Shillingstone 29.11.2015

SHILLINGSTONE

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(All 29.11.2015 via The Somerset and Dorset Railway at Shillingstone Facebook group). 

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It's fantastic watching the progress from Shillingstone, which has had its ups and downs over the years! Today was time to move stock clear to allow for the arrival of the two steam locomotives that are coming.

The little Ruston loco was busy pulling bits and pieces of rolling stock including the mark three coach - punching well above its weight! These pics really remind me of Midsomer Norton ten years ago! The S&D is stirring all along the permanent way.

spruce up at midsomer norton

(Midsomer Norton South 6.2.2012 both copyright Mick Knox)

Two shots taken last Monday at Midsomer Norton, primarily to show off the S&D style bank above the retaining wall after Mick Knox was released from his cage with a strimmer! Picture one also shows Midsomer Norton's latest locomotive addition, the class 08 diesel. The site now has two diesel locos, a steam Sentinel loco, a DMU and a Roadrailer, which means they are now covered for every eventuality!

S&D comes to the GCR!

(Apologies that the picture doesn't show some ersatz S&D recreation, but I love this shot as it shows just how good the GCR is in recreating scenes from the past - surely the best qualification?)

The Great Central Railway's October 6-9 autumn steam gala will have a Somerset & Dorset theme.

Eight locomotives will take part in a festival of steam which for the first time will last four days!

S&D 7F 2-8-0 No 88 should be the guest star, along with Southern Railway West Country No. 34007 Wadebridge. Neither have visited the Great Central Railway before and will bring with them a flavour of the Somerset and Dorset Railway which was closed in the 1960s.

However a late addition to the line up sees Southern Railway N15 4-6-0 King Arthur class No. 30777 Sir Lamiel back to GCR for the first time in many months. It offers the exciting prospect of seeing Wadebridge and Sir Lamiel passing each other on GCR`s double track and recreating the Southern Region steam scene.

Richard Patching, GCR’s general manager said, "Our autumn galas get better and better. We'll prove the letters 'S' and 'D' really stand for Spectacular and Dramatic! “We'll have nonstop mail drops, a mixture of freight trains and of course a very busy timetable of passenger trains passing on the double track.

“Interestingly, just as the S&D went from double track to single in places, we have just the same sort of arrangement south of Rothley station, so we are uniquely placed to capture the atmosphere of this long-lamented railway."

Five locomotives from the current home fleet of Great Central Railway should also join the line up, including sole surviving GCR freight locomotive, O4 2-8-0 N.o 63601. This locomotive will turn 100 years old in January next year. With GWR Hall, No. 4593 Pitchford Hall on the roster and LMS 3F 0-6-0 No. 47406 there will be a perfect mix of motive power which once worked over and around the Somerset & Dorset.

The GCR's gala event could be the first to feature the recently installed turntable at Quorn & Woodhouse station which is nearing completion. A new 50-seater cafe has also opened at the station giving a perfect vantage point to watch passing trains.

All locomotives and attractions appear subject to availability.

death of the diesels

I just caught the end of steam when I was a kid, watching the Brighton-Plymouth at speed over the level crossing at Lyminster, saw a few on Ryde Pier, saw a tank engine somewhere in London and, from a great distance, the trains departing from Waterloo to the west. Everything else I saw was electrics, until one day, somewhere in Battersea, I saw a big green diesel crossing a bridge over the road. I was hooked. These were far better than electrics and were modern, so much better than steam!

But I think we all know now that diesel locomotives' days are numbered. As the price of oil starts to rocket the railway companies will quickly feel the pinch, even though their supplies will obviously be prioritised over the private motorist (who will be finished). There'll be a rush to electrify but will the money and, more importantly, the skills be there to do it in time? I doubt it.

But there is of course an obvious alternative to electric locomotives - steam! Not the lumbering old polluting and high maintenance machines of old of course, but sleek, clean and fast woodburners, using a sustainable energy source and providing an excellent power source for the tens of thousands of extra trains we're going to need in the future to keep us going. Their USP will be their use of simple technology and also being completely sustainable. They'll have the other advantage that even the old steam engines used to have - longevity. They could easily be built to last 50 or even 100 years or longer, with standardised parts that can be recovered and recycled when the locomotives finally wear out.

I suspect that just about the whole network will be eventually electrified, that's the current network plus the reversed Beeching routes, but local railways and many industrial lines may well find that steam is the cheapest and easiest option. We really are about to enter a new age of steam.

And what of the diesel locomotive? It's doomed. There won't even be the option of running them on preserved routes, diesel for public transport simply won't be available. I suspect the last of the oil will be snapped up by the military, by chemical and fertilizer companies and, of course, by the airlines. And even then it won't last long.

So get out there and photograph these magnificent creations. We may not see their like again ever, or at least for 150 million years, when oil may once again be available for a century or two ...

stone age or steam age?

One of the main criticisms we get at the New S&D is 'When Peak Oil hits the last thing we'll worry about is running trains'.

(Which of course means 'Why bother?')

Hmmm. This is perhaps a valid view IF you think Peak Oil will result in some sort of return to the Stone Age - which of course appeals to novelists and filmmakers. But why? We didn't have oil when the first railway age was upon us - this country was built on coal and steam. Substitute 'coal' for 'wood' and you'll get an insight into my angle on this.

Of course we won't return to the Stone Age, much as some nihilistic types might want us to. The roads and cars and lorries will vanish of course, domestic electricity may become an occasional thing for those of us that still rely on the grid (or its successor(s)), globalization will go and probably most states will break up into smaller ones, diesels will vanish from the railways (so get out and photograph them now!) but there's no reason for us to go back centuries, just a few decades.

So we'll see steam return on railways that aren't electrified, many new railways and tramways will be built and most of us will probably be engaged in a trade and grow most of our own food. But is this so terrible? And don't forget that everything we've learned over the last 300 years will still be there for us.

Eventually once the trauma of Peak Oil is a folk memory I suspect that we'll start progressing again, using solar power. We may even, eventually, get back out into space. Who knows?

The only real certainty is that, for several centuries, we'll all come to rely on our local railway to bring in goods and to get us out and about!

remember 1972?

This is an interesting shot just acquired by the Rail Thing. It shows loco 210479 at Radstock back in 1972.

This is the first copyright picture I've acquired of any of the previous preservation attempts on our line. The Somerset and Dorset Circle had an excellent plan to restore the Radstock to Writhlington section of the S&D main line in the seveties, but it was killed off by a very shortsighted council. Imagine if the Mining Museum at Radstock could offer a steam trip up to Writhington with more mining exhibits there! Imagine the extra jobs and money it would bring to the community. Perhaps a revival of this scheme could be a next step for the New S&D? It would give us a working length of railway with a purpose and fill in one more gap on the strategic Radstock to Bath route. And bring all those jobs and money into Radstock ....

right lines 2

The second issue of our magazine RIGHT LINES is due at the end of February. I want to at least double the size of the previous one, so please send in your articles, letters, photos, comments etc etc. Particularly welcome are progress reports on Midsomer Norton, Gartell, Shillingstone, Washford, Blandford Arches etc etc. Also more than welcome are articles of either a historical or personal nature on all aspects of the S&D.

I want the magazine to become the best by any railway group in the UK within a year or so. I can't see we'll ever exhaust the potential content, and there is always a new angle, not to mention that the S&D is now up and running again in places and new history is being created. For example the above four photos all feature the Midsomer Norton diesel in it's previous unlamented Prussian blue livery!

Please send all articles and photos either electronically to leysiner@aol.com or by post to New S&D, Right Lines, 10 Bellamy Avenue, Hartcliffe, BRISTOL, BS13 0HW.

authenticity

D1120 at Midsomer Norton 6.11.2009

This is a sight for sore eyes! This was the first time I'd seen the resident diesel at Midsomer norton in its new livery. What an incredible improvement on the odd Prussian blue livery it used to sport!

I never got the way certain rail enthusiasts spent years getting the infrastructure looking right only to have the whole illusion destroyed by inappropriate liveries. Midsomer Norton is supposed to represent the station as it was in 1955 or thereabouts. Yet up till last year this diesel appeared in what to all intents and purposes looked like an industrial locomotive livery.

Another feather in Midsomer Norton's cap. And a historic picture. How much longer before diesel locomotives vanish entirely as their fuel sources dry up?

The following extract is from an investment newsletter, and shows how Peak Oil concerns have now very much entered the mainstream. Investment advisers, like New S&D promoters, are not affected by sentiment, nostalgia, wishful thinking or their own agenda, but by simple cold hard facts!

There are a lot of possible outcomes from the end of cheap oil. For our anomynous nostalgic chum (see yesterday's post) I've included some pretty pictures of diesel trains, which will of course be one early casualty, along with cheap air travel and road transport of freight, of this quantum shift in transport patterns and infrastructure. The rail future is clearly electric and sustainable (wood burning/wood waste burning) steam. You will only see diesels in a museum.

The Energy Crisis Just a Bit Delayed

Eighty-five million barrels a day.

That’s the most that can be produced. So when recession causes a temporary decrease in world consumption, it can seem like those 85 million barrels are enough. But consumption is bound to resume its upward climb, while those 85 million barrels a day are all we get. The day of reckoning has just been delayed for a little bit. “Can’t we get more than 85 million barrels?” some folks are bound to wonder. Let’s look into that.

Those Stubborn “Peak” Curves

This week I was in Denver, attending the 2009 conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO). Despite all the happy talk in the Big Media about how the oil situation is under control, I assure you that the oil situation is NOT under control.The market meltdown and world recession of the past year has bought some time, or stolen some time may be a better way of saying it. All the “peak” curves are still out there, but are merely adjusted a bit to the right on the timelines.

As Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey likes to say on the television show Mail Call, “Wipe that smile off your face.” We’re staring at an energy problem that’s coming down the tracks like a runaway freight train. It’s just astonishing that more people don’t appreciate the looming impact of Peak Oil.

Meanwhile, the politicians are fooling around with the health care issue. Hmmm... I have some news for them. If you screw up energy, health care isn’t going to matter very much.

Oil Output Not Increasing

It might be a comforting thought to believe that world oil output can increase. Indeed, many policymakers in the U.S. and Europe apparently dream themselves to sleep at night pondering how the current oil volume of about 85 million barrels per day could move upward to, say, 95 million barrels per day — “if only the world oil industry were more efficient.”Yeah, right. Except the global oil industry is not that model of dreamland efficiency. Sure, there are some bright spots. The big internationals like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, etc. are good. There are some really good state oil firms like Brazil’s Petrobras and Norway’s StatoilHydro. Saudi Aramco is outstanding. These guys are all doing great work to keep the world’s pipelines and tankers filled.

But much of the rest of the world’s oil industry lacks the knack for capital discipline and crisp project execution. Venezuela’s oil industry is a basket case, what with the Chavez-led nationalizations and mass firings of recent years. Output is falling in Venezuela, and this from a nation with among the largest hydrocarbon reserves anywhere in the world.

Mexico’s national firm, Pemex, is nothing but a piggy bank for the politicians, who suck most of the investment capital away from the oil patch and into their own boondoggles. Thus is Pemex walking off a cliff of underinvestment, depletion and decline. According to Matt Simmons, Pemex may not be exporting any oil at all to the U.S. within 18-24 months.

Iran’s oil industry is in a slow death spiral, despite the occasional report of Chinese assistance with field development. Apparently, there’s a “Twitter Revolution” going on in Iran that includes people at the grass roots impeding the oil industry. Well, it worked to depose the Shah back in 1979. Perhaps the Iranians can rid themselves of their mullahs in a similar way.

Next door in Iraq, chaos reigns. According to Matt Simmons, the Iraqis “are in the dark about how to run their oil industry.” The Iraqi oil legislation is so burdensome that almost all players within the international energy industry are spurning Iraq, including the Chinese. Wow. When the Chinese won’t invest in your oil fields, there MUST be something wrong.

And so it goes. The bottom line is that we should expect a global oil shock by 2012, or earlier if global economic activity kicks into high gear. It should go without saying that despite any calamities that may come from such a thing, you would be very happy if you’d taken advantage of lower oil prices to stock up.

(Written by Byron King)