Snow but no supertrain to the rescue this time

A rare snowfall in West Somerset led briefly to a few transport problems. Of course it was nothing like the blizzard of 1978. Then, everything stopped. Except a few folks on the West Somerset Railway at Minehead who steamed "Vulcan" which then ploughed through chimney-high drifts all the way to Bishops Lydeard. Over the next few days, the little train was the only effective transport between West Somerset and the rest of the world. Mailbags, hospital patients and folks just trying to get home were carried in style through the snowy landscape. The Railway did a good job and got a very good press for its troubles. The recent snowfall cold have provided a perfect repeat but there appeared to be no desire this time. To be fair the roads were re-opened quickly and with the Railway's infrastructure more complex than it was in 1978 movement of any train, emergency or not, involves more people and more equipment - getting folks to their workplaces and getting the signals and points unfrozen would have been a major task. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to see No 88, two coaches (one a buffet) and No 9351 at the rear, chugging through the snow-covered West Somerset countryside, doing what steam trains do best.

Nearest station to Minehead?

Well, the train ticket website thetrainline.com has a feature "Find the nearest station". Enter "Minehead" and you might expect to see the well-known and very much alive Minehead Station, the seaside terminus of the West Somerset Railway. Or even Taunton, perhaps. Not so, you get a map with a "You are here" flag stuck in Minehead and "Station" symbols at the South Wales towns of Llantwit Major and Rhoose, both across the Bristol Channel. Yes, nearest as the seagull flies but, heck, what a pathetic example of how not to use geographic information. Oh, I've just realised it's a Google Maps function, isn't it, so it's just another example of how poor these "maps" actually are. One day someone will lose their lives by relying on such trash. OK, OK. They do serve a purpose as a general locational tool at the smaller scales (that's the road atlas scales, not the detailed scale, folks). But using the data for intelligent queries - well, I ask you! And just how is the user of thetrainline.com website supposed to get from Llantwit Major to Minehead? Catch a train of course - probably back the way you came. It's rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. Come on thetrainline.com - wake up!

Geocaching

Without giving the location away, I must report an recent interesting encounter with two enthusiastic "geocachers". Geocaching is an activity which involves one party placing a small box or container, the "cache", in a hidden spot and listing a series of clues and coordinates on a geocaching website. Other geocachers then set out to find the cache. When found, the finders often leave a small object in the container and take one away.

The two enthusiasts, armed with the details and a GPS, were certainly in the right area and homing in on their target, which happened to be a structure within the railway fences. They had crossed the fence and made their way along the tracks towards said structure. I happened to be there, with permission, for photography purposes. Since two trains were due - we could hear them - I felt I had better have a word or two.

We had a brief and constructive chat, I pointed out they should not be on the railway, they agreed, we had a very quick look for the cache, found nothing. I suggested the cache is probably accessible from the other side of the railway fence. They agreed and off they went back over the fence. I did ask them to contact the cache placer and ask for a warning word to be place on the website page.

As it happens, I contacted the placer, who responded very quickly and responsibly. And I would like to thank him for that swift action. I'd also like to thank him for advising folks to travel on the Railway when they go out looking for his caches.

Rail grinding grinds on

The much awaited report on the so called "wheel/rail interface" problems that beset the West Somerset Railway in 2008 has finally been published. Two documents are being made available to working members and shareholders (not sure about WSRA members though). The bulky document is a report by David Holmes, a consultant engineer, brought in by WSR Plc Vice Chairman David Morgan to investigate the technical issues. The other is a summary by David Morgan, who headed the committee/group charged with looking into the whole episode.

The reports contain most of what folks expect, touching mostly on technical and management. And there are a few lessons learned, notably that works involving third parties should be subject to proper contractual procedures including proper inspection of work done. acceptance and closure, all of which were, incredibly, not done when the rails were treated.

I am not a lover of the phrase "lessons learned" which I hear so often these days - as if it is OK to make and write off mistakes in the pursuit of excellence. Not good enough for 99.9% of what we expect from competent folk.

It's not a "whitewash" but to me because it falls short of explaining exactly how it was allowed to happen. Because it needs to deal with the comptencies and ambitions of people central to the issues. Which is a management problem and not part of the remit.

Delegation was employed to the point of severance of any monitoring. Which, as any scholar of railway building in the 1800s will know, leads only to failure and wasted money.

Interestingly, the reports side-step the question of how much money has been lost.

There seems to be a ground swell of desire to put all this behind us. Fair enough. But only if we can be sure it will not happen again.

We shall see if lessons have, indeed, been learned.

Further to Barry Doe's article in an earlier Rail magazine in which he criticised the WSR for failing to provide a daily service to and from Taunton, I note Barry has now responded publicly in his Rail column to the many people who complained. It would seem he has failed to acknowledge the simple facts of business (there must be a market and there must be the infrastructure and staff to make it profitable). He says he had a positive phone discussion with the WSR General Manager and was clearly pleased to learn the WSR have distant plans for a park-n-ride at Bishops Lydeard, by which distant visitors can change trains. Whilst the WSR GM is clearly better placed than I am to make comment about future WSR plans, I would suggest the obstacles I so carefully pointed out to Barry Doe would still remain, even if such as facility existed at Bishops Lydeard. Indeed, it would not even be a "park and ride". It would be more of a "ride-change-ride". Unless there is a main line company willing to run their trains, daily, every hour or so, to Bishops Lydeard, and the WSR can itself provide a regular, daily service, throughout most of the day and evening, and there is sufficient passenger traffic, then the whole idea will not provide the kind of service Barry Doe requires. I am impressed by how easily Barry Doe has accepted things, even to the extent of mention in his column. Like many long-time WSR supporters, I do not accept such ideas lightly, and although I would love to see a regular service to and from Taunton, it must only be done when all the pegs fit in the right holes. Sorry, Barry.

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.

The turntable gets the nod

The "new" locomotive turntable at Minehead Station passed its inspection by the men from the Ministry - well, the Office of the Rail Regulator - yesterday. The freshly signed Certificate of Competence bestowed upon the massive lump of metal now permits full use. The West Somerset Railway have announced it will indeed be in use at the Winter Steam Festival on 28 and 29 December this year.

News of the turntable at Minehead has appeared in the website of a Swindon newspaper - see

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/community/remember/reports/3964409.Grandfathers_led_the_way_in_rail_history/ - who are, rightly, pleased to note that the Great Western Railway built these things to last.

This one was turning steam locomotives at Pwllheli in North Wales for nigh on seventy years before falling into disuse and eventually saved for preservation by some very, very far-sighted fellows in Somerset, who moved the whole thing to Minehead in 1977. And there is lay rusty away, uninstalled and unused, until very recently when opportunity knocked, money and land became available.

The turntable was too short for the longest steam locomotives now seeing main line use again, so the thing was extended at a specialist works in the Black Country, before making its way back to Minehead and placed on its original pivot already in place in a newly constructed pit next to Minehead Station.

Civic dignatories enjoyed a day out in October when the turntable was officially "launched", with several sightings of chain-of-office officials smiling as they pushed a real live steam locomotive round and round in circles just for the cameras, and the fun too, I guess.

Yesterday's low key inspection now gives Minehead and the West Somerset Railway the right facility to attract main line steam excursions right to the seaside town. The incoming steamer can be turned to face the right way for the homeward trip (main line officials don't like steam engines running "backwards"). This avoids the previous need for a diesel locomotive to tail the incoming excursion so that it can pull the return train, and avoids the incoming steamer making a lengthy, expensive non-revenue-generating trip to the nearest turning facility (Bristol, Westbury or Yeovil).

Great news for everyone, then, it seems. Thank goodness for those far-sighted folks back in the 1970s who knew a good thing or two about railways.