resource

A very useful resource for the restoration of the section of line between Midford and the Long Arch Bridge is this excellent work by Mike Arlett, out of print but still available on Amazon.

As well as a comprehensive history of the S&D at Midford there are also numerous photos that will help put things back as they were.

Remember that restoration of Midford is now proceeding and all members are welcome to go to the station and do some work. At the moment we are still at the clearance stage, which will probably take a few months.

Just a few rules if you do go up - please email me first at leysiner@aol.com so I'm aware you are there and can let you know what work is needed to be done. If possible please try to go with at least one other person. All work is currently done at your own risk so personal insurance is recommended. It is a good idea to wear steel toecapped boots if possible. We'll be getting New S&D reflective jackets made shortly - when they are ready ideally we'd like all people working on site to wear them. This makes us look more professional and, more importantly, visible. If people pass and ask what we're doing please take time to let them know what our plans are. You will be ambassadors for the project even if you are shy or just want to cut stuff down! If you have them please take some leaflets to hand out - if you need some please email me. No fires please - just pile up anything that's cut down, clear of the platform edges and, of course, the cycleway. Try to buy a drink or meal in the Hope and Anchor and let them know why you are there. Don't leave tools or anything else on the cycleway - it needs to be left totally clear at all times, this is one of our obligations as landlord. Take home ALL litter, including cigarette ends!

the future

Nick Howes asked, via the message board -

The S&D was the best most legendary line in the land and I often wonder why we are still struggling after 13 years as a very minor heritage set up, when we occupy a slice of the famous S&D. Just where are all the enthusiasts and supporters? and why are so many other "new generation" projects up and down the country overtaking us? we have to ask, is there severe apathy in the wider bristol region, do we portray our aims as too fantastic, do we look like a no-hoper project ? hemmed in by a missing 5 million pound bridge and 5 million pound filled cutting? what do you all think?

I quickly knocked out the following reply -

I think the problem is that quite early on we got the reputation of only being interested in setting up a 'steam museum with a short demonstration track'. This was such a throwback to the 60s when preservation was only just taking off.

I did a lot of shows a few years ago and although we got a lot of interest I was amazed by the number of people who thought the MN setup was a bit of an insult to the S&D. This was at least some of the impetus behind the rebranding to 'Mendip Main Line Project'. The problem now of course is that we are going nowhere fast, and that main line seems just as distant now as it was five years ago.

Also the original Midsomer Norton Station Project was exactly that, one project within a far more all-encompassing SDRHT which, constitutionally, claims the whole route and the eventual setting up of 'projects' at various places. That seems to have been forgotten now. Where are the trackbed stewards and the lobbying for preservation of the trackbed throughout?

There's still a tragic loss of focus. There is no way that Midsomer Norton to Chilcompton, or even Radstock to Shepton, is anything like ambitious enough to pull the real support for the S&D out into the open. The S&D was the finest line in the UK. It had unbelievable goodwill from enthusiasts and country lovers alike. A restored S&D will be a fantastic asset to Somerset and Dorset, whatever happens in the future.

That's really why I'm helping to set up the New S&D, because it will first and foremost be a lobbying organisation pushing for at first protection then rebuilding of the route, for real passenger and freight trains. Existing heritage set ups on the S&D need to fully engage in this process as well.

We won't get those big engines to MN until we have at least 4 or 5 miles of decent running line, and even then it will be a compromise. There's a huge amount of work to do and that's why we have to appeal to railway enthusiasts, local people along the route, Peak Oil types and country lovers. We need to build on the 'brand' serendipitously created by the likes of Ivo Peters, Mike Arlett and others who were lucky enough to know the line first time round.

We can do it.

quiet friday

Midsomer Norton South 23/06/06

A rare trip out of the office and up the line today. I managed to grab a few nice pictures before the sun sank too low! The cladding for the signalbox has arrived, as well as the new Mike Arlett DVD. We're expecting a small coach party tomorrow, so the engine will be running up and down a few times for their entertainment!

we're famous!

Just arrived at the sales office today - literally - is TVP's excellent new DVD and book commemorating 40 years of S&D closure. This uses both archive film and film specially short in March 2006, including Bath Green Park, the West Somerset Railway and Midsomer Norton, showing the very different ways the 40th anniversary was marked. Mike Arlett commentates. Running time is 75 minutes so this is very good value! The book is 20 pages with many photos, all in full colour.

To order the DVD and book please send a cheque payable to 'SDRHT' for £14.50 (£12.95 + £1.55 post and packing) to

SDRHT Sales Office
107 Anchor Barton
Horningsham
WARMINSTER
BA12 7LR

or Paypal £14.50 to leysiner@aol.com for return of post service

or pop along to the station (Sundays/Mondays) and pick up one in person!

the benefits of foresight

It seems odd that it’s taken forty years for the reversal of the idiotic closure of the S&D to start, and it’s worth looking at some of the possible reasons why.

There’s a story (surely apocryphal) that the whole S&D was offered to anyone interested in 1966 for £50,000! That’s line, stations, signalling, the lot. Even if true would a privately-owned S&D have been viable back in the sixties? The preservation movement was in its infancy, rail was (incredibly) seen as a dying technology, and marketing was unheard of. And at the same time steam was still reasonably common on British Railways, so steam on the S&D wouldn’t have been that much of a novelty. On top of the £50,000 locos and stock would have had to be found, and at that time about the longest preserved line was the Festiniog at 7 miles, the longest standard gauge was the Bluebell at 4 miles. A 100-mile preserved line would have been impossible to run economically - in 1966.

As the sixties became the seventies rail preservation was beginning to find its feet, the Dart Valley and Keighley and Worth Valley were added to the small list of standard gauge lines, and a small preservation set-up was emerging at Radstock, with the seemingly very reasonable and easily-achievable plan to restore the (in-situ) line to Writhlington.

Its failure in the anti-rail 70s surely left a bit of a cloud hanging over the S&D. Attempts (mainly pipe-dreams) to set up other schemes all fell through, without even laying track. The 80s were the real low-point for the S&D, not an inch of track remained and the clock was ticking.
So how could the finest line in the country be allowed to reach such a state? Surely with the huge love and support of rail enthusiasts and local residents at least part of the S&D could have been reinstated, even if only as a tourist attraction? Less worthy lines were being restored all over the country, the Great Central was restoring a double-track main line, the West Somerset turned a decaying branch line into a 20-mile plus tourist trap, even once empty trackbeds were being restored.

Was it the sheer magic of the S&D that frightened people off? Surely those coffin-chasers in the 60s actually quite liked the idea of being the ’last ever’ passengers on the line, there was perhaps a poignant grandeur in decaying stations fading in the mist, the ‘Withered Arm’ generation prefering the easy route of fondly remembering the recent past rather than facing up to the sheer hard work of restoring one of those dead routes? Perhaps they still see the next generation, those of us born too late to travel on and know the original S&D, as somehow inferior to them? Or perhaps there were simply too many other distractions - established steam railways, music, women, cheap sangria etc?

The world has changed so much in the last thirty years that perhaps it’s difficult for any of us to really get into that downbeat mindset any longer. Rail is in the ascendant, roads are coughing their last as the oil runs out, people want to live quieter, friendlier, more connected lives. Doors are opening for us all along the S&D.

Perhaps the S&D needed that period of temporary closure from 1966 to 2007 to gain an insurmountable mythic status where the iconography of Ivo Peters melds with the pathos of Jeffery Grayer, where Mike Arlett’s dulcet if somewhat pessimistic tones are replaced by the guitars of Arctic Monkeys to transform a whisper into a shout that ‘we are back, and this time it’s for good!’