Perchance it awakens
Baldwin 2-4-2T No. 762 Lyn at Woody Bay station on September 29. CHRIS LEIGH
In BC – The Government Don’t
As our politicians, planners and selected academics, offer more and more studies, in an attempt of achieving nothing, by spending a great amount of time doing studies.
The railway fraternity in the UK, don’t study, they do!
The Lynton and Barnstaple Railway has reopened after being abandoned and scrapped over 80 years ago. The narrow gauge railway has now returned to her former glory after only 17 years of hard work!
Then think of the E&N Railway and the Rail for the Valley TramTrain scheme for the Fraser Valley; two railways in existence and yet the Provincial government ignores any attempt to restore any form of passenger servcie on the two lines connecting major town centres on their respective routes.
The lesson is simple, in the UK, they do and in BC, they don’t.
Premier Horgan, are you listening?
I kept thinking I would wake up. After all, it must be a dream, surely? I was at Woody Bay station on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, on September 29 and there in front of me was a four-coach L&B train headed by the Baldwin 2-4-2T Lyn. But, I had come by VW Tiguan not Tardis, and if Iai??i??d gone back in time I would have surely travelled by the Southern from Waterloo…
September 29 is etched in the mind of any L&B enthusiast. On that day, the final Saturday of the 1935 summer timetable, the last L&B train ran. Yeo and Lew, the railwayai??i??s first and last locomotives, headed the final train on its return journey from Barnstaple Town to Lynton. The railwayai??i??s famous epitaph comes from a wreath placed on the Barnstaple stop block on the Monday: ai???Perchance it is not dead but sleepeth.ai???
In the subsequent weeks, North Devonai??i??s unique narrow gauge railway was reduced to scrap. Two carriages, a handful of bits of carriages and five habitable station buildings were about all that was left. Oh, and Lew escaped immediate destruction, having been exiled to a coffee plantation in Brazil, never to be seen or heard of again.
In 1982, as custodian of Ian Allanai??i??s photographic library, it was part of my role to buy negatives to expand the collection. One morning my post tray arrived and among the usual mail was a battered envelope containing an old-style negative wallet with 100 pockets, each containing a 31/2in by 21/4in negative of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway. Each negative was marked in the corner ai???FEBai??i??, which I recognised as the initials of Frank Box, a well-known 1930s railway photographer and fan of the L&BR. I had to request permission from above to spend money on these gems. The response was along the lines of: ai???If youai??i??re going to spend all of that money, youai??i??d better make a book out of them.ai???
And so followed some fascinating conversations with my IA Library colleague A B MacLeod who, as Locomotive Running Superintendent at Waterloo in the mid-1930s, had included the L&B in his area of responsibility. He had ridden on a couple of the locomotives and – judging by his comments about the position of the firehole ai??i?? had fired them too. I had already made a point of going to Clannaborough Rectory to photograph carriage No. 2 in the garden there, and I had taken holidays in the station buildings at Lynmouth (1972) and Bratton Fleming (1976).
Even as I was writing my text, there were stirrings of preservation down in North Devon. It was difficult to believe that any part of the L&B might be revived and I noted in the book my concern that a spluttering petrol tractor on a few yards of industrial track would not do the L&B justice. Thirty-five years on from that book, Iai??i??m delighted to admit that my fears were unfounded. The present Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Association may only have a short section of the railway restored to operation, but itai??i??s every inch pure L&B. Whatai??i??s more, at Snapper Halt and Chelfham they have made big strides in renovating the stations, and they are gathering more sections of original railway as it becomes available.
The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway is awakening and itai??i??s every bit as great as Iai??i??d always imagined!
To be fair, we have only restored a mile of the original 19 miles of the L&B track, and we too are waiting for the local planners to approve our plans for the next five miles, although as this runs through a national park, this is taking longer than we would like! We are hoping to gain approval during early 2018…,
Zwei replies: This would never even had happened in BC. This is the big difference; in the UK, people have been able to restore old railways, many long since abandoned. I know the process is long and arduous, but in BC, we have a few as well, but they are operating on recently abandoned track and live a perilous existence. Re-opening the L&B is akin to reopening the Lenora Mount Sicker railway in BC. The formation is there, but government would never let it happen, not even help.
When it comes to railways, even passenger service, the BC government don’t!
I think the L&B is wonderful and a wonderful tourist attraction. Hard work yes, but fun. My admiration and best wishes to the L&B and all who “steam in her”.
What about restore the passenger trains to Prince George? The track and most stations are still there. It would not be expensive to buy a few engines and a few passenger cars.
Zwei replies: There are second hand DMU’s that could and would provide a passenger servcie to Prince George.
But, of course, one of the reasons in selling the BCR was to give the Rocky Mountaineer folks a monopoly for passenger style operations.