up the chain of command that only British, Home Force and Allied uniforms will be accepted at this weekend's continuation of the event to "avoid potential offence".

It's been met with mixed responses (as anything these days is).

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DhV3LtN1a/

 

It is a tough call. Really none of these things can represent the war, from a railway perspective often the stock or locos are wrong (although the SVR has more chance than most at accuracy) but what is trying to be depicted? If it is billed as Britain in the war I guess that is one thing, but if it is a "war event" then viewing it from just one side seems to be whitewashing history, however bad that history may be.
Maybe in this current age an subject that upsets many, and best avoided.

I wonder how history on this sort of stuff will be taught in schools in 20 or 30 years time, just igored?

 

As far as a railway event set in wartime is concerned, surely the only 'enemy' troops should be POWs?
Pat

 

As someone who has always made a point of avoiding such events, I've found the events that imagine themselves into Europe really weird - and that's before getting into the whole vexed question of which uniforms reenactors wear.

Based on what's been visible on published material, the idea of events being a historical portrayal has always struck me as very troubling, as the source for many seems to have been a cross between Dad's Army and 'Allo, 'Allo. If anything whitewashes history, it's that deeply sanitised view of a real, horrible, period. I've had most time for those that have claimed to portray the Home Front during the war - however limited that may be, it's at least vaguely credible for a railway in rural England to attempt to show.

As for the history syllabus, I've every confidence that my (as yet unconceived) grandchild(ren) will have every opportunity to study the period when their time comes - just as I did in my time

 

I agree. I've always found these re-enactment events quite questionable to be honest, especially those that used to have mock 'arrests' etc. People/stations/trains dressed up to recreate a particular era is fine, but I simply don't see the point of having Nazi's wandering around.

Incidentally, the linked Facebook post above contains quite a few responses that are a great illustration of how culture war froth feeds itself online to the benefit of social media companies like Meta/Facebook. At least one 'troll' appears to have put up a photo of the cast of 'Allo Allo' claiming they are 'banned Germans at Bridgnorth station'. No doubt others won't bother checking this, blood pressure is raised, people write silly responses, the algorithm feeds it to more people who get angry.. etc etc. I hope the railway ignores it.

 

I have never had any enthusiasm for these railway wartime events for a different reason - namely because they don't (and indeed can't) give any idea of just how awful it was for railwaymen in WW2. My grandfather was a driver at Ashford and some of the issues he had to face were horrendous - bomb damage to the tracks and stations and sometimes having to work phenomenally long shifts because the disruption caused by German action meant there was no one to relieve him. Personally, I think that from a railwayman's point of view, events commemorating those years are best avoided. Still, if other people enjoy them and it makes money for the railways, I'm not going to object.

 

It's not how it's taught in schools, but how it is twisted by those with an agenda.
At this distance we have generally lost those who were maimed physically or mentally, so the survivor bias is worse. When Dad's Army was written, it was seen by many who had lived through it, or seen the effects on those who did. That element is lost now. Coupled with some, hem, questionable attempts to co-opt "blitz spirit" over COVID and brexit, and you have an immensely toxic cocktail.

In spite of what you may think, not all brits pluckily whistled while they worked as the bombs dropped. That famous photo of the milkman walking through a bombed street is a fake, the "milkman" is a photographer's assitant. The declassified reports on the Coventry bombing carry plenty of reports of panic. Now the generation who were old enough to know what really happened have died off, it's a false impression.

What of course is interesting is that for many, noteably women, the war created economic and sexual freedom of a sort not seen before.

As for German uniforms, showing them in a uk railway is clearly (channel islands aside) NOT showing a side of the war. There were no non-PoW Germans in uniform about anywhere near a UK railway. (Interestingly, at the end of the war, the Allied created an entirely made-up category of not-PoWs to avoid their Geneva convention duties to the German troops. But that bit never gets mentioned).

But yes, as a historian, I would cross the street to avoid anything to do with ww2 reenactments of that sort.

I'm very glad we won, utterly respect those that lived through it, but utterly refuse to condone or be part of any glamourisation of it.

 

Indeed, and then some use it as an excuse for a piss up.

 

If it was a true war event, it would be one train probably late being sidelined to allow more important traffic to pass. All of these war events would be better pitching as VE/ VJ celebrations since they're completely ahistoric knees ups anyway.

 

It would be interesting to do it properly, send half the men away, put any kids from cities in the care of others, ration the food and cut back the trains.
(Probably actually arranging for bombing and deaths would be a touch too far).

 

As mentioned above, I feel most WW2 events at heritage armies veer on 1940s cosplay than any legitimate attempt at education. As mentioned above though, you wouldn't see any German troops, never mind SS, on a random British branch line so it's a decision I can understand.

I do feel that while some German re-enactors are probably very sincere in wanting to simply depict historical outfits, there is definitely a contingent that are not. See the below article where a bunch of SS costumers in Sheringham styled themselves as, to quote themselves, "Fighters against Communist Russia.". Anyone who tries to soften or deflect the forces they represent raises eyebrows.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-66856678