A visit to the West Somerset, October 1975

[The Stationmaster]

I know its easily done, but now i'm confused!!

 

If its to stop stock rolling from Washford, why isn't it on the down side and facing in the down direction???  Surely if its on the up side, facing in the up direction and sprung then any loose stock from Washford would simple push it shut as it piled through?

Because it is trailing for Up trains as they pass through the Up side loop - thus it is a simple runaway catch point and if an Up train breaks away climbing up the bank the rear portion would run back to Blue Anchor and derail/be caught by the catch point.  Fairly normal bog standard sort of arrangement - it would normally stand open and as an Up train passes through it in the right direction the switch would be pushed over and then spring back to the open position - ready to catch any breakaways from an Up train.

[Tim V]

I'm sorry my description was no good, diagram from the SRS site. The Up loop points lie normal for the Up line.

http://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwe/S765.htm

As Mike says, fairly normal.

[Captain Kernow]

So we agreed to go down to see the West Somerset. I had the transport (an Anglia van), so my companion said he wanted a special look at Dunster Station - he was thinking of modelling it.

Indeed I was, although by the time we made the trip, I'd already built the model of the station building from plasticard. The one area that wasn't quite clear in my own mind was the layout of the Gents, as this didn't seem to be covered by the Ericplans drawings that I was working from. As it turned out, I built an interpretation of the Gents, only to find that in reality, they were configured a bit differently, but no matter, it was an excellent trip and these photos have revived my memories of that time. I would add, by the way, that I owe Tim a debt of gratitude for kick-starting my modelling out of a bit of a rut and encouraging me (via our membership of the Bath Model Railway Club at the time) to improve my standards!

 

I'll try to find my photos of the model that another friend took a few months later (although if I can't find them, I'll just take some new ones, as the model is still intact and looked after, although the layout it was intended for never got built...)

[Michael Delamar]

the bbc did a very good documentary about the line in about 1993, showed lots of archive footage of the line when it was derelict and shots of those prarie tanks lined up and also 53808 restoration, I think it was called alive and puffing, the seaside trains, a series of 3 programmes, the other 2 were about the S&D and the Weston Clevedon and Portishead railway