midford modelling

(Pic © Alan Jarvis)

Just found a very nice site all about Midford - modelling and prototype.

Check it out here.

hard work!

(Photo Jeffery Grayer)

Filling the website with content proceeds apace! There are now six stations with their own pages, hopefully the whole line will be done by the end of the week.

We will always be extremely grateful for any of the following -

write ups, particularly with photos, of the current status of each S&D station

photos of the line both whilst open, after closure and as it is now

memories of the line (either written or on tape)

Also is there anybody out there with detailed knowledge of the following (all in an S&D context) - locomotives, train operation, characters, etc?

Remember that by joining the New S&D you can help to make a new S&D happen!

web input

(Photo Mick Knox 6.3.2006)

We're now frantically churning out copy for the website. One feature is content for each S&D station with history, present status and future plans. This is the entry for Wellow.

History

Wellow was opened on 20 July 1874 with the S&D’s Bath Extension. There were two platforms and a neat limestone station building. This was a particularly attractive station, fitting in very well with the adjacent village. It was once quite busy with goods traffic including watercress, corn and agricultural equipment. It closed for freight on 10 June 1963 and completely on 7 March 1966.

Current status

The station building survives as a private house, as does the signalbox.

Future plans

The station will once again see trains when this section of the line is restored. It is hoped that the building and signalbox can be purchased before the reopening.

derrick returns!

Great news is that Midsomer Norton is no longer in the market for a replacement for Derrick, the Roadrailer. He's back at work on the extension. It seems that the stringent rules that MN thought they had to adhere to only apply to the main line, and that Derrick is up to scratch. So progress on the Chilcompton extension should now proceed without hindrance.

clearer view

Jeremy Woodrow has very kindly sent the original pic previously lifted from the MMOG newsletter so here is the new coach in all its glory!

I can't wait to see this coupled to the other coach which has now made its way off site for the final refurbishment. Then it's back to Midsomer Norton and hopefully, soon, being pulled by a genuine S&D steam engine on regular passenger trains. This will be such a momentous event in railway preservation that nobody should miss it. I know I won't!

arrived today

Just arrived today is a large range of 1/6th scale peelable S&D totems. These are priced at just 95p each and most S&D stations are covered. You can find them here.

fancy owning a bit of a coach?

(Photo Jeremy Woodrow MMOG newsletter)

Midlands Mark One coach number 26049 is now resident at Midsomer Norton - and it looks superb! (Sorry for the quality of the picture - it was taken directly from the newsletter - better quality shots are welcomed!!)

It is so important that the S&D restoration captures the feel of the line as it was in its prime. These Mark One coaches are every bit as iconic as Midford station, Midsomer Norton box, Templecombe, 9Fs, Ivo's Bentley and Prestleigh viaduct.

There are still a lot of costs looming to get the coach fully restored inside and to this end the MMOG are asking for further donations. If you would like to help with this please send a cheque made payable to 'Midlands Mark One Group' to Jeremy Woodrow, 1 Bathway Cottages, Bathway, CHEWTON MENDIP, Somerset, BA3 4NP. You can also make regular payments by standing order - again if interested please contact Jeremy at the above address for a form. (We will also do a pdf of this form on the New S&D website after David returns from his holiday this coming week, but please don't wait).

live at last!!!

I finally persuaded our perfectionist webmaster to let the website go live just minutes ago!

There's still a lot of work to do, there are a few text sections to go in (blame the tennis for the delay!) and many photos, but we both agreed that it was time to put our toes in the water.

David has also agreed to join the committee, so we are now up to six. If you've been waiting until now to join the New S&D you will find Paypal buttons plus a pdf membership form on the new site that will allow you to do this easily. So what are you waiting for?

spetisbury summer

I was down at Spetisbury back in February and was very impressed with the permanence of the place, particularly the brickwork which looks like it's been built to last a thousand years! There won't be a lot of work getting this place back on the network! The idiots who once thought the S&D was finished forever could never have visted this station!

Member Paul Beard popped down there the other day and has a small slideshow of the station here.

glastonbury solution

(Glastonbury ca 1970 courtesy Jeffery Grayer)

No doubt you've all been watching the Glastonbury Festival over the last few years. Too mainstream by half for me, though a few acts were okay.

My point is that every year the festival causes traffic chaos around Pilton. Many festival goers do come in by train, but they have to be bussed from Castle Cary, making the road congestion even worse.

There is of course an ideal solution. Our trackbed actually currently serves as an internal road within the festival site! When the rails return - for Glastonbury is FAR too large a town to be left without trains - I'm sure the S&D will be more than happy to ferry passengers directly into the festival site, serving a special station. Not to mention bringing in much of the equipment etc in special freight trains. This is the future.

yet another S&D site - this time from Belgium ...

Just started yesterday this S&D site is within the Steamtube site, which with its associated sites has loads of interest.

brand new key

Yes, this is it - the key to Midford! It's totemic of course, as anyone can access Midford, but it does mean a lot.

We had an interesting first meeting with everybody attending coming at least 80 miles each way! We've now formed a committee of five with all the officer positions being filled enthusiastically.

All felt that we were far too early in the journey to take on the huge responsibility of ownership of the site at Midford. Realistically this should become a short-term aim (1 to 3 years). In the meantime we'll work very closely with the current owner who has taken on an executive committee role within the New S&D. Hopefully we'll establish some presence on the ground very shortly, so that visitors to Midford will know we exist and what we're all about. The intention is of course still to purchase Midford, so keep sending in those cheques!!

Although I'll retain the acting Chair role for the time being most of my energies will now be devoted to development of the New S&D. This will be a mixed finance/marketing role. The first ecommerce items have now been added, the website is days away from going live and I'm continuing the membership push. We'll also be churning out press releases, both to the railway/transport press and to the local press along the line. At last my writing MA will come in useful!

now available

I've just finished listing all the currently available 1/6th scale peelable totems - most S&D stations are covered.

To view and buy please click here.

treat yourself

to a full size BR S&D repro totem!

Now listed on our ecommerce site we can supply ALL S&D stations either in the very posh vitreous enamel finish or the cheaper paint and lacquer version. Cheaper than buying from the manufacturers, and every one sold raises around £25 for the New S&D!

(We can also supply ANY station - real or imaginary - in these formats).

just keeps getting better

The latest S&D Telegraph, from the Midsomer Norton group, has just arrived. As always it's a fantastic read and a credit not just to MN and the S&D but to the whole heritage movement.

It's nice to see in this issue that not only are they breaking out of MN physically but there are numerous references to the larger picture, ie the whole S&D. This is really heartening to see as MN really is the lynchpin in the whole S&D revival and a superb base for all S&D fans to gravitate towards. I could almost have written the editorial myself!

Remember that we have our first meeting tomorrow evening (details on the sidebar). Please try to attend - I promise that the second meeting will be down at the Bournemouth end of the line so it's not such a trek for our southern members. I'm both nervous and excited about this! Hopefully the weather will be sunny and we can do a lot of it outside. Pimms on the patio sounds great to me!

I'm getting a lot of correspondence from members and supporters, many with a very feisty attitude to getting the S&D rebuilt! Just a few years ago I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness, but more people are coming over to our way of thinking every day ...

totem storm

Within a few days I'll be putting a huge range of totems on the e-commerce site. These will be both full size (repros of course!) and peel off 1/6th size - with every station on the line covered. I've managed to negotiate really good discounts on these so not only will you be able to get them cheaper than elsewhere, but every penny of profit will go directly to rebuilding the S&D. I'm also looking into introducing the 'missing' stations in the fridge magnet series.

help wanted

Can anyone help Mick Knox with this one?

Any idea what bridge number this one is?

Between Ham Wood Viaduct – and Masbury.

Doesn’t appear the be on the bridge list, as Ham Wood is No75 & Someville’s bridge is No74?

So what am I stood on, anyone know?

shillingstone progress

(Photos Feb 2009 - more recent ones would be most appreciated!)

With the two panels of track laid on Sunday 21 June there are now six panels of flatbottom rail in the station at Shillingstone. There is now track between the platforms for the first time in over 40 years!

It is fantastic that there are now two bases on the route both with track in place. With Midford joining them very soon (fingers crossed!) there is now a genuine feeling that the S&D is coming back big time. Hopefully within a few years the next logical step - that the groups (including Washford) will combine - will happen. By sharing knowledge, staff, equipment and vision the S&D will quickly establish itself as the UK's premier private railway offering real passenger and freight services, unmatchable steam experiences and an ambience and atmosphere unrivalled elsewhere.

twister over London

We were in London over the weekend celebrating our first wedding anniversary. We were offered an upgrade when we arrived at the hotel to a £1000 a night penthouse suite for £80 extra a night, so took it happily! The suite was amazing and one of the best features was a balcony overlooking the approaches to Waterloo station.

When I was a kid in the early 60s I used to visit my Nan up in Battersea. Her flat overlooked railway lines, but unfortunately all that ever used them were boring Southern green emus. But over in the distance you could see plumes of smoke - loads of them. For some reason my dad thought they were from Paddington but of course a little research revealed they were coming from Waterloo. Obviously they were coming from the Southampton and Bournemouth trains (and, right at the start, Salisbury and Plymouth trains). Steam lasted at Waterloo until 9 July 1967 on Britain's last steam main line.

Did I ever talk Dad in taking me to see them close up? No, I tried ...

But I'm sure it's those distant plumes that first got me interested in railways.

But on Sunday morning, 42 years on from the end of steam at Waterloo I finally DID get to see a steam train (fairly close up). After nearly two days of just 4 sorts of emus, on Sunday morning, just as we were about to leave there it was! And, amazingly, it was Tornado, the first main line steam loco to be built in the UK since 1960 (the S&D's Evening Star!)

It brought a lot of things together. Close up steam at Waterloo at last, a brand new steam locomotive which will, with a bit of tweaking to let them burn wood, doubtless be the first of 1000s in the 21st century, and even the 'old' Eurostar terminal at Waterloo in the foreground, showing that railways are always evolving!

bournemouth in the future

DORSET and the New Forest could be in for an environmental lashing over the coming years if emissions are not cut, a report has warned.

Summers could be up to six degrees hotter and 49 per cent drier, winters 54 per cent wetter and four degrees warmer, with sea levels rising, according to the UK Climate Projections 09 study.

Let's look at this purely from the angle of tourism. Summers are going to get hotter and drier. Remind you of anywhere? The Med perhaps?

In thirty years time summers will be around 2 degrees C hotter. And if scientists have yet again veered on the side of caution then that's probably at the bottom end of the range.

In thirty years time air travel will have all but ended. Cheap flights will be just a memory and most airport runways will have grassed over through disuse.

In thirty years time almost all overland travel will be by rail. A few roads may struggle on in some urban areas with the odd electric or fuel cell car, and millions of bikes, but all mass transit will be rail based.

In thirty years time Bournemouth will be a sun-soaked seaside resort par excellence, with a nine month summer season and mild winters.

Sounds like a good place to have a terminus for the New S&D!

new arrival at Midsomer Norton

(Oakamoor 15.6.2009 - courtesy Jeremy Woodrow)

A new arrival at Midsomer Norton hopefully tomorrow (17 June) will be 'Midland Mark One' coach SK26049.

She will be loaded onto Heanor Haulage’s lorry tomorrow AM and should arrive at MSN station by 6pm the same day. She will then be exhibited at the Midsummer at Midsomer Weekend on 20/21 June – with ‘proving runs’ for members only on both days. Don’t forget the ‘official unveiling’ on Saturday (11am) followed by a trip up & down [travel AT OWN RISK].

There are still several jobs to be completed (internal varnishing, flooring, possibly exterior roundel, second toilet and some other bits & bobs) but these will be done by Dave in August. He has worked night & day all last week to get her ready for shipping to MSN.

I'm a part owner of this coach but unfortunately will be in London over the Midsummer weekend (1st wedding anniversary!) but with good weather forecast the event should be fantastic.

Midsummer at Midsomer is always a very special time on the S&D and I hope you'll all get the chance to pop down there and see the progress that's been made at this classic S&D location.

(This coach will be the second in the rake that will be used on passenger trains when regular services begin shortly).

this week's helping

of James Howard Kunstler!

He seems to be becoming fixated on rail ...

Too Stupid to Survive

Coming home from the annual meet-up of the New Urbanists, I was already agitated from the shenanigans of United Airlines — two-hour delay, blown connection — when I waded into this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine for further evidence that our ruling elites are too stupid to survive (and perhaps the US with them). Exhibit A was the magazine’s lead article about California’s proposed high-speed rail project by Jon Gertner.

The article began with a description of California’s current rail service between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. A commission of nine-year-olds in a place like Germany could run a better system, of course. It’s never on schedule. The equipment breaks down incessantly. A substantial leg of the trip requires a transfer to a bus (along with everybody’s luggage) with no working toilet. You get the picture: Kazakhstan without the basic competence.

The proposed solution to this is the most expensive public works program in the history of the world, at a time when both the state of California and the US federal government are effectively bankrupt. By the way, I wouldn’t argue that California shouldn’t have high-speed rail. It might have been nice if, say, in the late 20th century, some far-seeing governor had noticed what was going on in France, Germany, and Spain but, alas.... It would have been nice, too, if the doltish George W. Bush, when addressing extreme airport congestion in 2003, had considered serious upgrades in normal train service between the many US cities 500 miles or so apart. The idea never entered his walnut brain.

The sad truth is it’s too late now. But the additional sad truth, at this point, is that Californians (and US public in general) would benefit tremendously from normal rail service on a par with the standards of 1927, when speeds of 100 miles-per-hour were common and the trains ran absolutely on time (and frequently, too) without computers (imagine that!). The tracks are still there, waiting to be fixed. In our current condition of psychotic techno-grandiosity, this is all too hopelessly quaint, not cutting edge enough, pathetically un-"hot." The fact that it is not even considered by the editors of The New York Times, not to mention the governor of California, the President of the United States, and all the agency heads and departmental chiefs and think tank gurus and university engineering professors, is something that will have historians of the future rolling their ey es. But for the moment all it shows is that we are collectively too stupid to survive as an advanced society.

Ironically (if you go for gallows irony) a sidebar in the same issue of The NY Times Sunday Magazine featured the latest architect’s wet dream of an airport-of-the-future (p.35). Note to the editors and architects: commercial aviation is toast (we just don’t know it yet). We’re back in the $70-plus a barrel-of-oil aviation death-zone for airlines.

Also ironically proving that America is not alone in techno-triumphalist mental illness was another big article in the same magazine featuring French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s neo-Modernist fantasies for vast new construction projects in Paris. Note to Sarko: the developed world’s metroplexes are headed for shocking contraction, not further expansion. I know this is counter-intuitive, but a little applied prayerful research will bear it out. And, by the way, the last thing any city on earth needs is more skyscrapers — i.e. buildings that have no chance of ever being renovated when they reach the senility stage of their design-life. For really mind-blowing statements, this one from that article is a standout: "Paris’s current problems as a city can be traced to the very thing that makes it most delightful — its beauty." Right. So, the solution will be to make it more like Houston.

Actually, I doubt the French people consider these schemes anymore plausible than ur-Modernist Le Corbusier’s 1924 proposal to bulldoze half of the Right Bank and replace it with dozens of identical skyscrapers. The French people laughed at Corbu, and put their vertical slums outside the city center, but notice that we Americans actually did it, replacing our old human-scaled center cities with priapic arrays of glass-and-steel tubes surrounded by parking lagoons. Anyway, nobody in the OECD world will have the energy to carry out anything like this again, not even France with its nuke plants.

Which brings me back to the New Urbanist annual meet-up last week in Denver. Given the gathering conditions of what I variously call The Long Emergency or the economic clusterf**k, they have had to shift their focus starkly. For years, their stock-in-trade was the greenfield New Town or Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), a severe reform of conventional suburban development. That sort of reform work was only possible when 1.) the continued expansion of suburbia seemed utterly inevitable, requiring heroic mitigation and 2.) when they could team up with the production home-builders to get their TND projects built. To the group’s credit, they realize that these conditions are no more. Suburbia is now craterin g, both as a re pository of wealth in real estate and as a practical matter of everyday existence. They get that the energy crisis and all its implications are real and that our response to it had better be deft. They understand that the capital resources we thought we had for Big Projects are flying into a black hole at the speed of light. Mostly they see that he time for "cutting edge" fashionista techno-triumphalist grandiosity is over.

To put it bluntly, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is perhaps the only surviving collective intelligence left in the United States that is producing ideas consistent with the reality. They recognize that our survival depends on downscaling and re-localization. They recognize the crisis we will soon face in food production, and the desperate need to reactivate the relationship between the way we inhabit the landscape and the way we feed ourselves. They recognize that the solution to the liquid fuels crisis is not cars that can run by other means but walkable towns and cities connected by public transit.

This is exactly what you will not find in the pages of The New York Times or the political corridors of power. Oh, by the way, the Obama administration contacted one of the leading lights of the New Urbanism in the weeks after the inauguration. He never heard back from the White House. I guess they’re not interested.

read all about it!

A sample page of our website that will be going on line within days! We're hoping to make this the best and most useful website in the railway world! You'll get the web address and link here first!

ecommerce at last

As promised the beginnings of New S&D e-commerce has commenced!

Unusually the first items are going to be non-S&D, being a range of DVDs covering Europe's industrial narrow gauge railways. These are just £14 each with cheap post and packing. Each one sold will raise £5 for the New S&D!

We will be adding a range of S&D miniature totems, full size repro totems, books, DVDs etc etc in time but please be patient!

The eventual aim is to sell just about anything rail, transport, model, peak oil or climate change related, all on-line, with the potential to raise many thousands of pounds each year for the New S&D. Please support us whenever you can!

Click here to see our e-commerce site.

great news

Excellent news. We will be getting the key to Midford in just under two weeks' time. It will be ceremoniously handed over at the June meeting by the current owner. We do still have to raise the money though! Expect a much bigger push in both the railway media and the local press over the next few months. Once a server problem has been sorted out our brand new website should be up and running within days - this should also help considerably with the Midford push.
It's amazing the progress that the New S&D has made in just a few months - hopefully this dynamic process will continue as we grow!

everything's coming our way ...

Move to reinstate lost rail lines

Train operators are calling for widespread expansion of the existing rail network, with 14 extra lines and about 40 new stations proposed.

The Association of Train Operating Companies said there was a need for expansion to cope with rising demand.

It said the expansion, which would cost £500m and possibly reuse lines closed under the 1960s Beeching cuts, could serve more than 1m extra passengers.

Any decisions on future expansion rest with government and Network Rail.

Atoc chief executive Michael Roberts said: "Record passenger numbers and rising demand require us to plan for the long term, while climate change and population growth make it vital that in doing so, we adapt the rail network to meet tomorrow's needs.
"Providing attractive new services and easier access to the rail network will encourage passengers to switch to rail from other, less green, modes of transport.
"We have established that there is a strong business case for investment to bring a number of towns back on to the rail network.
"Now we need to safeguard these routes and develop the detailed case for investment."

The Beeching report by Dr Richard Beeching in the 1960s resulted in the railway network being cut by a third, closing 2,000 stations and 5,000 miles of track.

The Atoc report says 40 towns not currently on the rail network could benefit from the 14 new lines.

Freight potential

It says the new stations could be operational within five to 10 years.

Any decision on whether any of the plans get the go-ahead would be taken by local and regional government, Network Rail and the Department for Transport.

Atoc argues infrastructure from some of the old lines closed in the 1960s could be refurbished to form part of the new network.
Freight lines could also be adapted to serve commercial routes, it said.

Transport Minister Chris Mole said the government would consider the findings of Atoc's report.

"The government's priority is to bring about changes, such as capacity improvements, which will deliver benefits for rail passengers now," he said.

"For the longer term, we will work with local authorities who want to improve links to the rail network, and will plan to make funding available from 2014 for successful schemes which demonstrate value for money."

Financial constraints

Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said the research was "interesting" and made "an impressive case" for reopening disused rail lines.

She added: "Conservatives recognise the value of these transport corridors, which is why we have called for a moratorium on building on any disused rail lines still in public ownership.

"Certainly, housing growth and the need to cut emissions from transport and tackle road congestion means that all political parties should look seriously at the ideas put forward in this report, though it is clear that the state of the public finances will put constraints on what is possible over the next few years."

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, said: "RMT has repeatedly called for an expansion of rail services to create green jobs and green transport options as part of our campaign for a people's railways.

"However, any expansion should be publicly-owned and free from the chaos and profiteering of the privatised franchise system."

The areas which would be served by the 14 possible new lines identified in the report are:

• Cranleigh in Surrey
• Bordon, Hythe and Ringwood in Hampshire
• Brixham in Devon
• Aldridge and Brownhills in the West Midlands
• Wisbech in Cambridgeshire
• Leicester to Burton in the East Midlands
• Fleetwood, Rawtenstall and Skelmersdale in Lancashire
• Washington in Tyne and Wear
• Ashington and Blyth in Northumberland

Thanks to all of you who brought this to my attention. It has also been on the News24 Channel all day, though sadly accompanied by imagwes from the 50s and 60s, which rather misses the point!

Note that Ringwood is included - though not Wimborne! Of course we want this section restored to give us a second outlet in the south eastwards towards Southampton, we already have a line monitor for this section.

This is still only a tiny step in the right direction, and most of these routes have had agitation for restoration for years, which shows how important it is to get organised - notice the S&D ISN'T on this list! Note also the surprising omissions of Bere Alston-Tavistock and Lewes-Uckfiled - perhaps these are already considered 'in the bag'.

Things are clearly moving our way - remember that this is a response to capacity restraints, Peak Oil and - except for one tiny quote - even Climate Change are not mentioned.

The problem with the Beeching Report was that it was totally inflexible. It assumed that - for some peculiar reason - rail traffic would continue to decrease and that - somehow - roads would be able to cope. We all now know that isn't true at all, and that the roads are beginning their slow decline into history whilst rail can only get stronger and stronger as it ticks all the boxes - fast, clean, puctual, efficient, flexible, sustainable, cool, profitable. It's amazing how quickly things have changed in just a few short years. People used to think I was mad proposing a rebuilt S&D just five years ago - now I'm having a job keeping up with you lot!

two tunnels

The Two Tunnels project is having an open day on the 27th June 2009 - there are guided walks through the 1 mile tunnels to show the condition before any work is done. There is also a bigger 4 mile walk talking in other parts of the route. See the attached link - http://www.twotunnels.org.uk/27-6.html

This group will soon be our closest S&D neighbour - great news on Midford later today!

two miles apart

Chilcompton station 17 February 2009. Buried deep in a small wood the platform of Chilcompton station can be seen on the right hand side. (photo courtesy Mick Knox).



Just two miles to the north Midsomer Norton South is full of life and colour and contributing to the local economy as well as providing the first green shoots of a sustainable transport system that will see us through the 21st century.

Chilcompton need not worry, its time is coming too. As the New S&D expands, and as the Midsomer Norton group heads south the only question is who will reach Chilcompton first to start the restoration!

beauty in the built environment

Two (deliberately non railway) shots snapped as we drove through Barrow Gurney the other day. This is the view from alongside the road and it got me thinking why every bit of roadside isn't like this. Okay, it needs a bit of effort to maintain, but does it cost any more than the alternatives? If anything (using propagation) this would cost far less than a brick or even block wall.

My point? The S&D always seemed to fit so snugly into its environment. It actually enhanced the scene. Think of Midford. Imagine Midford with a motorway through it! The S&D made Midford an even more magical place than it was before the rails came (and after they left!)

My wider point is that we could, if we choose, make all our built environment attractive. I'm sure that once we no longer have oil we will have the time to make the places we live in artistic and attractive and on a human scale. Slums, high rises, shopping malls, ring roads and railway stations with bus shelters will all become things of the past. We will have made genuine progress.
This informs my view of the New S&D. That the stations should be in the classic style, staffed, with full facilities. That signalboxes and lineside buildings will be appropriate to the wider scene, and not knocked together with no aestetic considerations but just done on the cheap.

Rail has one other huge advantage over roads. On roads there is a constant stream of traffic and noise, but even the busiest railways have long stretches of calm between trains. Between the trains the careful blending of track, buildings and scenery is actually life enhancing.

nostalgia for the present

This week's helping of Kunstler ...

Revolving Debt Cheap Energy Economy on Its Knees

Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable. The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing. It spells the end of the motoring era in America per se and the puerile fantasy of personal liberation that allowed it to become such a curse to us.
Of course, many Nobel prize-winning economists would argue that it has only been a blessing for us, but that only shows how the newspapers are committing suicide-by-irrelevance. And if other societies, such as China’s late-entry industrial start-up, want to adopt a similar fantasy, they will only find themselves all the sooner in history’s garage with a tailpipe in their mouths.

Here in the USA, we will mount the most strenuous campaign to keep the motoring system going — in fact, we’re already doing it — but it will fail just as surely as two (so far) of the “big three” automakers have failed. It will fail because car-making is only one facet of a larger network of systems that is coming undone, namely a revolving debt cheap energy economy.

Americans will never again buy as many new cars as they were able to do before 2008 on the terms that were normal until then: installment loans. Our credit system is completely broken. It choked to death on securitized debt engineered by computer magic and business school hubris. That complex of frauds and swindles coincided with the background force of peak oil, which meant, among other things, that economic growth based on ever-increasing energy resources was over, and along with it ever-increasing credit. What it boils down to now is that we can’t service our debt at any level, personal, corporate, or government — and that translates into comprehensive societal bankruptcy.

The efforts of our federal government to work around this now, to cover up the “non-performing” debt and to generate the new lending necessary to keep the old system going, is a tragic exercise in futility. I’m not saying this to be “pessimistic” grandstanding doomer pain-in-the-ass, but because I would like to see my country make more intelligent choices that would permit us to continue being civilized, to move into the next phase of our history without a horrible self-destructive convulsion.

Another consequence of the debt problem is that we won’t be able to maintain the network of gold-plated highways and lesser roads that was as necessary as the cars themselves to make the motoring system work. The trouble is you have to keep gold-plating it, year after year. Traffic engineers refer to this as “level-of-service.” They’ve learned that if the level-of-service is less than immaculate, the highways quickly enter a spiral of disintegration. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported several years ago that the condition of many highway bridges and tunnels was at the “D-minus” level, so we had already fallen far behind on a highway system that had simply grown too large to fix even when we thought we were wealthy enough to keep up. Right now, we’re pretending that the “stimulus” program will carry us over long enough to resume the old method of state-and-federal spending based largely on bonding (that is, debt).

The political dimension of the collapse of motoring is the least discussed part of problem: as fewer and fewer citizens find themselves able to buy and run cars, they will feel increasingly aggrieved at the system set up to make motoring virtually mandatory for all the chores of everyday life, and their resentments will rise against the elite that can still manage to enjoy it. Because our car-dependency is so extreme, the reaction of the dis-entitled classes is liable to be extreme and probably delusional to an extreme, too.

You can already see it being baked in the cake. Happy Motoring is so entangled in our national identity that the loss of it is bound to cause a national identity crisis. In places like the American south, the old Dixie states, motoring lifted more than half the population out of the dust, and became the basis of the New South economy. The sons and grandsons of starving sharecroppers became Chevy dealers and developers of suburban housing tracts, malls, and strip malls. They don’t have any nostalgia for the historical reality of hookworm and 14-hour-days of serf labor in hundred-degree heat. Theirs is a nostalgia for the present, for air-conditioned comfort and convenience and the groaning all-you-can-eat Shoney’s breakfast buffet off the freeway ramp. When it is withdrawn from them by the mandate of events, they will be furious.

Given the history of the region and the predilections of its dominant ethnic group, one might imagine that they will want to take out their gall and grievance on the half-African politician who presides over the situation. Among the ever-expanding classes dis-entitled from the so-called American Dream, the crisis is only marginally different in other regions of the nation. Mr. Obama faces a range of awful dilemmas, and it is painful to see them go unrecognized and unacknowledged by his White House. It’s hard to imagine that the president and his elite advisors are blind to these equations, but as the weeks tick by they seem stuck in a box of limited perception.

We’re in a strange hiatus for now. “Hope” levitates the legitimacy of the dollar, the stock markets, and the authority of leadership. In the background, implosion continues, debt goes unpaid, banks ignore bad loans to keep them off their books, jobs and incomes vanish, cars and other things go unsold, and a tragic wishfulness strains to sustain the unsustainable. Our expectations are inconsistent with what is happening to us.

It will be very painful for us to walk away from the car-centered life. Half the population faces the ugly obstacle of being hopelessly over-invested in a suburban house and all the life-ways associated with it. There will be no easy way out for them, whatever they chose to do politically, whatever noise they make, whomever they scapegoat, whatever fantasies they cultivate about what the world owes them, or who they think they are.

Mr. Obama should not waste another week pretending that we can keep this old system going. The public needs to know that we will be making our livings differently, inhabiting the landscape differently, and spending our days and nights differently — even while we suffer our losses. The public needs to hear this from more figures than Mr. Obama, too, from leaders in the state capitals, and the agencies, and business and education and what remains of the clergy. But somebody has to set in motion the chain of recognition, or events will soon do it for us.

teasers ...

The two shots above are of a working industrial railway in Bristol. Any idea where? Those coming to the first meeting of the New S&D will find out!

This brings me neatly onto the next subject which is e-commerce! Our New S&D online shop will be up and running within a few days. The first items for sale will be a superb selection of industrial railway DVDs - not S&D I know, but they made me an offer (wholesale) that I couldn't refuse!

The other big news is that we now have our new website domain registered and the stunning new site will begin to go online over the next week or so - you'll find out when right here.

The meeting is now only a few weeks away, and we are already expecting too big a turnout for an intimate dinner party as originally planned, but don't worry - a positive cornucopia of food and drink will be available to all attendees!

when even he gets it ....

David Bailey, our webmaster, has just sent me this gem on the death of GM in the USA.

Whilst Michael Moore is still using that old scapegoat Climate Change as the reason for this it is still 99% sound. Buses? Never! I never thought I'd agree with someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum to me, but perhaps this shows just how deep-seated this all is!


Goodbye, GM ...by Michael Moore

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

midford progress

Excellent news! I have heard today from the current owner of Midford station. He is very keen to see us take over the station etc and will ensure that either he or his representative will be at the New S&D meeting at the end of this month. He has also been speaking to the editor of one of the main railway magazines who is very excited by this whole project.

These are early days, and there's a lot of work (and fundraising!) to be done before the Midford Project gets off the ground, but so far things have been going far far better than I dared hope when the New S&D was set up just under three months ago!

the vision for midford

These two shots are of Hulme End station, on the old Leek and Manifold Railway in Derbyshire. Although this is not connected to an operating railway it really captures the railway atmosphere and serves a very useful purpose as both an information point and a tourist attraction.

One feature is a model of the railway which is certainly something we should consider for Midford - perhaps a representation of the S&D at Midford in the 1950s. Notice the easy to use and non-intrusive window shutters which allow security overnight but keep the place light and airy in the day.

We are still getting a regular flow of donations for Midford which should increase through the summer as the railway press recieve a barrage of press releases and articles from us!

missed - and future - opportunities

The old S&D served three major national venues, and the New S&D will do the same. One was there even in 1966, one has sprung up since, coincidentally on the route and the third was actually inspired by the S&D. All will be served directly by the New S&D.


First off is the Bath and West Showground at Prestleigh. This actually is already rail served, but only internally and on the 7¼" gauge. The Bath and West Show is a really big event, and is on at the moment. As road traffic falls it will, if it plans to survive, need a rail link. This could either be a standard gauge branch off the main line, or a narrow gauge feeder route that also serves the showground internally. There are regular events at the showground, many of which attract thousands of people, so the route would be opened many times a year.



Second is the Great Dorset Steam Fair. This was inspired by the S&D and the operating company is currently looking at an internal narrow gauge permanent railway to service the site in future years. No doubt the wheel will turn full circle and the restored S&D serve the site, again either with a standard gauge branch from Blandford or an extension of the narrow gauge internal railway to a new S&D station.


Lastly is the Glastonbury Festival. This is one of the most famous and important music events in the world. Currently special trains are run to Castle Cary during the festival with onward transport by buses (LOL!) Interestingly the old S&D Highbridge branch trackbed currently serves as an internal road within the festival grounds - so building a station within the festival site will be a doddle.

Railways in the future will serve the areas they operate in far more intimately than the old lines did with many branches, tramways and ultra light rail systems connecting to the main routes. The S&D will hopefully be a leader in this new form of community transport, linking communities to each other and to the wider world.

midford then and now ...

(Photo Mick Knox 6.3.2006)


Top shot. Midford as it is now.

Bottom shot. Midford in five years' time? With your help, yes!

To contribute to the Midford Appeal please see the side bar.

I've already put my name down to reconstruct the block wall in the foreground.

from our friends across the sea

More insight from James Howard Kunstler -


Waking Up from the Happy Motoring Dream

Something like a week remains before General Motors is reduced to lunchmeat on industrial-capital's All-You-Can-Eat buffet spread. The wish is that its deconstructed pieces will re-organize into a "lean, mean machine" for producing "cars that Americans want to buy," and that, by extension, the American Dream of a Happy Motoring economy may be extended a while longer.

This fantasy rests on some assumptions that just don't "pencil out." One is that the broad American car-owning public can continue to buy their cars the usual way, on credit. The biggest emerging new class in America is the "former middle class." Credit kept the remnants of the middle class going for decades after their incomes stopped growing in the 1970s. Now, their incomes have stopped coming in altogether and they are sinking into swamp of entropy already occupied by the tattoo- for-lunch-bunch. Of course, this has plenty of dire sociopolitical implications.

Unfortunately, the big American banks did their biggest volume business in their biggest loans at the very time that that the middle class was on its way to becoming former. Now that the former middle class is arriving at its destination, the banks are so damaged by bad paper that they won't make loans to even the remnant of the remnant of the middle class. In other words, the entire model for financing Happy Motoring is now out-of-order, probably permanently.

Even assuming some Americans can continue buying cars one way or another, I'm not convinced that we can make the kinds we fantasize about. Notice, nobody talks about hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars anymore. Why not? Because the technicalities and logistics could not be overcome at the scale required -- i.e. at the current scale of mass highway motoring and commuting. Sure, you could build a demonstration vehicle and run it around a test track a few times, but could you build a mass production car by the tens of millions that would run for 150,000 miles without a hugely expensive fuel cell change-out? No, at least not within the time-window that the liquid hydrocarbon fuel problem presented. Or could you construct a hydrogen fuel station (and product delivery) network replacing the old gasoline stations? Fuggeddabowdit. Hydrogen, as an element, was just too hard to move and contain. It's teeny-weeny atoms leaked out of valves and gaskets remorselessly and you couldn't pack enough into a tanker truck to make the trip to its destination worthwhile. Schemes to generate hydrogen on-board all ended up in the "perpetual motion" sink.

The current wish is that the dregs of GM and Chrysler will hire low- paid elves with no pension or health benefits and pump out hybrid and/or electric cars. It's conceivable that we could "reverse-engineer" a Prius or an Insight, but considering what a lousy job American car companies did on reverse-engineering everything that Japan or Germany pumped out over the past thirty-five years, the odds are pretty high that these new products will be just lame enough to fail against the established competition. What's more, they also present logistical and technical problems. For the hybrid, gasoline is still an issue (and Jevon's Paradox comes into play: the more efficient you make a means for using a resource, the more of that resource you will use). For both the hybrid and the electric car, the issue of how to get enough lithium for the batteries obtains, at least for now, given the current state- of-the-art battery technology. Most of this rare metal now comes from one place, Bolivia, and everybody wants "a piece" of it. Electric vehicles in large numbers depend on either coal or nuclear powered electric generation, each presenting special hazards. Both hybrids and electric cars would depend on the old installment loan purchase system -- at least to work in the current mode of suburban living, long-range commuting, and interstate highway travel.

Boone Pickens's plan of last year for converting the US car fleet to natural gas was another fantasy with wide appeal. But it depended on the companion fantasy of building massive wind-farm infrastructure on the great plains to shift natural gas use from power plants to vehicles, and the financial crisis has destroyed the capital necessary to even begin planning that project -- it even destroyed a large part of Mr. Pickens own capital reserves. Anyway, I would not be so sanguine about the long-term future of the shale gas plays that this scheme was based on. The depletion rates of these wells is horrendous and the amount of steel needed to keep production up is not consistent with the realities of the available infrastructure.

All the technologies under consideration are not likely to extend the Happy Motoring era. A prayerful reflection on them can only reinforce the specialness of oil and its byproducts -- cheap oil double-specially -- as well as reinforcing the reality that the cheap energy era itself is over. And, of course, in the play of events over the past several years we can see the relationship between cheap energy and easy credit, and how our entire economy has run aground, one way or another, on resource limits.

The implications of all this in the sociopolitical and geopolitical realms are pretty daunting. As long as we maintain Happy Motoring as the normal mode of existence in this country, we are going to see an ever-growing class of very resentful citizens pissed off at being foreclosed from it. In my oft-repeated scheme-of-things, this leads very quickly to the trap of political extremism, perhaps even corn-pone Nazism, as the system becomes increasingly difficult to prop up except by force. In geopolitical terms it leads to ever more dangerous international contests over the world's remaining oil reserves.

All this leads to two conclusions.

One is to accept the fact that the Happy Motoring era is over and to devote our remaining resources to re-localization, walkable communities, and public transit. It obviously requires a very drastic revision of our current collective self-image, of what we aspire to and who we are. If the car companies have any future at all, it should be based on making the rolling stock for public transit -- and for now the most intelligent choice for us is to fix the existing passenger railroad lines instead of venturing into grandiose new transit systems requiring stupendous capital outlays. Let the car era wind down gracefully. Triage and prioritize the highway maintenance agenda -- we won't be affluent enough to keep repaving the whole existing system -- and let other nations meet the diminishing demand for cars in the USA. This would be a "best case" scenario. (Other nations may decide to go further up the Happy Motoring road at their own eventual peril.)

My second conclusion is not so appetizing, namely that the bankruptcy of General Motors may set in motion a chain of events that will accelerate the destructive unwind of the bad credit economy, the damage to our bond values, the loss of faith in our currency, and the authority and legitimacy of our leaders. This last dire outcome might be allayed if, say, President Obama directed his policy efforts to the items in the paragraph above, that is, a reality-based agenda for true change in how we live -- but who can feel confident about that happening these days? Maybe it will take a horrifying chain of events to get Mr. Obama there. And then, tragically, he may be overwhelmed by the chain of events itself. I hope not.

bristol surprise

We went to visit the SS Great Britain today and this took me totally by surprise. It's the Bristol Harbour Railway, probably the only heritage line in the UK without a website, and it was running today. Currently it runs for about half a mile but will be extended in 2011 to the new industrial museum. Passenger vehicles are converted goods vehicles, which must have been great fun in today's heat and sun! This section of line was used a few years ago by a Parry People Mover. Unusually the line is operated by the city council, who clearly know a good thing when they see it!

first New S&D meeting

The first meeting of the New Somerset and Dorset Railway will take place on Saturday June 27th, 7.00pm for 7.30pm.

Venue is 10 Bellamy Avenue, Hartcliffe, BRISTOL, BS13 0HW

We'll provide an excellent dinner, possibly fondu or raclette. You'll have free access to our impressive wine collection too!

All members AND supporters are welcome, but please let me know you are coming. It's fine to bring partners. This will be a social and business meeting. Could members think about taking on committee roles so we can move things forward.

With such a long line and a wide range of members' home towns we'd like to change meeting venues each time so that we all share the costs (and time) of travelling. As membership grows and meetings get larger we'll look at hiring a function room somewhere midway on the line.

Invitations have also, of course, been sent to each of the S&D restoration groups (Midsomer Norton, Shillingstone, Washford, Gartell and Blandford Arches) to send a representative each.

not in my back yard!

(Thanks to Mick Knox for this and picture).

An example of when the state run railway wants to reopen a line. Miles of palisade fencing that the average trespasser would take seconds to get over so is a complete waste of time & money. This is in Bletchley on the route to Oxford. This is not what the people of Somerset or Dorset would want on their re-opened line!

It is essential that as the S&D gets rebuilt it is seen as PART of the landscape, not a blot on it. Network Rail lives in a dystopian past. The fencing probably exists because there's money in it for someone. Most continental and US railways don't use fencing at all. Why should they? Our roads aren't fenced and are infinitely more dangerous as it's impossible to forecast where a vehicle may go. A kid from Hartcliffe was killed a week or so ago when a car, driven by another kid, mounted the pavement and hit him. No fences there. Yet the roads have a constant procession of vehicles, driven by amateurs, with barely a break in between. Even the busiest railways rarely have more than one train every two minutes.

This is the future. The image of railways in their prime is an image of the railway of the future. We need to fight to ensure that our railways are human scale, that they serve local needs first, that stations are manned and a delight to wait in, that refreshments are available everywhere and the whole atmosphere is one where people want to be, not flee.

The New S&D is all about this, just as the old S&D was!

PS Thanks for all the pledges and cash that came in to the Midford Appeal after Jeff Harris's very odd message board post!

Progress report 1

Well we've been up and running over 2 months now.

To date we have announced our presence via this blog and local newspaper reports. There has been a steady flow of new members including our first junior member and first overseas member (Sweden).

We are about to get the website up and running, possibly in the next week.

We have funds in the bank!

We have launched the Midford station appeal, wth pledges of over £1500 already, and press releases now with all the major magazines.

Over the next three months I will expect us to -

Increase membership by 200%.

Have the website fully operational with full e-commerce facilities etc.

Have reached £5000+ with the Midford appeal.

Launch fully along the route via local newspapers and magazines.

Hold our first meeting (please contact me with availability so we can set this up for June).

you're wasting your time!!

Classic misunderstanding of what we're about (via the message board).

i've taken a while back to look at this from an outsiders point of view recently and have come to see that this whole idea of your new s+d really is pointless. a lot of the whole idea of this seems to be to 'get back' at the midsomer norton project and bring down the image of it between yourselfs with stupid bitchy comments going back and forth, they will succeed with their aims. your aims on the other hand are going to require such a stupid amount of investment that the chances of them happening are slim to none. as much as i'd like to see the S+D back its not going to happen, to much development has happened in the poole/bournemouth area, i doubt that bournemouth station could cope with the additional services required. and before you say bournemouth west station rebuilding, SWT arent going to give up their maintenance depot, and isnt there a car park there anyway now? at the bath end of the line there is nowhere anyone could put a station beyond midford and theres not much point building a railway line to nowhere. at radstock there is pretty much no way you can get through there, to much development has happened now, i know there's going to be talk of me being a troll so im not gonna even look back to see what is said.

My reply -

This is not about MN and never has been. MN provide a valuable rail corridor on the route and as a life member I'll always support what they do there. I can't say I've seen any bitching anywhere - but then I haven't been down to MN recently! We're all working towards the same thing - a restoration of the S&D. Why would anybody involved in this try to run down other aspects of this great revival project??
Jeff, you're going to have to live a lot more in the future than I am! How do you expect to get around or are you going to just sit in MN and grow veg?

We have looked closely at approaches to Bath and Bournemouth. There is every possibility of a chord line north of Midford connecting via the old Limpley Stoke line to the Bath route, giving an approach to Bristol as well. At the southern end there are several ways of returning to Bournemouth, and connecting on via the Ringwood route to Southampton and beyond.

I don't think you really 'get' the New S&D. As the fuel crisis hits big time then the government will have no choice but to restore the rail network. This process - a reversal of Beeching - is already happening. It will accelerate. We need to make sure that we are at the head of the queue. Already 1969 and 1968 closures are being reversed. The S&D closed in 1966 - the time for reopening is rapidly drawing near.
With a base at Midford we can publicise what we are doing and be taken seriously.

Negativity is a very 1970s thing. The world has changed enormously. It's your generation that will be doing the rebuilding of railways. You need to get involved in a huge project like this because you have to!

So don't listen to a few oddballs that just want to run steam trains and look backwards. We have to live in the future, not the past, and the New S&D is very much part of the future, even if we will incorporate the best elements of the world that existed before you were born!