May 2018 Board Meeting

The GWR 5 plank wagon as it may look when restored

A very good, forward looking atmosphere in the Boardroom on Saturday as we worked through a number of very positive developments.

Top of the priority list is the planning application to Stroud District Council for permission to build platforms at Berkeley and Newtown. We had hoped we could get away with calling them a rebuild of an existing structure, thus avoiding Planning Permission but SDC, probably quite rightly, to be honest, insisted they were a lot more than a rebuild so we need to submit plans and we have set ourselves the ambitious target of doing this by 31st July.

We have been held back here by the lack of an architectural draughtsperson prepared to do the drawing work pro bono but regular member Andrew Perrin, who came from Portsmouth specially for the meeting, is a surveyor by trade so he was able to give us some strong pointers as to how to go about the job. So it is being left to him to work with Paul Colechin, our civil engineer trustee on the details while Tim Cambray liaises with the council.  But we still need that draughtsperson....

Other good news was that Paul Richardson's leaflets for the Founders Club and Covenanters Club appeals are now at the printers and will be available in time for our stand at the GWSR gala next weekend.  As are our new membership forms.  We have raised subscriptions a bit, we have added the necessary statements that meet GDPR requirements and we have tweaked other aspects.

If you would like to join the very exclusive 'Founders Club', you will need to make a one-off donation of £1000 (or 4 quarterly ones of £250). If that is too much to commit, we are asking for people to become Covenanters with 36 monthly donations of £10.  This method of funding has been very successful at raising the money to build 'Tornado' and keeping her out on the mainline so we have high hopes this will do the same for us. Expect to hear a lot more about this as the months go by and we get ever closer to obtaining our lease from Network Rail.

The text and details of the Expression of Interest in the remaining EU (RDPE) funding pot were agreed so all we have to do now is email it out and keep every digit firmly crossed. If that is approved, we then have put in a full application.  It would be a huge benefit if we could fund those platforms from this fund but it is far from inevitable.

Everything is now going very well at Oldminster and Berkeley and we are starting to plan the railway based activities that we will need once we have running lines.  In anticipation, we have run 2 PTS (Personal Track Safety) courses, both very successful, so that anyone who wants to be involved in any aspect of the live railway is trained to the proper standard. Since we will be interfacing with Network Rail lines and may be meeting big DRS diesel locomotives, this training course is to Network Rail standards, as indeed we aim that all our training will be.

The sales, shop and marketing side of things is still a problem.  We are just about coping at the moment and we talked about ways of solving it but there have been no volunteers yet for what will become a very vital role indeed in a very short time. Some good news though was that Clive Washbourne has been in to organise the model railway items, which is a good step towards actually selling those donated items to bring in money.

We now have Restoration and Use Agreements being signed for some items of rolling stock (but not the LMS brake van) to ensure that we actually get some long term railway benefit in return for our volunteering efforts and we are talking to the Gloucestershire Waterways Museum (GWM) about a contract to conserve and then later restore the 4 vehicles that they own and are currently in Berkeley Green car park.  If we can get started soon on the GWR 5 plank wagon currently outside the shed and add the 2 Sharpness Docks open wagons owned by GWM as soon as that one is finished, we will be well on our way to a coal train.  We also want to bring inside for restoration the other VoBR-owned wagon, the BR 25T brake van that is currently outside in the dockyard.

Things do need reorganising at Berkeley Green: one of the containers (and possibly the GWR gates?) need to move to Berkeley, the TPO currently up on stands needs to re-find its bogies and the 'Snake C' luggage van badly needs protection from the elements. A working party looks likely soon.

Lastly, volunteer and member numbers are on the rise again after the cold weather so trustees left happy. Most of us ended up at Oldminster Sidings in the afternoon sun where the track, in surprisingly good condition considering, is re-emerging through the undergrowth. It is a massive site though, over 300 meters long, which is the length of a 12 car train, so please come and help, if you fancy a little 'Extreme Gardening', as Edgar calls it.