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.

The power of the column

Barry Doe is a transport specialist and commentator who has a column in the RAIL magazine. In a recent edition, Barry has a pop at heritage railways which, in his opinion, should provide a local service. When he says "local service" it seems he means a regular service of several trains per day throughout the year running from the heritage railway to a nearby mainline station. The latter requirement reduces the number of heritage railways to a handful as only a few have a physical connection with the mainline. And according to Barry Doe, the worst example is the West Somerset Railway - "...the only railway that links a major National Rail station to an important seaside town but is not interested in using it..." Doe continues, "And what a potential market to connect all those places [London, Bristol, the North, Devon and Cornwall] to Minehead...Yet all they [WSR] want to do is play trains to Bishops Lydeard."

Since reading the article, I have had a very civilised and polite email conversation with Barry Doe. It would be wrong to discuss this private conversation here. But, on this blog, by adding part of my letter to the RAIL editor (since published in a later edition of RAIL), so illustrate my disappointment with his words about the WSR in the article: "...check the freely available facts, [you] might find the WSR has a long history of providing a public service since opening in 1976. For example, half fares for local folk available since 1976; the running of DMUs for many years for local people (including a 7.30am departure); the use of the Railway for carriage of thousands of tonnes of stone for public works at three separate locations; the Bristol to Minehead trains of 2007; the installation of a turntable to enable more folks to travel to Minehead by steam excursions; the construction of a triangle on land purchased by the WSR Assocation at Norton Fitzwarren which is receiving almost daily deliveries of spent ballast for cleaning and reuse, and which will be used to support passenger and freight traffic to and from the main network. The WSR has also sponsored bus connections between Bishops Lydeard and Taunton since 1979 to help folks get around. Barry Doe would like to see WSR should run trains to Taunton. We all would. We all know how much it will cost. Perhaps Barry Doe might like to explain exactly where the necessary capital is to be found - money might grow on trees in his neck of the woods but not in Somerset, or anywhere else. I look forward to Barry Doe's wise words on how we might achieve the ultimate goal?"

We shall have to wait to see if Barry Doe revisits his WSR argument in a future article. If he does, I look forward to his plan of how a regular service from Taunton to/from the WSR can be successfully operated. I feel confident his plan will include ideas already explored and dismissed for a variety of reasons.

How easy it is for a writer to put half a story in print. Whether Barry Doe is ignorant of the WSR situation, or simply chooses to ignore some of what he does know, just to make a point, we shall probably never know. That said, since so many WSR people would like to see a regular Taunton/West Somerset service, perhaps the power of the column could be better used to turn a negative into a positive. I look foward to Barry Doe using his position to help the WSR achieve that long-wished-for goal.

Just to prove the link is in place and can be used at any time, the picture shows a Taunton to Bishops Lydeard train run at the Autumn Gala in 2006.

Track trouble

How much damage has been done to the Railway by the recent rail grinding machine? I'm not meaning the actual rails but the fact that it happened at all. No plausible explanation of just how the work was allowed to continue unchecked has been issued by the Railway so we can only sit here and spectulate. I don't think anyone wants a witch hunt, but I do think everyone wants to ensure nothing like this happens again.

And although our visitors have been wonderfully patience and forgiven, the Railway simply does not live up to the Heritage Railway of the Year. Such titles and awards, not long ago, were raining in on a regular basis. The diesel boys have been magnificent, turning out capable machines and crews at short notice, so at least the trains have been kept running. But the Railway attracts visitors because they expect the steam locomotives that the Railway shouts about on all its publicity and promotional material.

There have been times when I have been so ashamed of the debacle that I have considered closing www.wsr.org.uk because I too have been guilty of promoting a product that cannot be delivered. But I chose instead to keep posting what information I could get to allow folks to make their own minds up about trekking out to Lydeard or Watchet to buy their tickets and ride the Minehead Branch.

At the time of writing, the steamers are back and everything seems to be normal again. But there is bad feeling around and some folks will not allow this to be easily forgotten. And if faith is lost...