I had another enquiry about the New S&D which meant that I needed to explain concisely what we were doing - and came up with this -
At present we own Midford near Bath which has been cleared ready for rebuilding later this year. We own about 400 metres of trackbed as well here.
We are also about to take on Spetisbury in Dorset (on a lease) and clearance work will commence there very shortly. This site will also include about 400 metres of trackbed.
Both stations will be restored to 1950s condition and will then serve as information offices for the whole route and will also each have a shop.
The next step after that is to secure a site where we can set up a Sustainable Transport Facility, which will have both standard and narrow gauge running lines.
Spetisbury may well have track laid with the next step being extension to Charlton Marshall. There’s plenty of opportunities for hands on work at Midford and soon at Spetisbury.
Beyond that the plan is to restore the Bath to Bournemouth route together with the line to Wimborne and beyond, also connect Wells and Glastonbury, probably along the original branch from Evercreech Junction. It’s important to stress that this is a long term project and assumes that road traffic will fall substantially or completely over the next 20-50 years as Peak Oil hits hard and alternatives fail to be economic or scalable. Freight will be as important as passenger traffic. It is assumed that small viable sections will be restored, not the whole route in one go! The only heritage aspect of this plan (which is enshrined in our constitution) will be that infrastructure will be restored to heyday condition to encourage steam specials off the Network, and also of course encouragement of the existing heritage groups on the line, which we work with closely. We would operate steam trains (modern new builds) only if this was economic compared to electric traction. We do not even consider diesel as the fuel will simply no longer be economically available within a decade or so, and we don’t want to lumber ourselves with unuseable and unsaleable ‘assets’!
We are also charged with obtaining trackbed and other infrastructure as and when it becomes available and a separate fund exists for this.
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