E&W Lucas wrote:Rail Rover wrote:E&W Lucas wrote:Satalite images do not tell the full story, but it looks like you'll have a job to find an intact section of the formation that has access & the potential for expansion?
We have to be very respectful of present owners' & other stakeholders' wishes & all we can say at this stage is that we do have an offer in principle for use of a stretch of the trackbed.
One of our main concerns is indeed obtaining a section that will allow us expansion, give us a good customer attraction & be as sustainable as possible long term ie: requiring as little resources as possible to give as large an income as possible. Not only does this involve landowners, but also planning, access & environmental issues. This is why we are as yet unable to 'go public' so to speak with our plans - we are doing the research so that we get these plans right to start with.
Thank you. That is actually what I first visited this site in order to find out, having come across this project previously.
Considering the infrastructure "issues", have you considered a narrow gauge project? Would be a heck of a lot cheaper to set up.
I guess that nothing can be ruled out as we're quite prepared to consider whatever has the best chance of working.
At the moment we'd envisage a SG setup - The quarries used industrials which is a useful historical tie-in, and there's plenty of Barclay's about so would be relatively simple, economical and there's a better than most chance of picking up spares. If during the course of research it becomes apparrent that there would be a greater customer pull in NG, and the infrastructure became available significantly cheaper then it would be irresponsible not to look into it.
My understanding is that there is greater educational and cultural mileage in trying to represent the history of the area as well as running an attraction. It may help us access (dare I say??) funding in the future and there has to be business logic in trying to reconnect people with their past. By this measure I'd say that it was easier to do that if you represent as closely as possible what was there in the past. Not only that, there's probably a bit of local mileage in marketing 'the dodger' and for this purpose we'd have to look as close as possible to the real thing - in laymens terms at least, I don't anticipate buying a G5 anytime soon, but a smallish SG tank fits the picture better.
The priority is a sustainable and affordable stretch. If plan A proves impossible we'd owe it to the existing supporters to explore every avenue in achieving the goal. It would take a bit of convincing to believe that NG stuff was more readily available - even though times are admittedly much harder for sourcing SG nowadays.
