Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Nope, I don't subscribe to SR. What is the gist of the articles?

 

The first one is mainly about the various attempts to rebuild the railway over the years, and the second one is about the various challenges facing the railway today

 

The Yeo Valley Trust has now officially changed its name to the Barnstaple & Yeo Valley Railway Trust.
The Trustees decided to do this to better reflect the Objects of the Trust, which have not changed.

Look out too for their new website, coming soon… (that'll no doubt be my job for the next several weeks!)

 

A couple of updates on the L&B website worth looking at:
2025 Members' Forum - The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway
Work weekend, trackbed news and Santa - The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway

 

A refreshing - and somewhat surprising - change, in view of past experiences, to see a report of the recent Members' Forum available for all to see in the public News section of the website. What next - publication of Board Meeting Minutes ?

 

Yet still no obvious signs of joined-up strategic thinking by the BarnYoe/ExAss and L&B Trust factions acting together in any way. Maybe there's been discussions behind the scenes but I sadly predict no significant progress towards reopening a significant chunk of the L&B until new potential supporters & funders can see that all the supporting organisations are working together even if on separate sections.

An extension to Parracombe Halt is not a significant chunk. For the Trust it might count as a significant achievement after so long but it's just not exciting enough for anybody else.

 

The BYVRT ,as EA/YVT are now known, has seen that the carriage shelter project has unfortunately exceeded its planned budget so to hopefully help get this project completed as soon as possible they have in the last few hours offered to purchase a length of track bed immediately north of BFS that is owned by the LBRT for £30k and will pay for the legal fees, hopefully this will be discussed at the joint LBRT/CIC meeting being held this morning

 

Andy, Is this an official BYVRT press release? Seems a little premature to me. Let them at least hold their meeting first.

 

Whatever, it does seem a good idea IMHO as (a) the land lies "south of Blackmoor" anyway and (b) it should provide more scope for an embryonic resurgence at BF. Plus the Trust gets the extra 50% funding apparently needed for the carriage shelter work, which it can achieve by capitalising on one of its current assets.

 

If even the carriage shelter cannot be completed within budget, what hope is there for the reinstatement of any extension.

If there is a budgetary shortfall, was there any realism in the budget allocated for the project, especially as the problems cited surely could have been identified during the planning and site investigation phases and the potential implications built into the project costing?

 

A 50% overspend on a transport infrastructure project isn't unusual. In fact, it could be seen as quite minimal - just look at HS2!
An explanation for the overspend is given on the L&BRT website: https://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/news/view/carriage-shelter-mayor-update

 

I’d read that…

 

To be fair, AIUI the 'overspend' is for work not previously included in the original tender and therefore really a 'new extra'. Having said that, I think it might be valid to question whether this was a problem that might have been anticipated or not - do we have any civil engineers within our readership?

 

Surely there would have been a proper ground survey during the planning of the carriage shed and wouldn't a careful visual inspection of the headshunt and associated pointwork identify both life expired trackwork and the sleepers which needed replacement.

Furthermore, the anticipated workload of volunteers and likely work hours available from those volunteers must be known to managers, so why was it assumed that the work needed on the carriage shed could be undertaken by volunteer input? It seems it patently could not be and the contractors had to be asked to carry out the work instead.

Good project management means that you develop a comprehensive plan to start with, and stick to it, rather than be blown off course by circumstances and face the consequent time and cost over-runs

Just seems to me, as an outside observer, that better preparation could and should have been undertaken. It doesnt auger well for the future if a relatively simple project like the erection of a carriage shed faces such over-runs.

Presumably this now means that the carriages will need to spend another winter with just canvas protection against the vagaries of Exmoor weather.

 

That may be true, but I’ve been on well managed and estimated projects that have gone well over budget

 

A 50% overspend on a project that wasn’t (and still isn’t) fully funded in the first place is pretty poor.

 

Martyn, no its not an official press release by the BYVRT, that would be nothing to do with me. I just thought it should be mentioned that an offer of help has been made from one side to the other that would of course be advantageous to both parties, why keep it hidden, openess is the key factor here.

 

It is as much about perception as anything else.

Given the possibly unnecessary and certainly unseemly internecine machinations that have been laid bare in this thread over the past few years, the Trust had an opportunity to show that this was behind them and that it could move forward successfully with the development of the railway’s infrastructure.

HS2 it wasn't. It was the erection of a steel framed half-open sided shed over a pre-existing headshunt within the existing curtilage of the railway at Woody Bay.

And yet the project could not be brought in on time and budget.

There is a significant cost over-run for avoidable reasons. The reasons for the cost increases could all have been identified during the project initiation stage rather than seeming to come as a surprise during the construction phase.

If such a simple project causes such issues, how can investors and donors have faith in the organisation’s ability to manage and deliver the bigger prize of the extension of the railway along the former trackbed?

 

I would describe that as 'thought provoking'

 

I have spent most of the past 40 years building stuff. Few projects have ever gone entirely right, according to plan, budget and Gant chart.
I have seen projects where what was absolutely known for certain turned out to be not so, leading to costs spiralling.
I have seen jobs mismanaged that lead to costs spiralling. Who knows what is the case here.
It is very difficult part way through a job, when a contractor says "do this additional now it will cost £2000, do it later and it will cost £5000" to stick to the original plan and not end up gold-plating the job. That is nearly always the issue on rail projects. You have to assess the reduced operating or maintenance costs arising from that extra investment after 10 years.
One of the old truisms of railway maintenance was 'spend nothing until you have to, then spend enough to do the job right first time'. It is likely much less costly in money, time, volunteer willingness to build a carriage shed than keep re-restoring your showpiece rolling stock every ten years