(Copyright Stuart Seale 22.7.2012)
From Stuart Seale -
Midford 22 July 2012. What a cracking day we had. The weather was glorious. In the morning Tom Seale and I treated the platform, station area and Will Cummings' drilled tree stumps with a good dose of weedkiller. After lunchtime refreshment in the Hope and Anchor we proceeded to burn up the large pile of cut wood that had accumulated over the preceeding months. We also took the opportunity to remove a number of trees that looked a bit menacing to the public and disposed of the arisings to those too.
5 comments:
Fantastic work here gents - well done.
Is it planned to put any rails down, or would the relatively short length available make that pointless? Can't help thinking the site would look amazing with some rails and a coach or two at the platform!
It depends on what the membership want. There is the issue of accommodating the cycleway, which is a technical rather than legal problem. Obviously rails will eventually return to Midford when the line is opened through to Bath and Radstock. Personally I'd be happy for rails to appear all the way to Long Arch Bridge but would rather not see any rolling stock on site as it would look cluttered. The other option is if we open a sustainable engineering site at either the up or down goods yards, in which case rails would be laid well before a full restoration for the testing of locomotives etc.
To which degree do you mean sustainable? Generating it's own power for example?
'Sustainable' in this context means something that can be used indefinitely into the future. By definition that would exclude using fossil fuels, including coal. Wood is my own preferred choice for fuel though using electricity generated from small scale wind turbine or solar panels would also be fine (although of course you have to take into account the availability of materials used in their construction/maintenance). Also a 'sustainable' locomotive would need to be repairable using locally sourced material and skills.
Yes-the pleasure steamer 'Gondoler' on Windemere burns 'eco logs'. She has a loco type boiler but landlords English Heritage have banned coal firing on the lake. Her only appreciable emission is steam. All that is left is a loamy ash which gets spread on the local English Heritage owned flower beds as fertiliser . I have spoken to her operators and they are well pleased with this vessel's performance. Now that's what I call sustainable.
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