Great Western Coffee Shop

The South Devon Railway has confirmed to RailAdvent that it is considering electrifying the line as the Coal Crisis situation leaves the line with a ‘very real’ prospect of no more British coal being available from 2022.

This may lead the South Devon Railway to consider electrification of the seven-mile line as an alternative to using steam and diesel locomotives in the future.

The South Devon Railway is currently home to a number of steam and diesel locomotives, and is a popular tourist attraction based at Buckfastleigh.

HYBRID FUTURE for the CLIFF RAILWAY - The Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway has finally announced its conversion to electric power this week and follows in the footsteps of many of the other UK Funiculars. The cliff railway, which has been run entirely by water since 1890, can no longer justify its contribution to rising sea levels. Each day, the cliff railway can extract up to 60,000 gallons of fresh river water from the West Lyn, it is used briefly and then simply chucked directly into the sea. That’s a huge amount of water, more than 16 million gallons during the season. ‘putting that much water into the sea is only going to contribute towards rising sea levels’ said company spokesman, Archie Medes, ‘It’s just like when my bath overflowed last week’. The ‘Eureka’ moment followed the recent high tides in Lynmouth, the company felt it could no longer justify its contribution to rising sea levels in this way and has been working closely with Tezla over the winter maintenance season laying high voltage electric cabling. Twenty high-capacity Lithium (Li-Ion) Batteries have been installed below the carriages in the now redundant 700 gallon water tanks, the 100kWh batteries are expected to hold 90% of their life after 1000 discharge cycles and have the capacity of up to 5 journeys per day, powering the railway and its passengers silently up the hillside at up to 40mph. General Manager, Ashley Clarke, said ‘this new technology is amazing, no longer will we have to starve the planet of fresh water, when we can use Batteries, Lithium and electricity instead. We thought we were really eco before but the switch to electricity just makes that better – I can’t believe the Victorians didn’t think about it. We even have phone charging points that visitors can use during their journey’.

Today we're pleased to announce that the Cholsey and Wallingford Railway will be extended to Oxford. The line is being extended to Cowley to provide a diversion route when the main route through Didcot and Radley gets flooded - in 2014 the line was shut for around a week because of flooding and the signalling problems that resulted disrupted services for even longer. ..........

I meant to flag up the new half hourly through service from Looe to Okehampton!

"Tell me, it is your proposal, isn't it?"

"You've been working on it for 7 years."

"For the last time, what is the Mid Cornwall Metro??"

"I don't know! Nobody Knows!!"

... and the new dining cars and reseating for the 800's.

OTC