West Somerset Railway General Discussion

If you ran a year round service, when would the infrastructure team have a clear free period for more substantial repairs and renewals? Consider the track relaying work done recently at Williton - when would you have fitted that in if a year round service was running?

Obviously anything is possible with money - but if you shrink the available time window, you push up the cost by requiring more machinery and maybe more paid labour to meet timescales, or night time working.

Personally, I am very sceptical about whether a mainline TOC can co-exist easily with a heritage infrastructure (beyond occasional one-offs, such as at galas). The NYMR situation seems fundamentally different in that regard, in that a heritage railway is operating on infrastructure owned and maintained by Network Rail - quite different to a mainline TOC operating on a heritage railway infrastructure.

Tom

 

The new housing that is being built is almost all on the Eastern side of Taunton so is of no relevance. The cost of the engineering would be prohibitive and I have seen any evidence, as opposed to pipe dreams, that there is the demand for the commuter using the WSR metals. The reality is that expensive commuter rail schemes are only viable in major conurbations and even those often require significant subsidies. The reason most rural branch lines closed was that the demand was simply not there. Little has changed.

 

The whole issue constitutes, not just an elephant in the room, but a major distraction.

IMHO the Plc (and supporting organisations) should be concentrating on increasing 'pax' (bums on seats) and fund raising. Extolling the virtues of a Heritage Railway already the major tourist attraction in West Somerset and arguably within the top three in Somerset is surely not simply a priority it is the only priority. I am afraid the Minehead interests need a plain statement of the facts of life ie be thankful for a vehicle that brings c.150,000 persons pa to Minehead.

(As a sop perhaps the WSR might offer them the oppurtunity to place suitable enamel advertising signs on the stations proffering their wares)

One can envisage the TN- BL shuttle having limited success. The conclusion then being that the connecting services are poor, not available all year round etc.etc. ie It will all be blamed on the Plc.

AFAIK the West Somerset District Council is devoid of any financial resources, the Minehead interests want their Taunton connection but show scant desire to put their money where their mouth is, Taunton Deane District Council is barely solvent and hopes a merger/takeover of the WSDC might bring some overhead savings. Then we have Somerset CC wrestling with education, social services and capital budgets.

Why are we taking our eye off the ball. We all need to be selling the WSR as it is for all we are worth. With the Plc having to work really hard merely to balance its books we cannot afford these grandiose distractions.

Michael Rowe

 

Are you really unaware of the many railway lines that have been re-opened to passenger traffic since the Beeching cuts, or that we have changed from labour-intensive steam to diesel multiple units, that most rural stations are no longer staffed, or need to be, or that the ridership of the railways has been increasing over the last decades, etc etc.? I could go on, but there's none so blind as them that don't want to see, so it would be pointless.

 

Worry not, noone is being distracted except the commentariat and we can afford to be.

 

What is this obsession with a year-round service? Even the "big railway" doesn't run the same service in the summer as it does in the winter and never has done. The number of people in West Somerset who would sell their car and rely solely on the railway for transport if there was a year round service is nil. Taunton is not London. If you live in West Somerset you need a car. Any sort of service on the WSR/NR isn't going to make any difference to that. People will use it when it is there and their cars when it isn't. Perhaps people would use a BL-TN shuttle to commute, especially if getting in by road is very slow, but by far the largest number of potential passengers are more long-distance travellers to and from the WSR and to and from West Somerset. In my experience people are much more likely to make a rail journey if they can use rail for the whole journey, thus the prospect of travelling by rail to BL is far more enticing than the prospect of travelling by rail to Taunton and changing to a bus, especially if you are elderly and can't get about as well as you could.

 

So what is the conclusion - that the WSR should effectively close as a heritage railway so it can reopen as a modern branch line with no station staff, signals replaced by ERTMS boards, and all services operated by modern DMUs (or 1980s DMUs at any rate)?

I'm unaware of any railways as long and rural as the WSR which have reopened following closure as part of the national network, although you could argue that the saving of the Settle-Carlisle almost counts. The Borders line has a rather bigger metropolis at its main line end; the Robin Hood line's area is also much more heavily populated.

 

That is a fallacious argument as far as the WSR is concerned. Read what I said and don't jump to absurd conclusions. The reality is that there is no proven demand for a non-heritage traffic between Minehead and Taunton i.e. year round commuter passengers.

 

You said: "The reason most rural branch lines closed was that the demand was simply not there. Little has changed.", which implies, does it not, that little has changed since the closure of those rural branch lines. That is the point I was challenging.

Well. if you don't like fallacious arguments, don't make them yourself. I've already pointed out the absurdity of suggesting the need for any service to be a year-round commuter service. To say that the lack of demand for a year round commuter service between Taunton and Minehead means that longer distance travellers would not use the line if it was connected to the national network and that any such service is unviable is a classic "straw man". In any case, without running a trial service, how the hell can you "prove demand" for it?

 

And, I would add, you would need to adequately market it.

There are now, fortunately, some quite sophisticated and well=developed methods of predicting transport demand, which can be useful.

Robin

 

I'm really puzzled how you came to that conclusion, but the answer is no, see my reply to Yorkshireman.

The Waverley Line? but again, I wasn't suggesting that the WSR should be reopened as a NR line. Lots of heritage railways benefit from a connection with NR without having NR trains run over their full length.

 

Do you think Yorkshireman would accept them as proof, though?

 

Alas the "naive and sentimental gricer" seems still to be with us.

PH

 

If the full details of the methodology and the results was made available and they followed credible statistical analysis. Nothing of that nature has been published as far as the WSR is concerned. All that has been produced so far for public consumption is speculation.

 

In post #2589 you stated "I'm unaware of any railways as long and rural as the WSR which have reopened following closure as part of the national network." having challenged my assertion that little has changed. So which is it? The point I was making is that the demand for non heritage passenger services on reopened branch lines has not changed. The public simply will not pay the fares for However there have, over the last forty year been incessant demands for a regular service connecting the WSR for the use of year round, non heritage, passenger services. The reason none of these fanciful schemes has come to fruition was lack of demand at a price that would have to be charged. One of the most vocal recent advocates of that has been the Minehead Chamber of Commerce headed by Mr. Mendoza. You will recall the joint statement by the WSR PLC and the MCOC supporting the proposed scheme to extend passenger services to BL from TN. Do you seriously believe that the COC and Mr. Mendoza would be supporting that unless they think it will advance there case for non heritage commuter services to be extended to Minehead? That is why I mentioned the concept in connection with the proposed TN to BL service. I have also made it very clear that I don't believe there is any possibility of Mr. Mendoza's scheme being any more successful that the previous ones were. Whilst it would be foolish to refuse the experiment offered by the TOC as it seems the cost to the WSR will be very little I remain unconvinced that it will be viable. It certainly will provide no evidence that a regular non heritage passenger service to Minehead is practical.

 

In which case, an experiment on a limited scale and with limited downside risk to the WSR PLC must surely be welcome as a means by which the economic realities can be proven.

Ignoring for a moment @Maunsell 907's observations on the economic importance of the WSR as it now is, this debate highlights the tension on a number of railways between what they are today, and what they were built to be. I'm sure I'm not alone in being torn between the desire to retain the heritage operation, and the moral imperative towards reopening as a practical means of public transport.

 

I apologise for being blunt but this is utterly pure W.I.B.N.

PH

 

I don't see any significant moral imperative. The WSR is a commercial operation that has limited resources. They certainly are not in a position to spend millions of pounds on a speculative commercial venture. As I have repeatedly stated I welcome the experiment. IMHO it might well put an end to the demands to provide a commuter service that nobody, AFAIK, has ever produced a credible, fully costed, proposal for.

 

Both Yorkshireman and @paulhitch mistake me; I am equally sure that there is no economic case for running the Minehead branch as a commuter operation given the likely traffic, costs of doing so, and impact on the tourist business of removing a key attraction.

My point about moral imperative was more general, and with reference to the purposes railways were built for, and the natural and recurrent desire of some to return them to that original purpose. Other reopenings, some doing more violence to the heritage operation, have been proposed elsewhere; if viable, it is hard to prioritise the heritage operation over the public transport.

 

I am sorry but this is still W.I.B.N. There is no "moral imperative", the issues are purely ones of practical public transport. Had it not been for the Second World War, something akin to what happened under Beeching would have occurred by about 1950, even without increasing private car ownership. Waiting in the rain for a bus was hardly fun but it was infinitely better than trudging for one or two miles in the said rain just to catch a train. That is real life, not gricer's fond imaginings.

PH