• 'Along These Lines' - the TV series
• Gazetteer Updates
• Richard's Fruit Cake
• 'Railway Walks' - the TV series
• Railway Walks - the books (click here and here for press releases)
• Strawberry Line project goes online
• Recent site updates
• This year's news
• Guided busways – a concrete future for some railway paths?
• What was news ...
• Thank you

Along These Lines was an eight-part television series about disused railways and railway walks in the south of England. It was made during 2007 and screened during 2008 on Meridian, the local ITV station covering Medway to east Dorset – but now it is about to get a national airing. Discovery Real Time is showing the series, with transmission commencing on Wednesday 17th June (repeated on Saturday 20th June). Two episodes will be shown 'back to back' on Wednesdays at 11:00 p.m. and Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. Shown in this format, the series will run for 4 weeks. We are indebted to Jamie Barratt of Platform 14 Ltd for this information; this company made the series.

Gazetteer Updates. In January and February, the webmaster added grid references to another batch of entries in the online gazetteer. The whole of England and Wales is now done, with only Scotland requiring attention. (Most of the Scottish entries already contain grid references, although they do need to be checked.) In addition, details of all railway walks in Devon have been sent to the county council for checking – the first of many such checks, if all goes according to plan. Please remember that the gazetteer is an extremely time-consuming project, which is why there have been no additions to the Photo Gallery since late last summer.

'Railway Walks' – the TV Series. During 2008, a series of six half hour programmes entitled 'Railway Walks' was made by Skyworks and broadcast on BBC4 during October and early November. The episodes were presented by Julia Bradbury, and superbly produced by the Skyworks team; a notable feature was the amount of aerial photograph. (That, of course, is why the company is called 'Skyworks'!) The series was repeated on BBC2 from Monday 9th March to Monday 13th April, and the viewing figures were about four times those for BBC4 last autumn – in fact, the series was the third most popular on BBC2 during its run. As is the way with modern television, we feel bold enough to guarantee that further repeats will follow, possibly on BBC1 and eventually even the Yesterday channel. The Skyworks team hopes that a second series will be commissioned, and we will announce details here if this happens.

Railway Walks – the Books. The History Press re-published Railway Walks: Wales by Jeff Vinter on Monday 13 April 2009, and has advised that the other three titles in the series (Railway Walks: SR & GWR, LNER and LMS) will follow in June. The publication of the Welsh book coincided exactly with the ending of the 'Railway Walks' TV series on BBC2, which was a superb piece of timing! The first reviewer on Amazon has given the book 5 out of 5 stars and described it as 'sad but good' – 'a facinating book, so good for people who like to see something of our past and get some exercise'.

Strawberry Line Project Goes Online. In Somerset, the Strawberry Line project now has its own website, which can be accessed from our Links page. The project aims to create a railway path from Cranmore to Clevedon via Wells and Cheddar, with spurs to the north and south, often using other old railways such as the Blagdon branch. The project is supported by Sustrans Ltd, Somerset County Council, and all the local district councils, which is a good start. Have a look at the website and add your support using the online petition.

Recent Site Updates. During summer 2008, the webmaster added eleven new batches of photographs (groups 24 to 34) to the Photo Gallery in a belated attempt to catch up with the huge amount of material waiting to go on the site. Hopefully, few if any members are still waiting to see their work appear on screen. More recently, he has updated the News 2008, News 2009 and Publications pages with new reports and book details, while thinning out old material from the Home Page – although the reports on guided busways (see below) remain in place due to their unrivalled potential to undo 30 years' good work in re-using the country's abandoned railways. Finally, club members might like to take a look at our online gazetteer, where each section now reflects all known new path openings to date. The next steps are to include six figure grid references for all entries (due for completion this summer), and then write to every local authority in the British Isles to identify any routes that we have missed – although this job will be delayed if more TV and book work comes along.

Here Comes the Concrete ...

Bath-Bristol Railway Path Still Under a Cloud. Contrary to previous reports, Bristol City Council has not abandoned but merely postponed plans to turn the Bristol end of this immensely popular rail trail, built by Sustrans in the late 1970s, into a guided busway. Click here and here for further details. On 19th June, Bristol became one of Britain's 'Cycling Capitals', although the BBC failed to mention how much the city owed to Sustrans for this accolade; but what, then, is Bristol doing in promoting a scheme that will spoil one of the company's (and the country's) flagship cycle routes?

Guided Busway Planned for the Comber Greenway. This route in Northern Ireland, part of NCN99, re-uses the old railway line from Belfast to Comber via Dundonald. The first 2½ miles from Belfast to Belfast Lough are already open, with completion of the remaining 4½ miles due in September this year. According to a 2006 survey, the trail is already generating 122,000 walking and cycling journeys at a single town along the route, but – before it is even complete – the government has announced that it intends to establish a guided busway (called Eway) along part of it. Sustrans is keen to prevent this important route being compromised, but seems not yet to have an official voice in the proceedings.

Comment. This is Sustrans' response in the latest edition of The Hub, its quarterly magazine for supporters: 'While Sustrans fully supports plans to improve public transport, we do question whether bus routes should be built at the expense of walking and cycling paths. It seems counter intuitive to develop public transport in direct competition with walking and cycling when the aim is to tackle road congestion and greenhouse gas emissions [and rising levels of obesity - Webmaster]. What this trend seems to show is how under-valued walking and cycling are as transport choices in their own right.' Many share this view. Many also question the wisdom of building guided busways in the first place. Not only are they visually intrusive structures that deploy vast amounts of concrete, but the example now being completed between Cambridge and St. Ives has cost millions of pounds more than reinstating the railway which it replaced.
 

Meridian TV Series.The long-awaited series, 'Along These Lines', featuring eight old railways in the south on England, was broadcast between Sunday 13 April and Sunday 22 June. Click here for the official website which supported the series, and here for details of how to order the programmes on DVD. The production company has kindly provided a selection of stills from the filming, which have now been added to our Photo Gallery – click here to view them.

Full Colour Brochure. We have large stocks of our new brochure in place, in case the BBC TV series creates a lot of interest in the club. Click here to access the electronic version. Note that the brochure is in PDF form, so you will need Adobe Reader, which can be downloaded here.

North Dorset Trailway Continues to Grow. By the end of August, the North Dorset Trailway (which seeks to re-use the old Somerset & Dorset Railway as a long distance multi-use path between Templecombe and Poole), will have established a continuous route from Blandford Forum to just south of Spetisbury. Click here for further details.

New Railway Paths in Wales. Earlier in the year, member Bob Morgan supplied details of two new railway paths in Ceredigion. Previously, we had reported on the proposals for these routes, but now they are open. Read the full story by clicking here.

Sustrans' Connect2 Project Wins National Vote! In December 2007, Sustrans' Connect2 project won the 'People's £50 Million', gaining 42% of the overall vote. Huge amounts of research and planning had already been completed, so work started in earnest from January 2008. We have left the link here in place, since it contains further details of Connect2, including a list of those projects which involve the re-use of old railway infrastructure. Connect2 will bridge significant gaps in 79 communities throughout Great Britain with safe, traffic-free routes. It was the only project in the final shortlist of four which offered significant benefits for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Want to Walk or Cycle Into Bath via the Somerset & Dorset Railway? It's on its way! The Connect2 project (see above) includes a scheme to re-open the old S&D from Midford to Bath. This provides for opening up both Combe Down and Devonshire Tunnels, which will have street lighting installed. The result will be of great value to residents in the Midford area, since it will make Bath accessible via a level 4 mile route instead of a very hilly 7 mile route. The project, known as 'Two Tunnels', will also support long term plans to develop the S&D as a cross-country cycling route between Bath and Bournemouth.

Viaducts, Viaducts! Two viaducts now carry plaques commemorating the contribution of Railway Ramblers to important restoration projects. These are at Midford in Somerset, and Haltwhistle in Northumberland. This is a tremendous achievement for the club, and an endorsement of the decision to set up a 'Footpath Fund' to help finance projects like this at a time (1983 or thereabouts) when a few doubters reckoned that it wasn't worth bothering with. So, many thanks to all those who have supported the Footpath Fund over the years – what a difference we've made! Click here for further details.

Message Board. Our message board can be accessed by clicking the link here. Would area organisers and club officers please consider making greater use of this facility, in order to justify what we spend on it? The Webmaster does not have time to maintain area walk programmes on the main site, but you can do this very easily by making a posting on the message board. Honestly – it really is easy! If you have forgotten your username and password, just get in touch via the e-mail link on our Contact page.

'On Tour'. If you haven't had a look already, why not visit the page which gives a flavour of one of our occasional special events? Click here to take a look – the event was based on a visit to sites on the former Somerset & Dorset Railway between Templecombe and Blandford Forum.

Search and Site Map. These features can be accessed by clicking here. The site is now too big for more than a part to fit into the site map, but the search feature is really useful if you are looking for information on a specific route.

Access. Our Access page contains guidance on which old railways can and cannot be walked, as well as a brief history of how we lost our railways, and how some came to survive as walks and cycle trails. This page also includes a link to our Non-Trespass policy.

New Railway Paths. All new railway paths are reported initially in our News pages, after which they are added to our online gazetteer. This is a members' only area, which is a good reason for joining the club – click here for details. If you would prefer a printed copy, Vinter's Gazetteer is correct as at April 2000 and still covers the majority of railway paths in the UK; see our Publications page for further details.

Site Re-Design and Statistics. Our site was re-designed in 2004. Our objectives remain to make it run quickly, for narrowband as well as broadband users; to keep it simple to navigate; and to provide well written and interesting content. At the time of writing (2 May 2009), the tally on our 'hit counter' had just reached 69,250, and the number of visits had risen from 1,000 per month in December 2007 to a peak of over 4,000 in April 2009. Currently, 86% of our visitors are new to the site, as can be seen from the table below:

Above: Visitors to the website during the last 18 months. The yellow line shoots up from nothing because the statistics service was installed at the end of November 2007, during which month only a few days were monitored. Numbers climb dramatically during October 2008 and April 2009 due to the 'Railway Walks' series being broadcast, first on BBC4 (Oct-Nov 2008) and then BBC2 (Mar-Apr 2009). The series gives the club a name check in episode 5. Generally, visitor numbers increase after the introduction of new content, which is hardly surprising. Similarly, they usually decline between March and May annually, when the Webmaster's teaching commitments generate a lot of coursework marking, which reduces the time available for voluntary activities such as maintaining the club's website.