Week 11

As Groucho Marx once announced:

'I've good good news and I've got bad news.
The bad news is, there is no good news.
The good news is - there is no bad news'.

Well, it's not quite as drab as that, as there is a little bit of movement behind the scenes. We have just been requested via a GWSR survey whether we are ready to return to work, and that is certainly the case with this blogger! More than two months of inactivity now. What the country has achieved is the flattening of the curve for the NHS, but the virus has not gone away, and it may never go away. We need to be sensible about it, as you would with the flu, or a STD, or any tropical disease when you go on holiday.

The Trust's appeal for £250.000 help with paying for the Gotherington landslip has reached its target! We now have all the money we need for that, so the appeal has been closed. We could not have done the works without our supporters, so here is a heart felt THANK YOU to you all!

The slip repair is almost complete now.

The hand rails along the top of the sheet piles have been attached, and in this picture you can see the mini digger back filling the downhill side with spoil, which is being brought in by dumper.

Here's a view along the top, with those hand rails, and the mini digger working behind.

The contractor hopes to finish by Friday this week. Network Rail and at least one other steam line we can think of have had similar problems, but perhaps with deeper pockets than we have.







Bits of heritage

During the enforced absence from the railway we have continued in the off site 'workshop' with the production of various bits to improve the look of Broadway station.

This is the third of three Quad Royal poster boards just completed. It is now ready for lettering with 'GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY' on the shiny part along the top. This one will replace the temporary plywood board that was put up to speed the opening of the station.

The materials for a couple more of the big boards, and several smaller ones, are in stock, and these are earmarked for the P2 building, as well as its signage.

P1 boards completed, we have moved on to the timber for the P2 steps, those for P1 all being done and just awaiting fitting, as soon as we are allowed to.

In the foreground are 9 timbers which will serve as the uprights between the panels.

The two longer pieces in the background have been treated with a fungicide and were primered this morning as well.







News from the Toddington Standard

There's been a further news bulletin from the group restoring 76077, the frames of which were sent to Locomotive Maintenance Services Ltd at Loughborough.

You can read all about the update here:

https://standard76077.com/milestone-reached-as-pony-truck-is-completed

Your blogger has set up a monthly standing order to them of £25, so that makes £150 donated this year already, a monthly amount which went through the bank statements almost unnoticed. This sort of small but steady stream of income is really helpful to the group, but it needs lots of us. So do consider it. The means of donating are on their website above.

We've got two original pictures of the kit of parts as they were waiting patiently for someone to rescue them from the end of the Toddington north carriage siding.

Boiler and smokebox at Toddington north.

Frames and wheels at Toddington north.

It was this project, which had already been started, which created great excitement when a new group announced that they would now finally complete the job. From the update at LMS Loughborough you can see that we are well launched, although we are far from fully funded yet.


In other news

There is another project which is close to your blogger's heart. You have almost certainly heard of the Lynton and Barnstaple railway project at Woody Bay, where they have perfectly recreated the station and rebuilt nearly a mile of track. In addition, they have not only built from scratch a replica Baldwin, but based on the success of that, they have launched into the reproduction of three brand new Manning Wardles. This is clearly a group with confidence and a vision.

What you may not know is that there is a sister group which supports the re-opening of the 19 mile railway. This is Exmoor Associates Ltd, a small company with the sole purpose of buying wherever possible the 100 odd pieces of land that were sold off in the 1930s when the railway closed. It's behind the scenes stuff, but they have have quietly made good progress. Indeed, two bits they bought some time ago were duly transferred to the operating company in 2018, in preparation for the extension of the track southwards from the operating bit at Woody Bay.

In this rather useful map you can see the route and in green, the pieces currently owned by Exmoor Associates, and in red, those by the operating company.

http://www.exmoor-associates.co.uk/land-property/

The exciting piece of news today is that one small intermediate station has just been put up for sale by its private owners. This is Bratton Fleming, much added to since the 1930s but the original core is still there, inside what is today a 2 bedroom bungalow.

Here it is in its glory days, just by a road bridge and a short cutting. What is for sale is pretty much what you see in the picture, it comes with 0.63 of an acre, being basically the trackbed in front of the building. The road bridge in the background is also still there today.

The site was about to be sold to another bidder but the deal has fallen through, giving L&B supporters the chance to make a bid. The site is in a narrow valley on a slope, so you can't really work around it if you don't own that station. You can see that it is important that the railway seizes this rare chance to acquire the site.

Exmoor Associates have launched an appeal for help here:

http://www.exmoor-associates.co.uk/2020/06/bf-station-for-sale-again/

in which they are asking for help in the form of 700 donations of £500, or multiples thereof. A Just Giving page has also been set up if you can help with a smaller amount. Yours truly has contributed one of these slots of £500, but many more are needed. What is so encouraging with this appeal is that it is for something you can actually see and visit - a small station in rural North Devon, a beautiful area of nature and really worth visiting. It's a real asset, and a critical piece in the big puzzle of putting the Lynton & Barnstaple back together again.

To give you a quick idea of the surroundings, here are two pictures of the area:

The mouth of Heddon gorge, not far from Woody Bay station

Chelfham viaduct, in excellent condition

We hope you are as enthused about this project as we are. Let's all get together and help them buy Bratton Fleming station!