Wednesday 11 July 2018

Gateway project at West Somerset College

I had a very interesting day today. As part of their 'Gateway' project, Careers South West ran a two-day business development exercise at West Somerset College in Minehead.

The premise was that the WSR requires to develop its station at Bishops Lydeard. The young people at the college were split into teams of about 6 or 7 people and given the project brief, they had to come up with a development plan which then had to be presented back to the tutors and railway representatives.

The teams appointed surveyors, architects, commercial and advertising leads and each studied their particular aspects. Initially I was allocated to the surveyors and i had to tell them a lot more about the layout at BL, what the constraints might be (eg ground levels, underground pipes, planning issues etc) and give some general background about what might be required.

there then followed mentor sessions, when we visited each team and discussed their presentation plans, answered their questions and gave more pointers.

Finally, we had to listed to the proposals and judge them!

There were some great ideas! In no particular order:

1. provide a wedding venue at BL station. It was suggested we could charge £6000 for a wedding and once costs taken out, make £144K per year.
2. Donate a quarter of all our profits to the Dogs Trust
3. Build an underground multistory car park so that visitors' modern cars are hidden from the heritage railway (cost was £1M per storey!)
4. Build a maze in the shape of a turntable
5. use as much sustainable material as possible, recycled bricks, reclaimed timber etc
6. build an interactive museum with 'speaking boards' to encourage young people.

All the teams did very well with some very imaginative drawings and plans. The winning team was the one who had  costed out their proposals and suggested how it might be paid for.

Considering these were year 9 students, the results were very encouraging. Stepping back, all realised the need to expand visitor facilities, make them more attractive to visitors and to advertise them much better - I am sure we can all agree with that.

We do need top do more work at BL, it is our busiest station and does not present the image we may wish to our visitors. The board realise this and we have now restarted the BL development project which first came to light under the Southern Gateway project.


Sunday 1 July 2018

A Trip Down the Line

Today was a day for the Chairman's day out! Not really on duty inasmuch as I didn't have any meetings to go to, but on duty in the sense of having a great day out and the chance to talk to people on the ground.
First stop was at Crowcombe to chat to Geoff about the Best Kept Station competition that is being held in just two weeks time. All is looking good at Crowcombe and I waited long enough to photo the down DMU as it paused at the station. Although steam trains are lovely, my train spotting days were 1970s diesels and this multiple unit brings it all back to me. I collected the best kept stations trophy and that is now safely at Castle Coleby ready for presentation soon!


Next we headed to Stogumber to view the work that Bob and Russel are doing on restoring the old cattle dock. Its good progress. A large skip was filled with rubble and Bob had exposed the original bridge rail posts. The current intention is to cap these with new wooden posts with metal rails. This is a pragmatic solution that will enable bridge rail to be substituted in the future if needed.

Lunch at the White Horse in the village.....

Then on to Watchet. It always seems a bustling station, particularly after the quite of Stogumber and Crowcombe. What did I notice? First rate floral displays despite the inexplicable theft of some plants directly out of the planters around the station. Incredible!
Here are some pictures of the floral displays at the station:


And here a view of the heritage display in the pagoda shelter where we sheltered from the rain...


Next a walk along Blue Anchor beach. I had no idea that this crossing was called Dingles Crossing - see the small nameboard. Has anyone got any idea why this crossing is so named?


On the way home we dropped into Doniford Halt. Incredibly, after 35 years of volunteering on the railway, this is the first time I had stepped foot on the platform here. Well that's put right then. The halt looks great, really well maintained. Despite its diminutive size, its an impressive place. Great foresight from those who rescued the platform from Montacute all those years ago.