midweek at midford

 

Cleared platform.

Looking towards Long Arch Bridge.

 

Classic fencing starts to reappear - and makes the narrow road safer.

 

Midford main mover Stuart Seale chats to New S&D Press and Publicity Officer Kevin Gover.

 

Had a nice (and rare) trip to Midford on Wednesday to meet with our new Press and Publicity Officer Kevin Gover and get a chance to catch up with progress on the site.

 

Stuart kindly showed Kevin around the site and I did some radio stuff for the Masbury Appeal.

 

Interestingly Kevin walked from Freshford to Midford and I may well try to reach Midford by train and foot in future, rather than use the slow and rather ridiculous car. It's about a two mile walk in each direction.

 

Television is also taking an interest in developments at Masbury so expect to have it rammed down your throats (in the nicest possible way!) over the summer months!  

 

Midford is looking great and the litter problems we suffered from anti-social visitors after the Two Tunnels route opened seem to have calmed down somewhat. New fencing has appeared along the top of Long Arch Bridge, together with some new safety bollards, much improving this part of the site.

 

Remember if you would like to help in restoring Midford to its former glory please contact me via leysiner@aol.com and I will put you in touch with Stuart.

more wood

Mick Knox has got his eyes on these saplings and small trees lining the cutting at Midford towards Long Arch Bridge - a job for when the bird nesting season's passed. You can just make out the platform in the far distance giving a good idea of just how much land we own at this site. This will look great when the track returns.

long arch bridge

Some shots of Long Arch Bridge, which forms the northern boundary of our land at Midford. This would also presumably form the southern boundary of the Up Goods Yard land. Judging by the SAD-17 marker in the bridge it's still owned and maintained by Network Rail. If we do proceed with developing a sustainable engineering facility at the Up Goods Yard it may be that we could negotiate rights to running through the bridge without having to take on the liability of ownership.

When we are running regular trains we'll be more than happy to take these redundant bridges, viaducts and tunnels over from BR Residual and Sustrans but until then I suspect they would be too big a drag on our finances to maintain with no clear cash flow emanating from them.

the next step - what do you think

Whilst I appreciate that any project - perhaps especially one as big as ours - needs a little time to consolidate (but in a way that's what we're doing by setting up stand alone projects that have a reasonably sedate pace, mainly governed by money and human resources) I also don't think we should rest on our laurels too much!

Midford and Spetisbury are proceeding apace and will no doubt both be fully up and running within 3 years. At the same time a project as all-embracing and as important as ours needs to constantly be doing NEW things which will drive the whole project forwards.

My own view (and at the moment it is only my view!) is that project 3 should be a small sustainable engineering facility, where we can experiment with new electric and steam locomotives. It will need a building (S&D style!) and a few test tracks, standard gauge, narrow gauge and perhaps 15" gauge.

Of course there'd be loads of places along the route (and I'm not forgetting the branches!) where this could be set up, but yesterday I took the brave step of venturing beyond our bit at Midford, under the Long Arch Bridge. Just beyond is the old up goods yard - and suddenly I thought 'this would be ideal!' Not only is there a fair bit of room, there's even the old crane base to give us a link to the old S&D and, of course, the run up to the station if we wanted giving us about a quarter mile of standard gauge track, and there's room within the goods area for a few decent lengths of narrow gauge (2ft? Metre?) and 15".

What do you lot think?

midford 1980s

(Both copyright Jim Type)

Two fantastic shots of Midford from the 1980s, which just shows how much progress has been made over the last year, and also by the two previous restoration groups.

Whilst these shots do have a certain charm I wouldn't have liked to have made the short walk to Long Arch Bridge through all the undergrowth. The S&D really has moved on from this rather dismal scene, with two stations restored, a third one (Midford) cleared and a fourth (Spetisbury) now taking its place in the queue!

In the next few years I suspect Chilcompton and at least one other station site (perhaps on the branch?) will join this illustrious list.

musings ...

This has ended up buried in the 'comments' section so I've promoted it to the main page!

2 Items, firstly to all supporters who can't make the mid week working parties, let's set up some weekend ones. Best use the Midford Facebook group for this here. I live in SW London and am happy to give others a lift down to the site, it will be more cost effective. Please comment on my message there or reply to this comment here.

2nd Who owns the adjoining land and how do they feel about selling, particularly the old goods yard through Long Arch bridge? Because if we owned that?? Who knows what we could set up :)
Yes, let's get weekend work parties set up. Not only is it convenient for most members, but also there will be far more passing visitors who may well then take an interest in the route. I think this would be a huge publicity boost for us and hopefully Brett can quickly get a team together. I'll certainly do everything I can to make it up on the first occasion!

On the question of land ownership I'm sure Mick Knox, who has taken on the 'portfolio' of land ownership, would welcome help with getting this information together. The goods yard to the north of Long Arch Bridge would be an excellent base as there's a reasonable amount of land, there's access from the minor road and, most importantly, it's clear of other users ie the cycleway.

We certainly don't plan to sit still now Midford's under our belt, and further land purchases are inevitable - though it does depend on lots of good sized donations coming in!

'we are approaching midford'

Great news is that the agreement for the New S&D taking over Midford is now in the post. All we have to do is sign and we will get access to Midford and begin the rebuilding of the station. We will be paying £100 per month for just over 40 years to buy the freehold of the station and the trackbed as far as the southern end of the Long Arch bridge, about a quarter of a mile.

The intention is to rebuild the station building, signal box and associated infrastructure and lineside furniture. It is possible that track will be relaid for cosmetic purposes but no rolling stock will be sited here until the line is reinstated for real trains from Radstock to Bath. The station building, once reconstructed, will serve as an office, information centre and shop for the northern section of the route.

This will be a big step for us and should raise our profile enormously. We will put out an appeal for funds to rebuild the station as soon as we have taken the site over.