swanage approaches the change

I love the Swanage Railway. I was lucky enough to visit it when it was a real line, in 1971 and on the last day 1 January 1972. I was on the train that got held up by cowboys. Sadly I don't have the photos to hand, they are in the attic somewhere and no doubt willl be scanned eventually!

But Swanage intends to be a real railway again soon, runninga  daily service from the junction with the network at Wareham. Unfortunately for the line the junction wasn't right at the station but about a mile away at Worgret, so the new service will involve running over the network. But this is going to happen everywhere so it's good that Swanage will be the groundbreaker.

Full report from the Swanage website here.

Swanage to Wareham Daily Service

One of the goals of the Swanage Railway is to restore a daily service between Swanage and Wareham to connect with the main line. This is progressing well and we hope to have a service running around 2013. However, before that can be done there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to upgrade the track between the Swanage Railway and Worgret Junction, just west of Wareham station. While Swanage is now connected to the national rail network, the infrastructure is not currently suitable for daily train running and is restricted to just several charter trains each year.
The key issue is signalling. We are hoping to have the branch junction re-signalled for regular passenger traffic as part of a Network Rail upgrade of the mainline that is scheduled for around 2012. During a recent visit to the Swanage Railway, Transport Minister Lord Adonis listened to our plans for establishing a service, noting in The Times that "the business case is promising and the proposal is highly credible." Lord Adonis said that he would schedule a high level meeting to discuss the plans.
What else needs to be done? The 'Project Wareham' to do list is a long one. While the track is in place and has recently accepted charter trains visiting Swanage, it does need to be upgraded in places. The service will also require rolling stock as well as storage and maintenance facilities. There are also plans to develop this area. The line beyond Norden needs further investment to upgrade the line speed to 25mph. A full barrier crossing will be required at Norden before regular movements will be permitted and at anything more than walking pace.
Our new signal box at Corfe Castle is now in service and will need to be fitted with the necessary equipment to interface directly with Network Rail such that trains can be exchanged without the need for padlocks and gates.
All of this requires funding. Swanage Railway supporters have launched a £100,000 appeal to upgrade the section of the Swanage Railway towards Wareham. Without this funding, the regular daily service will not happen. This £100,000 is only a small part of the total funding required.
Donations to the project can be made on-line or by cheque or money order payable to the Swanage Railway Trust (Project Wareham), Station House, Swanage, Dorset BH19 1HB. Please download and print the form on the right to send with your donation or donate on-line by using the links below.
Please click here to visit the Swanage Railway Trust Appeals section at http://www.swanagerailwaytrust.org.uk/appeals/index.htm#Wareham

deadly serious

Swanage Railway.


Welsh Highland Railway.


Gartell Railway. (John Penny).


Jinty at Midsomer Norton 2005.

One of the oddest things about all this New S&D thing is that I still occasionally get asked 'Is this a serious scheme?' It's deadly serious. I have studied the economics of Peak Oil, of transport and of railways and I still can't see any way - short of apocalypse - that this can't happen.

Consider two futures. One in which - somehow - economic expansion continues and some sort of alternative/s to oil is found. Roads would become increasingly congested, towns would continue to expand. Already our railways are bursting at the seams - new lines are not just desirable but inevitable. And in this (extremely unlikely) scenario economic expansion could lead to increased carbon output. How long before every government finally 'gets' what the rest of us have for years - that fuel efficiency is one way of reducing atmospheric carbon? Railways are at least FOUR times as efficient as road transport, much more than four times as efficient as air travel (which even in this scenario is doomed). Light and ultra-light rail are even more efficient.

The other future, the far more realistic one, will see economic expansion halt and even contract, and the road system grind to a halt due to a mix of sky-high oil prices, deteriorating maintenance of roads and ever greater limits on carbon output. This could happen over decades, years or even weeks. In this scenario rail expansion won't only be desirable but a matter of life or death, for communities if not for individuals. New railways will be opening everywhere, not just totally reversing the Beeching cuts but reaching places that never got a railway first time round, because in this scenario no railway = no way of continuing as an economic community.

The New S&D has never been about dreams, but more about stopping a nightmare. A New S&D is already needed, many feel that the original line should never have closed, in twenty years time only a few rocking lunatics won't see the need for it.

What we need - HAVE - to do is get organised NOW, develop our networks and contacts, within the rail industry, among local people, at local, regional and national political levels. It will be a struggle to get resources, human and financial. We will be competing with hundreds or even thousands of other routes desperate to reopen before the oil runs out. Serious? You could say that!

it'll do for now ...

Info courtesy of Nick Howes.

Tangmere - London to Swanage.

Timings for the express (Waterloo-Swanage) on Parkstone Bank
Sat 2 May 2009 1155 down
Mon 4 May 1725 up

Not quite the S&D but very close and with the right sort of loco! And great to see that trains can now really run from Waterloo to Swanage again ... we're getting there!

heritage railways in the new golden age of railways

The heritage railway (formerly preserverved railway) is really a child of the 1950s-1980s. It was created in a very different world, one where it was seriously considered that road traffic would continue to expand, where railways were some quaint historical artefact, where steam power (despite its use in nuclear power generation) was finished. It carried tourists on trips through pretty scenery, just for the experience of travelling behind a steam locomotive. It was great! It was nostalgia and volunteers, crisps and coke, tea towels and fridge magnets.

The world has changed. We face two huge challenges, Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Both will impact enormously on the heritage railway movement, and are already beginning to do so. The Severn Valley suffered two disastrous bouts of Climate Change related rain damage recently. The price of coal and oil rocketed until a few months ago, then plunged precipitously. This volatility has long been forecast by Peak Oil economists. Both threats have serious economic impacts - the current economic downturn may well be the first symptom of Peak Oil.

But there is an upside. Both threats will increase the use and relevance of rail. Rail is four times as energy efficient as roads in moving passengers and freight. Rail is far more flexible in its energy inputs - it can use conventional electricity, oil (for a few more years), renewable energy delivered via wires, conductor rails, conduits or flywheels, it can use steam generated by coal, biomass or wood.

The real problem is that a railway will, wherever it is, be considered in the future as a locale's principle asset. Will there really be room for amateur-operated railways in this new world? Will a line even be allowed to purchase coal to run passengers on journeys they don't need to make? And without coal that will be the end of them, because oil would have vanished years before.

In a way privatization was an acknowledgement that railways would become of prime importance in the future and perhaps an admission that huge national government may not survive, as we all look to living simpler and more locally-based lives.

The process will be gradual, but the sharper-minded lines are already planning for their own survival. Where genuine passenger flows can be identified then services are being gradually introduced that are geared towards passengers, rather than tourists. The Norden to Swanage service is a classic example, removing cars from the roads and narrow streets of Swanage. Soon you'll be able to hop off a train from the network at Wareham and take the train the whole way down. Moves to reconnect Minehead to Taunton are also signs of this process. Even the Lynton and Barnstaple are serious enough to see that to survive they need to connect back down to Barnstaple - they cannot rest on their laurels up in the heights of Exmoor with only the soon-to-be extinct car and bus to link them to the rest of the world. Closer to home the Trust at Midsomer Norton consider reconnection to the network at Radstock to be a big priority. ALL heritage railways will have to justify their existence in the future by offering real passenger and freight services to communities no longer having any real alternatives.

This is the new world of rail development, full of both opportunities and threats. The New S&D will be in the vanguard of these developments and will ensure that our stretches of Somerset and Dorset, at least, will still be connected to civilization in the future!

inspirations

Swanage station. A line that almost never happened but is now one of the leading heritage lines, which also operates 'real' trains to take visitors from Norden to Swanage, leaving their cars behind.


Wulfric. Born four months early, we were told that he had 0% chance of surviving by the doctors.


The signalbox at Midsomer Norton. Rebuilt from a pile of rubble, now an absolute gem and a credit to the whole heritage movement.


The Rhatische Bahn in Switzerland. A huge network of metre gauge lines running through spectacular scenery, using engineering on an epic scale - and profitable!


A1 Pacific 'Tornado', built 2008. 18 years and £3 million - and many said it would never happen!

The above are some of my own inspirations which keep me working towards reinstatement of the S&D. Let me know yours!

new facebook group

Midsomer Norton South.


Avon Valley Railway.


Swanage Railway.


Lynton and Barnstaple.

A great idea from Robin Whitlock - a Facebook group specifically for potential railway volunteers. Take a look and join today!

ever vigilant

(Photo - 1986)

We should never take what we've achieved at Midsomer Norton for granted. Britain is littered with failed preservation schemes, from the Westerham Valley Railway sacrificed for a motorway(!) to the above (Shoreham-Beeding), a line that should have been preserved as it would have tapped into a huge tourist trade. And of course schemes closer to home including Radstock to Writhlington and the Midford set-up.

The interesting thing is that many of these schemes seemed straightforward - track still down in many places, or short routes with little obvious obstructions.

Other lines that looked doomed from the start - Kent and East Sussex, Swanage, even Minehead - have really flourished. And did any of us really see the Welsh Highland reopening throughout?

It seems to me that the lesson to be learnt is - be ambitious! It's mainly the smaller schemes that have failed - they probably just did not ignite real enthusiasm, did not build up a head of steam and did not attract the real players.

The scheme at Midsomer Norton seemed to take ages to take off - the original plan to just restore the station and - perhaps - a small 'demonstration' length of track would never have worked. The S&D deserves a REAL preservation attempt - miles of track, big engines, plenty of stations, all the grandeur and iconography of the original line. This is what we're now working for - the Mendip Main Line. Midsomer Norton to Shepton at the very least, with the line to Bath happening at the same time or very soon after. And Shepton to Templecombe isn't really that far ...

Midsomer Norton is secure, but it's taken us fifteen years to get as far as we have. Over the next fifteen years progress will be a lot faster as we move into the post Peak Oil world, and as the new S&D becomes more widely known. Even now we still rather hide our light under a bushel, but this blog, the website, the superb Telegraph Magazine and an increased media presence shows our determination to change that!