Great Western Coffee Shop

Couldn't help noticing some new track and ballast when driving alongside the A403 towards Severn beach. What's all that about please ?

There's a couple of Sunday closures coming for PLTR (Plain Line Track Renewals). The first one, which is in the on-line maps, is July 7th.

Wouldn't it be better to put it on the Severn Beach Line rather than the A403 ;D

Did I hear about another incinerator being built there? Could it be to extend the current rail access from the present one to the new one?

Not that I can find. Things like that have to be refused planning permission by local authorities first, then the ruling is overturned on appeal. It's rather a long process. As it's a turn-back sort of affair, with the trains going almost to Severn Beach then turning back into the plant, the may be no room for a second plant anywhere other than right next to the first. They don't come cheap - the plant, run by Suez, was partially funded by Pensions Infrastructure Platform, whose website has the best pictures.

It solves a number of problems, it's just awkward that the trains have to come through Montpelier, Clifton Down etc.

Could it be the proposed Viridor waste to energy plant said to be opening next year. I came across this slightly old article:

https://waste-management-world.com/a/viridor-confirms-33mw-avonmouth-waste-to-energy-plant-to-proceed

Gosh, I wonder why they wouldn't come over the Hallen Marshes...

You would think a bit of engineering for a right-hand turn would do the trick, wouldn't you? And that it would be worth doing as there's a 25-year contract in place, especially as the train has to come via Bath to be pointing the right way at Narroways. Anyway, I've had a look and it is running tonight - 686H from Northolt Sidings. It should be crossing the Arches around 1130pm.

I was at Redland Station a while back at very early o'clock to see the morning return freight run through from the SITA depot before my Temple Meads service arrived.

There must be some crafty shunting going on. The train, on passing St Andrews road, actually goes past the end of the siding, almost into Severn Beach, or so I'm told, then reverses down the line, and into the siding. On arrival, it splits into two parts, side by side, for the 70-odd trailers of waste to be unloading, before repeating the process in reverse to go home. It is timed at 22 minutes from St Andrews Junction, so I guess it has a loco at each end. Beggars the question why it couldn't come in Badminton way and perform one more reversing movement to avoid Bath and the home of the rare Red Squirrel, but I'm not even a barrack room expert on these things. Maybe it wouldn't fit in with the traffic that way. Another thought strikes me - does a driver have to bunk up for the night at the SITA depot, or go home then someone turn up by cab for the return leg at sparrowfart the next morning?

In some senses, it's a rum do, having London rubbish brought all this way to be burned, but local authorities need the certainty of a long contract, free of those nasty landfill taxes, and the two London boroughs supplying the stuff must have come to the end of their previous deal at just the right time. Nothing new of course - in the olden days, the Avon Binliner used to head for the former London brickfields to bury our unwanted stuff, passing a train coming the other way, full of London rubbish going to the former Avonmouth incinerator to be turned into poisonous discharges. This new plant is a much slicker operation, powering tens of thousands of homes around the clock as it turns at least of our bad stuff to electricity. Whether it will look as shiny a decade hence remains to be seen, but where there's muck, there's brass.

If you look at the latest picture the pigeons have taken, you can see:

• a reception siding and loop with a roundrunnable length of about 530 m
• two unloading sidings about 300 m long
• a train of 520 m in all split into two parts between them
• no locomotives trapped at the inner ends of those, nor anywhere else
• you can also see the new ERF (Viridor's) a-building some 700 m south - barely started last April

So the whole train has to be propelled* into the ERF siding, split, and the "front" half shunted. Then the loco goes off to find a seaside landlady who accepts class 66s during the day.

PS: * there's a picture on P11 (657) of the October 2016 Railway Observer (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwjG7JaX79HiAhXIBGMBHbPvAVQQFjAAegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcts.org.uk%2Fmembership%2FThe%2520Railway%2520Observer%2520October%25202016.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3kf9ccaN0U5zn4AfpgJq6w)...

Crikey, it is something to behold! There's a Youtube timelapse video (https://youtu.be/XG2T4cjV0Pw) of the build.

I hadn't realised at the time of earlier comment that the Viridor plant had already gone through Phase One of the democratic planning process, namely refusal. The City planners turned it down because it would mean that there were three similar plants within a stone's throw, and Seabank Power Station next door. They made a schoolboy error in only using the word "sustainable" and its derivatives three times in one paragraph in the refusal decision. That left an open goal, and the planning inspector duly allowed it on the grounds that there would be three similar plant within a stone's throw, and Seabank Power Station next door.
(Note to anyone unfamiliar with planning applications: What the planners really meant was that if they approved this, even though an appeal will obviously succeed, they might lose their seats at the next election. Doing it this way covers their cherries, at a cost of only £150,000 or so to the council, and they can say that they tried. Cf MacDonalds, Fishponds.)

It looks as though deliveries of rubbish and removals of recycled plastic and bottom ash - very useful in building - will be by road. I can't see how a rail link could be done, and there is no mention in the planning application. Still, it looks as though Severnside could become the energy from waste recovery capital of Britain. I'm all for that, as long as the incentives, in the forms of subsidies or tax breaks, and likely profits do not drive perverse behaviour, like scouring the globe for cheap waste and dragging it thousands of miles in small diesel lorries. It wouldn't be the first time.

Before long, though, energy companies could be springing up all along that stretch of coast. I can see the day when the wind turbines on the adjacent land are demolished to make way for something that produces electricity.

Did I miss a memo? I thought wind turbines did produce electricity...

"Resource Recovery Centre"
I think someone got a 9 for GCSE creative writing!
And 376 views. Is this a definition of "you know you're sad and geeky when..."?  ;)

No that is just fake news from a left wing dominated mainstream media. Their sole purpose is to be a scar on the landscape in order to rob the landed gentry ordinary country-folk of the hard earned  ::) wealth by devaluing their modest :o property!

I thought they were there to make wind, now that there are less trees thrashing their branches about.  :)