Bluebell track laying South from EG?

At the risk of tempting fate, looking at Mr Philpot's latest photos, that waste must be as dry (and therefore as lightweight) as its ever going to get. I don't know how much rainfall there has been at the Bluebell but here in Lincolnshire we seem to have had less than 20 wet days this year so far! I got my tenner certificate today (very quick too). Please donate a tenner if you can spare it. If we all do that then the Bluebell can put right this short sighted wrong and we can see services to EG again from Sheffield Park!

 

I was up in London yesterday and saw a long train of yellow bogie wagons passing through Kensington Olympia; they look like the ones in the pictures and videos of the rubbish removal trains - are they? Perhaps someone on here will be able to tell me.

The pictures of it are now on my Flickr site in the 'Stop Press!' Collection for new pictures; see the Set dated 6th October :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/train-pix/collections/72157627090322278/

 

I can confirm that 66708 'Jayne' was at East Grinstead on Wednesday, so yes you have photographed the Bluebell waste train.

Chris

 

Jayne was down again on Thursday, i watched her pull out with 1000 tons of rubbish as I walked out of Sainsburys

 

Thanks to 'Axe' and 'Spindizzy' for confirming what I saw. I have amended the captions accordingly. The pictures are now also in the 'Modern Miscellany' Set on my Flickr site. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/train-pix/sets/72157626183901157/ )

Just for once, I was in the right place at the right time it seems!

 

Robert Philpot's pics of the incoming train on MOnday 10th show a lot (probably over 100 tonnes) of leftover new ballast still in the wagons from the weekend activity on the underground. Assuming that is the full story, Robert points out that the tragedy is that no only has this ballast gone off to a landfill again at Appleford but the Bluesbell has effectively paid to take it there!
It is nobody's fault on the railway that an army of PW volunteers could not be mustered to shovel the ballast out before the wagons were refilled but I sincerely hope that the Bluebell's geneous donors have not effectively paid for the disposal of high quality useful and very expensive ballast that never even came from the railway!
I hope there is a coda to this.

 

Do we know if the nearly full wagons of ballast were emptied before or not?

 

Robert Philpott's photos shows the empty wagons left at the tip and those with ballast in taken away for emptying.

 

Bluebell have confirmed that the wagons were emptied and did not go to landfill.

 

Week 2 of the current phase (WBR 4) saw 4,128 tons depart - again, remember this was 4 days' digging, not 5 due to the wagons being needed on another contract on the Friday. The total removed over all phases of the digging is now about 55,000 tons with probably another 15,000 tons or so to go in this phase.

Tom

 

Yesterday's waste train was designated "The Chit Chat Express" for which several photo images and videos can be accessed from the Bluebell's 'What's New' page at http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/whats_new.html.

The "Chit Chat Express" ran from Sheffield Park to Imberhorne South, from where the headboard was carried over the tip to East Grinstead by members of the Bluebell's Yahoo! e-mail group, and placed on "their" train carrying 1000 tonnes of rubbish away on the main line. Members of the e-mail group have so far raised enough money (> £50k) to pay for a second waste train, and are currently fund-raising for the 3rd.

Chris

 

Photos of the walk over the tip, showing progress within the tip, have been posted by Dave Clarke:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/extension3363/6243745699

 

A new update from Mr Philpot today - looks like things are really moving forward!!

http://www.philpot.me/cutting3.html

 

More pictures and great progress. Have a look on Mr. Philpot's page

http://www.philpot.me/cutting3.html

 

Well done to Robert Philpot for keeping us informed, but what about the official project team? There has been no report on the website since WBR4 week one - just the odd snippet and we are now at the end of week 4! It would be very little trouble to post a short summary report on the website if only to keep the thousands of contributors and wellwishers updated - especiallly since many of these people will be expected to contribute again to see the job through. Someobody in the project team, especially someone responsible for communications, should try and keep us informed as to what our previous contributions are achieving.
Just for once, try and break with the Bluebell tradition on this one eh lads?

 

I'll second those comments.

 

There have been fairly regular updates on both the whats new pages of the Bluebell website and the Bluebell facebook site. They quite often seem to do a report at the end of a spell of waste trains, so I guess one will come out in a couple of weeks or so.

 

Since the start of 'Waste by Rail 4' there have been news updates relating to the waste clearance published on the Bluebell website on 23rd, 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th September, and on 4th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 14th and 21st October.

Chris

 

Chris, please don't set yourself up for a rebuttal - the majority of what you list as news updates are far from that. What contributors would like to know - and should be entitled to know - are proper progress reports, not single sentences with no context, or photographs with no indication of whether progress is on schedule - or on track - jollies on the chit chat express. Don't try and claim that many sponsors outside the project team even know what the objective actually is. Why is there such suspicion that revealing any information at all is like giving away official secrets? I know that many of the project team are not civil engineers by profession - and nobody will deny they are doing a fantastic job - but there clearly is an extraction plan, a schedule, a timetable against which progress can be measured - it is good PR to provide informative reports regardless of whether progress is bang on or not . The last proper report of the week's progress was posted on October 4th and if other reports are not contiguous nobody can have any idea whether the overall progress is on track or not. If the railway want to maximise contributions and increase goodwill they need to be putting out more professional and informative progress reports, not relying on visitors and other members posting the odd snap at random. I am sad (though not surprised given the usual defensiveness and suspicion) that you felt the need to rush to the defence of such an obvious and unnessary deficiency. Perhaps instead you would like to tell us a) the total tonnage removed against target to date b) the engineering plan for the coming week - c) the plan for the removal of capping d) the actual route of the track e) the plan for the final (we hope) WBR5. And yes I am a member and I do get the BLuebell News like many others on this thread!

 

"Chris, please don't set yourself up for a rebuttal - the majority of what you list as news updates are far from that. What contributors would like to know - and should be entitled to know - are proper progress reports, not single sentences with no context, or photographs with no indication of whether progress is on schedule - or on track - jollies on the chit chat express. Don't try and claim that many sponsors outside the project team even know what the objective actually is. Why is there such suspicion that revealing any information at all is like giving away official secrets? I know that many of the project team are not civil engineers by profession - and nobody will deny they are doing a fantastic job - but there clearly is an extraction plan, a schedule, a timetable against which progress can be measured - it is good PR to provide informative reports regardless of whether progress is bang on or not . The last proper report of the week's progress was posted on October 4th and if other reports are not contiguous nobody can have any idea whether the overall progress is on track or not. If the railway want to maximise contributions and increase goodwill they need to be putting out more professional and informative progress reports, not relying on visitors and other members posting the odd snap at random. I am sad (though not surprised given the usual defensiveness and suspicion) that you felt the need to rush to the defence of such an obvious and unnessary deficiency. Perhaps instead you would like to tell us a) the total tonnage removed against target to date b) the engineering plan for the coming week - c) the plan for the removal of capping d) the actual route of the track e) the plan for the final (we hope) WBR5. And yes I am a member and I do get the BLuebell News like many others on this thread! "

I can't agree more
regards
noel