Stones again

Great news that the Railway will be used by up to 17 trains bringing a total of around 7000 tonnes of stone boulders from the Mendips to Minehead. The stone is for sea defence work at the Dunster end of the Golf Course.

Trains will run early morning, as required, to Minehead, where the loco will run round its train and haul it back to Drift Crossing where the stone will be unloaded and later taken across the fields to the worksite on the coast. The empties will then head back to Westbury leaving the WSR at lunchtime.

What a marvellous example of a railway doing what a railway should do. And well done the WSR for negotiating the deal.

So that's the fourth contract for stone traffic now. Plus the ongoing spent ballast trains calling at the Norton Triangle worksite.

It makes you wonder what other freight could be carried on the Railway. Do Tesco or Morrisons get their stores deliveries by train elsewhere; or what about the timber from the nearby forestry works?

The Reef

How can the West Somerset Railway prosper from a tidal reef in the Bristol Channel?

One of several ideas to harness the renewable energy generated by the tidal flows in the Bristol Channel is the "Tidal Reef" proposal from Evans Engineering. See http://severntidal.com/mystart.html

The Tidal Reef is rather different in many ways from the other, more conventional, proposals. It will also the longest, running from Minehead to Aberthaw, around 12-13 miles.

The Minehead landfall is proposed to be at Warren Point, just east of Minehead. Evans Engineering make much of the existing rail connections at each end. The WSR is seen as key to moving the materials to the work site. Evans Engineering suggest a branch leaving the WSR just west of Dunster Station, across about a mile of former saltmarsh to Warren Point, and then extending along the "reef" for about a mile to a transit point.

The RSPB - long time opponent of any Severn Barrage for fears of damaging important bird feeding mudflats in the estuary - has come out in favour of the Evans Engineering proposal. See vidclip on BBC website at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7748431.stm

Of course, all of this depends on the feasibility study for the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK government on harnessing the estuary's tidal power which started in January. It seems discussions are continuing.

The WSR has not made any comment on the proposal.

Everything is rosy in the Station Gardens

It's been a bit of a slog but we are on the move with the Station Gardens promotion. A date has been fixed for the special week - 15 to 22 July 2007. A leaflet has been designed and will be printed soon. The Railway Company will be completing the promotion strategy which should include mail shots to garden centres and leaflets in tourist information centres. The www.wsr.org.uk website has, as you can imagine, already posted information on several pages. I have also been busy emailing websites which list garden events. One success already! There is a poster image at http://www.wsr.org.uk/posters/gardens2007.jpg for folks to download, print and display to help us promote the Gardens Week, it'd be wonderful if folks could do this! Anyone with a blog or website can also help by listing the link for more information at http://www.wsr.org.uk/gardens.htm Anyway, the Station Gardens are open every day in the summer so folks can always visit a Station Garden before make their way by train perhaps to another Station Garden down the line. A leisurely lunch at the Washford Inn or the Driftwood at Blue Anchor, maybe, and hey that's quite a nice day out! Help us promote the Station Gardens if you can. Thanks.