A Road Rail Vehicle (RRV) has recently been donated to the Dean Forest Railway (DFR), which will help to mechanise much of the maintenance of the track, including lifting and shifting materials and renewing and replacing sleepers on the line.
The DFR operates a steam-hauled heritage passenger service in Gloucestershire, augmented by 1950's-60's diesel locomotives and railcars. The machine will replace some of the manual labour that the society's volunteers have long done by hand.
The DFR has operated for 50 years along a 4½ mile restored route between Lydney Junction and Parkend through the beautiful Royal Forest of Dean. The railway was originally built to transport coal, iron ore, stone, and timber. It connects at Lydney Junction with the mainline from Gloucester to South Wales via Chepstow.
Thanks to the mainline connection, the railway also benefits from being able to train technicians from Network Rail on their track maintenance machinery and has established a good relationship between the railway's volunteer workforce and their mainline counterparts.
This relationship has taken a significant step forward with a donation to the Dean Forest Railway Society, a registered charity, of an RRV. Society Trustee Adam Williams said “Some of the concrete sleepers we have on the line were manufactured as early as World War Two, with many from not long afterwards. We felt it was time to get a bit of expert mechanical help on the line and reached out to Quattro, who immediately stepped in with a generous donation of a Road Rail Vehicle which will help us with our track renewal and replacement works.”
“We have a trailer and are now looking for attachments for the new RRV that will be the most effective at getting our jobs done. We will be ready to start working with it very soon.”
“It's difficult not to feel like a kid in a sweet shop. I've seen the RRV, got the key for the RRV, but haven't actually climbed in the RRV! I'll leave that feeling for the training.”
Trevor Hartnett, Regional Rail Director for Quattro, was on hand to oversee the donation and said, “We're very familiar with the DFR and are always testing machines in that area. The Society does important work in giving people the experience of a heritage railway and we're more than happy to help them preserve and maintain it with the donation of this RRV.”
“There's something incredibly special about being in the vintage carriages, just like you're travelling through the 1950s. It's simply a lovely little railway, a popular tourist destination, and a real step back in time with its historic locomotives.”
Quattro will also be providing familiarisation training on the new RRV as well as health and safety training, with this relationship being viewed as a valuable corporate partnership of equal benefit to both sides.
The Dean Forest Railway regrets to report that their main link with Network clients, longstanding Society member Roger Phelps (standing 3rd from left), who was skilled in all aspects of operating the railway has recently died suddenly, shortly after the RRV was donated by Quattro. The railway will miss him greatly.
Wonderful. Yet another Heritage Railway making good use of that vital piece of railway kit – the RRV.
All Heritage railways rely heavily on these, specially with ageing volunteers. All except one – the North Dorset Railway at Shillingstone. One member donated an RRV in 2013, but the cabal in charge say they do not need it to rebuild the line to Sturminster, and want to sell it FOR SCRAP.
This can only mean one thing – that the man who controls this setup has no intention to rebuild the line, and wants to continue stripping assets (selling off plant, land, the workshop structure) donated for the purpose of rebuilding the Somerset and Dorset Railway. For five years they have dragged their feet about the rebuilding, and members have had to make Freedom of Information Requests (FOIR) to the County Council to discover just what the trustees are up to.
The Dean Forest Railway (in Gloucestershire) is most certainly on track, let alone on a roll… especially with the help of that newly donated Road-Rail Vehicle of Assistance in the occasional Trackwork upgrade, and to forever keep the DFR (of whom runs from Lydney, via Norchard and Whitecroft en-route, as far as Parkend) on track… even to A Brightly Multi-Colourific Future Ahead.