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?

templecombe shed

(Courtesy Jim Type)

Not sure about the origins of this shot, but Jim asked me to confirm that it was Templecombe shed. It is of course - the distinctive roof of the shed is confirmation enough, as is the S&D style embankment in the distance which leads up to Templecompe (Upper) station.

I love this shot - it looked like a great place to work!

This is exactly the sort of small steam shed we'd like to set up on the route (possibly at Templecome) to allow visiting steam locos to refuel, clean up and rest overnight when running steam specials along the route, and also along the Salisbury-Exeter route and elsewhere.

We're also hoping to set up a sustainable transport engineering centre on the route, hopefully with both standard and narrow gauge demo lines, where we can experiment on energy delivery systems, ultra modern vehicles and all the other aspects of sustainable transport that we'll need in the future. Perhaps that should be our next step once Midford and Spetisbury are completed as information offices? There'll certainly be something for everyone on the new Somerset and Dorset!