Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

You seem very keen to turn the railway into something it isn’t. From my point of view, the Welsh Highland, with South African locos and modern infrastructure leaves me rather cold - not somewhere I’d go out of my way to visit. Whereas the opportunity exists in Devon to create a very good facsimile of what was a charming railway. Pubs with umpteen bars and Darjeeling carriages would rather detract from that outcome.

Tom

 

My concern is that ideas are focusing on individuals' ideas of how they might use an extended L&B, not the overall viability of a pub business located at a railhead. Ice creams will I'm sure be a good idea - but what seem like high margins when going round the cash & carry soon erode once staff costs have to be paid, and the weather turns against. Ditto sandwiches, which also have a short shelf life.

The one thing I absolutely agree on is that if the railway reaches Blackmoor, how OSHI operates will be affected in some way as the visitors to the site change.

 

Sorry Colin, but with regard to the signalling at least there has been quite a lot of 'design' work done over the last few years.

Admittedly much of it is 'conjectural', insofar as it is not exactly easy to define the signalling for a particular location when - as yet, at least the last time I asked - no one has finalised the various track layouts let alone produced a set of Operational Requirements against which the S&T Engineer (if we had one) could produce some possible options. However a 'baseline' in terms of a set of Signalling Principles has existed since early 2020 to define the basic 'look & feel' of signalling on the rebuilt L&BR, from which the following is a very brief extract:-

"It is an objective of the rebuilt L&BR to capture the atmosphere of the original line, as far as is possible in the present day. [R1] includes the following requirements relating to this:

• L&BR signals and equipment appropriate to the period portrayed, or SR types of the period if no L&BR precedent exists.
  Rationale: A conscious effort is needed to achieve an appropriate appearance for the signalling whilst ensuring modern levels of safety, with the visual impact of non-original signalling minimised.

• Operational signage for use by staff and visitors to the railway to reflect L&BR or SR styles of the period.
  Rationale: There is no particular need to adopt modern railway signage, provided that the signs are fit-for-purpose and are defined in the Rule Book.

• Operational signage used by the general public (e.g. at level crossings) to be compliant with appropriate current standards....."

[ R1 refers to Phase 2A Project Requirements, LBR/REBB/002/1e ]

There is certainly a draft scheme (or two) for both Blackmoor and Whistlandpound, and quite a bit of work has been done also on possible changes that may be needed at WB, but again all of this is still in the draft stage until such time as 'the powers that be' may make any decisions. So to some extent the work is 'in limbo' for the time being.....

 

Oh god.

 

I agree that we always need to talk to other railways and that the long term operation of the L&BR is going to be very different from say the WHR, after all, they do have a very special USP (unique selling point) in the use of Garratts.

I am not suggesting for one moment that we do the same, however the USP of the L&BR by itself, is not going to cut it in the very long term. Beside galas, special events and different locos to see what else do you guys think the L&BR should be doing?

The biggest problem we have, is that this is the only railway in the UK that is going to be rebuilt after 80 odd years, which by the way has been sold off to over 100 landowners, with some who want to sell their trackbed to us, while others don't.

It goes without saying that the railway is trying to be a good neighbour, but sometimes it can get a bit difficult .

 

As far as I know I am only talking about carriages not the rest of the railway

 

And that is the "Oh God" moment - the key attraction of the L&B is caught up in "Perchance she is only sleeping". Radical changes to stock, buildings, etc. would take the L&B down a completely different path, IMHO one that would undermine it's chances of success.

 

Hi Chris I am more than aware of the amount of work behind the scene you have done so far . But I got the impression this was more pointed at what the tourist coaches will look like. Beside having to comply with modern day rolling stock and other such regulation is going to be a challenge for anyone. To be honest I don't know of anyone currently in the L&BR who has or can design new coaches to the railway requirements and still meet the current regulations .

 

You may be right - as you may guess, C&W are not my forte However, if the railway has been able to re-build/re-create and operate a number of ex-L&BR coaches already, apparently with little problem regarding 'current regulations', then why should they not be able to continue with the rest of the 'fleet'?

As to the 'railway requirements', are they formally specified anywhere? To what does EAST work ?

 

My point is we are talking about the tourist market and not the railway enthusiast market, which are two total different requirements.

The old coaches have been granted grandfathers rights and so don't need to comply with the current coach regulation, where as the new tourist stock if design correctly, must comply with them, to start with different colour doors and modern LED lightings comes to mind they have to comply with this

https://www.orr.gov.uk/guidance-compliance/rail/health-safety/laws/interoperability

 

None of which requires or even necessarily supports designs such as that from India.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It was just a suggestion and a starting point for the discussion. I am sure the Darjeeling has it only regulations it has to comply with. For what it is worth I happen to like the old LNWR railway Observation coach on the Bluebell as an example that could be looked at

https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pics/1503.html

 

Or you could look at these:-

https://www.rhb.ch/fileadmin/_processed_/0/2/csm_panoramawagen_20060905094943_k_f50fede5f6.jpg

 

I wish I could unsee those, but unfortunately they are burned deep onto my retina.
Please stop, it's distressing, and we obviously have very divergent views on this.
Incidentally, the F&WHR have built quite a few superb replicas of long- gone rolling stock, and with the one concession of a steel underframe and roller bearings, seem to have satisfied regulatory requirements.

 

is this a wind up?

 

Maybe, but how does that apply to coaching stock? After all, on other heritage railways the tourists seem to be happy IMHO to travel in the same coaches as the enthusiasts. In fact, is not part of the appeal of the L&BR-era stock what I would call - no offence intended to the railway - the 'twee' nature of it. I don't hear of (say) the IoWSR having to build a fleet of modern stock 'cos the tourist shun the Victorian offerings.

 

I am not sure what it applies to - All heritage line have to cater for both tourists and enthusiasts - and they are not mutually exclusive.

 

I rather think that it is - I have now come to regard most of the posts from this source as a 'wind-up'.

 

What makes you think that tourists will not want to travel in "old" carriages - surely the heritage nature of the line will be part of it attraction? I don't know if different coloured doors will be mandatory but I don't see why LED lighting should be a problem when it could be set up to mimic either incandescent electric or gas mantle lights.

 

As I understand it we only have enough parts to build another three old style L&BR coaches which can command Grandfathers rights, after that we are then into new builds, just like the new steam engines we will have one day.

Every new item of rolling stock has to have some kind of type approval before they can get built as they need to also comply with the current regs.

Who remembers the Clapham train accident with slam door mk1 stock? Just to give you some background to this one of the results was that it was felt that slam door stock was not safe due to teleiscopic action, but after the report was published there was a blanket ban on such stock on the main line if it didn't have a central locking system in place hence why we now have sliding doors on a lot of passenger coaches this day and age.

That is all right if you have an electrical supply to operate all these functions on a modern day railway carriage. But on a steam hauled heritage railway, you don't have any such luck. Again this is another reason why the maximum line speed is 20mph on Heritage railways.

The reason the IOWSR and others can use old carriage bodies is that they existed before Clapham and just like the L&BR coaches, they too have grandfather rights.

Again as I understand it, if you can prove that am item was in use before Clapham, grandfather right may be applied, it is just a pity that there never was a 2ft gauge graveyard for old coaches, why do you think that a number of narrow gauge railways in the uk jumped at the chance to acquire coaches from Europe about twenty years ago, it was down to this fact that they could see this issue coming in.

A rebuilt L&BR coach costs us about £150,000 to do. But you can expect to double that for each new build simply because you have to pay for someones liability insurance to put their head on the chopping block as the designer, just in case anything goes wrong while the carriage is in use.

I think that once it is fully open the L&BR operation is going to need somewhere in the region of 40+ carriages or a round 30 new built carriages, I saw somewhere that the last FR Pullman observation car cost over £200,000. Rebuilding this railway was never going to be cheap. Many years ago I suggested that it could cost anywhere up to £200 million pounds, but no one took it seriously, but seeing what is going on I might not be far short of that figure by the time it is up and running.

The question on how does the like of the FR able to build replica WHR coaches from the past? Very easy they just need to make sure that the replica complies with todays regulations, which I am sure we could do with the L&BR carriage, but again I stress that there are two markets we need to cater for the railway enthusiast and the tourist.