VALE OF BERKELEY RAILWAY
How do you set up an all-new steam railway in the 21st century? Vale of Berkeley Railway Charitable Trust chairman HOWARD PARKER gives us his perspective.
Starting a railway in the 21st century
The Vale of Berkeley Railway’s plan to reopen the 4½-mile Sharpness branch as a steam line began in August 2015, when we moved into the old diesel shed at Sharpness Docks, courtesy of Andrew Goodman of Moveright International. There we started to gather all the items we would need to take over the line from Network Rail. We were lucky at this early stage to have access to Andrew’s impressive collection of rolling stock and equipment and the shed has proved to be an excellent resource, providing better facilities for volunteers than many wellestablished preserved railways.
Once the premises were renovated, a small band of volunteers cheerfully took on the task of restoring a couple of small diesels, a brake van, some signalling equipment, and a short length of track outside.
Four years later, a lot has changed. We are now active on three sites and are deep into negotiations with Network Rail for the lease that will allow us to take over the full branch and run trains – hopefully within two years.
But, as we are discovering, the heritage railway world in 2019 is a very different place to that in the early days of preservation. Years ago, it was possible to set yourself up, take over a line and run trains, with ex-BR steam crews still available in numbers to get you moving and to train volunteers.
In 2019, we are inheriting a short, main line-connected freight line where Direct Rail Services nuclear flask trains run once a week over the line, and where the legal and regulatory environment has changed out of all proportion.
Between Berkeley Road junction and Sharpness the track is in very good condition, thanks to its use for nuclear traffic, but it runs through a rather overgrown and neglected green corridor – and there are no surviving buildings, except, it turned out, the Berkeley station weighbridge, which we discovered unexpectedly among the dense undergrowth of the station drive last year.
ECO-LOGIC
Our toehold on the branch began with a licence from NR a year ago to clear 40 years of undergrowth at Oldminster Sidings, the original Midland Railway interchange sidings for the dock complex at Sharpness. This spacious site was seen as ideal for providing the long-term operational base for rolling stock storage, restoration and maintenance, but our immediate concerns there were almost entirely ecological. We live in an industrial environment that is close to a sensitive natural one – the ecologically protected Severn estuary – and that required us to use our first precious funds, not on anything railway-related, but on an ecology survey.
Not much more than a year later, hampered by the conditions of the Network Rail licence that only permitted the use of hand tools for six months, we have almost completed the transformation of the place from the appearance of a small forest into something that is clearly a railway yard with four long sidings. In the process, we have actually started to enhance this rather poor ecological area into a place where, through our practice of ‘dead hedging’, small animals and birds can find cover and nest.
This led us to consider the environment elsewhere on the line. ‘Slash and burn’ may have been OK in the 1960s, but it was never going to be an acceptable practice when dealing with our lineside in 2019. We quickly changed the way we thought about the environment of which we have become the custodians. Several of us are very keen environmentalists, with a lot of knowledge about species diversity, and it is now a core value for us that we see our line (anticipating, we are proud to say, the Varley Report on the environment for Network Rail) as a linear nature reserve with rails running through it.
LOCAL DEMOCRACY
Our numbers have grown steadily after that early rush of enthusiasm and we have around 400 members and almost 100 active volunteers, a tremendous ratio compared with some railways. Not only that, but the vast majority of those volunteers are completely new to railway preservation, coming from the local environment south of Gloucester and north of Bristol.
As we have grown, issues about accountability arose and many of us studied, with mounting horror, the stories of appalling relationships that have arisen on other railways – egos running rampant, lack of accountability and volunteers feeling neglected and ignored.
We began with the traditional model of a private limited company and supporting preservation trust, but the company had only three shareholders who sought to retain control over the trust – something that was intolerable to most of us and we could see that this would inevitably lead to trouble later on.
Looking at alternatives more suited to our democratic values, we learnt that a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) would do everything we needed to do because it was simple
and accountable. We could already detect the beginnings of antagonism between company and trust and we acted fast to gain approval of the members to close down the limited company.
Now there is only one executive board of up to 12 trustees, with a third of the trustees needing to be re-nominated every year in rotation. No blame culture can emerge when there is only one organisation and the buck stops with those trustees, who are answerable to the members.
We are firm believers in the principle that an hour of every volunteer’s time is as valuable as anyone else’s. Nobody is getting paid anything and we are all doing this voluntarily in our spare time. We do not believe in hierarchies and we are determined that we will not allow power to be concentrated in the grasp of a few individuals.
TAKING STOCK
We are constantly asked when steam will be running. In terms of locomotives, ex-Wemyss Private Railway ‘Austerity’ 0-6-0ST No. 15 ‘Earl David’ is going to steam within the current year, the NRM’s ‘4F’ No. 44027 is receiving boiler work in the Midlands with the ‘bottom end’ almost complete at Sharpness, and Andrew Goodman’s pannier tank No. 9642 is under overhaul at the
Flour Mill. Carriages are available
AS WE ARE DISCOVERING, THE HERITAGE RAILWAY WORLD IN 2019 IS A VERY DIFFERENT PLACE TO THAT IN THE EARLY DAYS OF PRESERVATION
for service and specifications are advanced for the two platforms – at Berkeley and Newtown (Sharpness South) – together with the storage shed on the sidings site. The bill for those three items will be about £250,000, so the race is on to get as much in the bank as possible.
Within the next 24 months, we expect training for operational roles to come to the top of the agenda. We already have an excellent relationship with our sister railway, the Dean Forest, where our permanent way gang are gaining valuable experience and other members are learning footplate and guarding skills.
The arrangements for the operational interface with Network Rail at Berkeley and Berkeley Road and a host of other associated matters are slowly but surely taking us to the brink of a guard’s flag waving off our first train.
Support is growing both among enthusiasts and in the local community. We have a Friends of Berkeley Station group to attract local residents to the task of rebuilding their lost station and we are engaging with local businesses and tourist attractions about how we can help them increase visitor numbers to this under-valued area.
Our biggest innovation is that we are building a partnership with the college that has been built on the site of the old power station at Berkeley. Students there are taking engineering degrees and we hope to be able to offer apprenticeship experiences to them.
PUSH-PULL FACTOR
We are only too aware, though, that to put ourselves on the map as the 217th preserved railway in the UK, that first train has to run as soon as possible and, in my mind, it has to be a ‘14XX’ and autotrain, reviving the memory of the local passenger train last seen in October 1964. Later, there will be goods trains, charter steam tours from the Midlands, and Berkeley and Sharpness residents will be able to travel to Gloucester for shopping. Who knows, we may even see freight trains running down to the docks again.
It is up to us to close the gap between the dream and the reality a little more every day, to encourage and enthuse our volunteers and members.
Progress sometimes feels painfully slow but we are determined and confident and, with the help of Steam Railway readers, we know we will get there. Please help us to hasten the day by becoming a founder member, a covenanter or an
active volunteer.