DCDR Flood Recovery Appeal

[GSWR 90]

The Downpatrick & County Down Railway is facing its biggest ever crisis. The recent flooding saw substantial damage to our rolling stock and infrastructure, which is estimated to cost at least £250,000 (approx €290,000). It’s a long road ahead, but with YOUR support, we can recover.

With YOUR help, our fantastic community of supporters, you can help us rebuild and restore the Downpatrick and County Down Railway, Ireland’s only standard gauge heritage railway, back to its former glory.

Your donation, no matter the size, will make a significant impact. It will contribute to repairing the damage, and ensuring that our beloved railway remains a source of pride for people across Ireland, the UK, and beyond for many generations to come.

You can donate to the appeal by following this link.

 

[Signal Post]

 

I saw this appeal on here last night, it is a terrible disaster for the good folks at the DCDR and indeed for any of us who value this wonderful heritage railway. I hope that they manage to raise substantial funds to help out with repairs to the huge amount of damage caused.

 

In the nature of this forum if members aren’t commenting on the topic (ie making replies) then the topic tends to drop off the list of recent posts, in addition if the topic is located in a group of topics (eg News, Irish Models etc) which includes a popular thread (such as the Hatton’s 6 wheel carriage thread) then it won’t appear on the home page either. 

I know that you are all aware of this but the reason for my post is just to bring the appeal to the attention of members, I am sure that many of us on here would wish to make a generous contribution but may not even be aware of this appeal.

To this end if members could post an occasional reply it would help keep this topic to the fore and hopefully get the word out there.

 

Finally I have no connection with the DCDR myself but I would wish all those involved the best of luck with the appeal and I would like to express my admiration for the wonderful work that they do on this marvellous heritage railway.

[jhb171achill]

Totally agree. This is Ireland's only operational 5ft 3 line, and it has a unique and fascinating collection. I, too, would urge all who can to donate to their disaster fund and / or go up there and assist in person if possible.

[Niles]

Further to @GSWR 90's post, and for those of you not on Facebook:

 

Quote

On inspecting the battery boxes of our 80 class 'Thumper' Power Car No.90 after the flooding, we found that considerable (and rapid) corrosion had developed on the batteries. We are sorry to say that this is to the point that are no longer usable, and have had to be removed. As you can imagine, their replacement will not come cheap, and this is considerable set back in the return to service of this classic vehicle (we had originally hoped it would have made a cameo appearance at our now-cancelled Diesel Gala).
If you would like to help towards our flood recovery, please consider donating to our appeal at https://www.downrail.co.uk/appeal/

Edited November 21, 2023 by Niles

[irishrailways52]

absolutely terrible news. hopefully everything can be returned to its pre flood glory

On 16/11/2023 at 3:52 PM, Signal Post said:

In the nature of this forum if members aren’t commenting on the topic (ie making replies) then the topic tends to drop off the list of recent posts, in addition if the topic is located in a group of topics (eg News, Irish Models etc) which includes a popular thread (such as the Hatton’s 6 wheel carriage thread) then it won’t appear on the home page either. 

I know that you are all aware of this but the reason for my post is just to bring the appeal to the attention of members, I am sure that many of us on here would wish to make a generous contribution but may not even be aware of this appeal.

To this end if members could post an occasional reply it would help keep this topic to the fore and hopefully get the word out there.

 

it is also posable to rate the topic at the top right of the screen which might boost its awareness

[Colin R]

Wow just shows you can't take anything for granted, I would not have though Downpatrick could have suffered from such a flood. Just where did all that water come from? did a local river burst its banks or something?

 

Colin Rainsbury

[Niles]

22 minutes ago, Colin R said:

Wow just shows you can't take anything for granted, I would not have though Downpatrick could have suffered from such a flood. Just where did all that water come from? did a local river burst its banks or something?

 

Colin Rainsbury

Late Oct/early Nov saw a rainstorm and unprecedented flooding levels at Downpatrick, with many businesses in the town horrendously affected along with the railway. Unfortunately the town lies on a flood plain, though flooding to this extent has not been seen in the railway’s time.

[jhb171achill]

The area has traditionally been flood-prone. While the town has hilly parts, as the name suggests, the railway entered the town across the flood-prone River Quoile Estuary, and just west and south of the town skirts this area, which was actually at one time the coastline of a long since flooded inland bay. Thus it is low lying. The station, being on the western side of the town, was also built on low-lying ground and has always been prone to flooding even in BCDR days.

The DCDR was estabished just less than 40 years ago. There have been floods at the modern preservatyion site before, but they have caused more inconvenience than actual harm. This time is different.

As a member, I sent off a donation today. Every member will agree, please all of us send what we can; this is a unique and highly interesting railway with a fantastic collection of locos and rolling stock which can no longer operate on the main line, and thus will not operate anywhere else.

[GSWR 90]

Many thanks to everyone for your support, whether you’re donating money, spreading our message, or even just liking our posts. It really means a lot to us all.

This October was the wettest on record for County Down, with this year seeing almost twice the average rainfall for that month – this raised the water table in the Downpatrick area, meaning that the heavy rain at the end of the month had nowhere to go apart from above the ground’s surface. In the 40 years that DCDR has been here, we’ve never seen any flooding even remotely close to this.

This map from 1729 shows Downpatrick before the land drainage in the area and construction of a tidal barrier in the mid-18th century. Before this, what is now the River Quoile was once part of Strangford Lough.

Our station is just south of where the cathedral is (Down Cathedral, which still stands and where St Patrick is buried) on this map; the station’s approximate location has been marked with a red X. The railway runs through several drumlins (small hills created during the last ice age which are common in County Down) which were islands before the land reclamation, and were briefly islands again during the flood. It’s interesting to note that some of the drumlins/islands still retain their original names today, even though they haven’t been surrounded by water for a long time, eg Horse Island, Hog Island, Inch Abbey (Mainistir na hInse = Abbey of the Island). Also interesting to see Plague Island mentioned – I assume it’s named in reference to St Nicholas’ leprosy hospital, which was established in the medieval period very close to where our railway station is today.

 

Edited November 22, 2023 by GSWR 90

[jhb171achill]

Is it near Tunnocks Island?

 

(Sorry, DCDR “in joke”!)

[enniscorthyman]

I have joined and made a donation. 

[GSWR 90]

4 hours ago, enniscorthyman said:

I have joined and made a donation. 

Thank you!  It's very much appreciated!

[GSWR 90]

Underneath power car 90

[jhb171achill]

56 minutes ago, GSWR 90 said:

Underneath power car 90

Awful. A big blow to diesel preservation - but you’ll bounce back!

Maybe an appeal to battery manufacturers - or in the enthusiast world for the batteries?

[Colin R]

I think a steam cleaner would be useful right now, I wouldn't give up on the batteries either, I would suggest that they are take them off the power unit and check them over electrical wise, if no water got in to them, then a long slow change may just restore them back to life. It may be worth contacting a battery manufacture to ask for help in carrying out any refurbishment's too them, if they are lead acid then, it might be possible to replace the old sulphuric acid and distilled water with a fresh supply (just as long as the batteries have not dried out).

This may not be the long term result, but trying to buy or replace the number of these size batteries now at this moment in time may just buy you the time to get things back up and running next year.

Of course all the above may be a waste of time if the Batteries themselves have become damaged or have shorted out across the terminals.

Someone that might be able to help is the GWR company as they took over vivarail who start to build new Battery powered Railcars 

Good luck          

[Bob229]

Terrible to see the flood damage, have made a donation all the best in the recovery work

[GSWR 90]

The cost of the damage is racking up well into the hundreds (and hundreds) of thousands of pounds, with the pile of destroyed machinery in the workshop getting higher and higher. Everything from extremely expensive lasers for the new tamper to much of the fencing around the station, as well as essential equipment for maintaining the permanent way, are badly damaged/beyond repair. And on top of that, diesel locos/bridges etc. need to be professionally inspected, which in itself will cost many thousands of pounds in addition to any repairs that need to be carried out. Will we hit the magic million? Stay tuned to find out!

On the plus side, the 450 missed a lot of the floodwater due to its position in the yard, and after a massive amount of work to replace the grease in all the axleboxes + electricy things, it now appears to mostly be working again.

Edited December 4, 2023 by GSWR 90

[GSWR 90]

Also worth mentioning that the UK government has already given £1,700,000 to affected businesses to date, out of the total of £15,000,000 allocated for flood relief by the Northern Ireland Secretary – of that £1,700,000, we have received a whopping £0.00. For context, the estimated total of the damage caused by the flooding throughout Northern Ireland is about £30,000,000 (and I assume that's not including the particularly high cost of the damage to DCDR as they didn't consult us on this). Unfortunately nothing anyone in Northern Ireland can do about it as we don't have an Assembly at the moment.

Edited December 3, 2023 by GSWR 90

[irishrailways52]

great to see 458 in working order. it is such a disgrace that government's north and south don't give enough to keeping fantastic places like the DCDR working

keep up your fantastic work

Edited December 5, 2023 by irishrailways52

[GSWR 90]

For better or worse, G617 seems to largely be working again. It's diesel hydraulic with a chain final drive, so no traction motors to dry out unlike the A/B/C/railcars, so main problems were axleboxes + an electrical fault.

 

 

[GSWR 90]

Water is rising again. Like I said before ground is saturated from extremely heavy rain over the last two months. Please keep us in your thoughts tonight!

Edited December 8, 2023 by GSWR 90

[jhb171achill]

Awful. Long dry spell needed.

I'm wondering if there is some future way of creating some sort of flood barrier round the station? Or sealing the shed doors?

Only long term solution is one which jhbSenior encountered a couple of times during his civil engineering days - raise the entire track level by a couple of feet!

[GSWR 90]

G, B, 80s, bruff + dumper are being moved up the yard to minimise risk of flood damage 

[jhb171achill]

This is just awful. Good luck with remedial measures.

[GSWR 90]

Packing sandbags around the Carriage Gallery. Spitting in the wind maybe but better than nothing. Most of the stuff in the new loco shed has been moved off the floor

[Bob229]

That's dedication, hope no damage

[irishrailways52]

so terrible to see yet another wave of flooding. hope no damage is done

[Gabhal Luimnigh]

It's cruel, the weather isn't going to improve this side of next May I reckon, the water table is so close to the surface in many places now, lots of money and planning will have to be done to avoid further destruction I'm afraid. I feel so sorry for everyone affected.

[Westcorkrailway]

My first question is would it be possible to run a few railtours where the profit of which goes exclusivly to the DCDR flood damage fundraiser 

the other question is if finances one day opened up. Could a second mini base of operations be made at ballynoe. If such a place is of a higher ground then the Downpatrick. 

[StevieB]

I spent my working life dealing with river and sea flooding. The sandbags may only give limited relief but it will allow time to lift vulnerable equipment out of the way of the flood water. Make sure you know what is irreplaceable and what is not.

Stephen

[GSWR 90]

Yes, I’d say we’ll keep the locos etc up the yard for a while. No major flooding in 40 years then twice in two months demonstrates that we should be on our toes for at least the next few weeks. 

 

We are considering several options to minimise the impact of future flooding, all of which are very expensive – we will look into them more when things have settled down. Although a lot of people have been extremely generous, for which we are all extremely grateful, last time I checked the total value of donations is about 1% of the estimated total cost of the damage – so recouping the cost of repairs alone will be extraordinarily difficult, never mind paying for flood mitigation measures. Although we can apply for grants, grant applications are very arduous, time-consuming processes that have a relatively small chance of success and only apply to subjects within narrow parameters, often things like accessibility and environmental sustainability which won’t be of much help to us at the moment. On top of this, as I’ve said before, the NI Secretary of State is in charge of the government financial relief (which has been taken from other NI departments) which we have not been eligible for to date – as far as I’m aware there has not been a Northern Irish MP in the British Cabinet since Edward Carson, so I don’t think we’ll be able to do anything about that any time soon. 

 

We are a lot lower down than the rest of the town and we’re in the River Quoile’s very wide flood plane so flood barriers etc don’t seem to be an option. A lot of people have been calling for the Quoile to be dredged (during the flood some areas were blocked up with debris to such an extent that the discharge was less than half of what it should be), but the Department for Infrastructure said that that would have a negligible impact on flood risk. It’s worth mentioning that the river was last dredged in the 1990s and major flooding has only occurred 30 years later after it has been significantly silted up. I understand that flooding is a very complex and multi-faceted issue, but personally I remain unconvinced of the ineffectiveness of dredging, particularly since there has been no explanation or elaboration on this stance. Unfortunately since there’s no Stormont, there’s no infrastructure minister to give a detailed explanation on this, and there are no MLAs to hold the DfI to account.

 

Making the shed doors watertight won’t be of much help since water seeps up through the inspection pits in the Maghera Shed and the Workshop (I don’t know how to make these watertight but I assume it’s not cheap), the former of which has big wooden sliding doors which would need to be completely replaced. The sandbags were only put around the Gallery as a last resort – they won’t be effective against a significant flood but they can be helpful, eg during the first flood I put sandbags in front of a shop on Market Street which just caught the edge of the flood, if the water level had risen much higher then the place would have been underwater but the bags did prevent it from seeping through the door. Re Ballynoe, a lot of infrastructure, land acquisition + a bridge over the main road needed to have a base there, I imagine too much money and work for at least the medium term. I am not sure about a railtour as we have our hands full at the moment, I’m going to pass the buck on to Táilte Tours on that issue!

 

In spite of all this, plus the usual sectarian trolling that businesses in Downpatrick and Newry have received, we’re all blown away with the financial and moral support that you’ve all been giving us. Several railways in Britain have provided us with vital advice and logistical support on dealing with flood-damaged locos as well. Hopefully we’ll have a nice event to celebrate our recovery at some point in the future.

Edited December 12, 2023 by GSWR 90

[airfixfan]

When Carson was in the WW1 Cabinet he was an Irish Unionist MP

[GSWR 90]

13 minutes ago, airfixfan said:

When Carson was in the WW1 Cabinet he was an Irish Unionist MP

Good point. Would therefore be a stretch to say that we’ve ever had an MP in the cabinet, and I doubt that will change any time soon to allow us better access to relief money. As one of my colleagues said, Mo Mowlam would have been down in Downpatrick in her wellies!

Edited December 12, 2023 by GSWR 90

[Galteemore]

The last NI MP, arguably, to have the access required was Knox Cunningham, who was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan 1959-63.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Galteemore

[GSWR 90]

5 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

The last NI MP, arguably, to have the access required was Knox Cunningham, who was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan 1959-63.

Interesting, thank you! I knew there was going to be some caveat to my original post