DCDR Flood Recovery Appeal

[Galteemore]

I think your point still stands though - Carson was last of Cabinet rank. Sir James Craig had a senior position at Ministry of Pensions c1919 but was not of Cabinet rank. 

[airfixfan]

Agree Carson only Irish MP since 1900 to hold a full.cabinet position.

[GSWR 90]

Anyway, the point I was making re the Cabinet was that the current NI Secretary of State is not very popular in Downpatrick. Several weeks ago, he was to attend a meeting of people impacted by the flood to announce details of the recovery fund and to answer questions from business owners etc. While they were waiting for him, the SoS briefly met with our MP to tell him that the recovery fund was going to be roughly half of what was originally expected, then the SoS bravely left through the back door and flew back to Britain without speaking to any of the retailers! Our MP was not pleased with having to announce these details to an angry crowd on his own while being unable to do anything about it.

[jhb171achill]

On 13/12/2023 at 5:26 PM, GSWR 90 said:

Anyway, the point I was making re the Cabinet was that the current NI Secretary of State is not very popular in Downpatrick. Several weeks ago, he was to attend a meeting of people impacted by the flood to announce details of the recovery fund and to answer questions from business owners etc. While they were waiting for him, the SoS briefly met with our MP to tell him that the recovery fund was going to be roughly half of what was originally expected, then the SoS bravely left through the back door and flew back to Britain without speaking to any of the retailers! Our MP was not pleased with having to announce these details to an angry crowd on his own while being unable to do anything about it.

Typical of that crowd! Disgusting behaviour. 

[GSWR 90]

A brief update to fill you in over what has been going on at Downpatrick over the past while:

• We have added up the total cost of the flood damage with the help of assessors/insurance adjusters: including locos, machinery, infrastructure, etc. we will be out of pocket up to approx. £2,500,000 (€3,000,000) – no, that is not a typo!
• We have not received anything from the government's assistance scheme. The requirements for the next round of funding applications are grim reading – I would bet money that we will not receive a single penny.
• Cleanup is well underway, as far as I have seen the sheds are generally cleared now but the floors will likely need to be professionally cleaned. It's sad to see tens of thousands of pounds of equipment being simply chucked into a skip in a matter of seconds. We're at the point where we're gathering up wooden sleepers/debris which have floated around the yard.
• Passengers who had booked tickets on our Santa trains had the option of either receiving a refund or attending an alternative Christmas event that we organised in the nearby Down County Museum, who went to great lengths to very kindly host us. Although the vast majority of passengers did opt for a refund, the static event slightly softened the financial blow of losing our Christmas + diesel gala revenue.

I don't think it would be an understatement to say that this is one of the greatest crises ever faced by railway preservation on this island. You can donate to our recovery appeal here – many people have been extremely generous, for which we are extremely grateful, but we'll need a lot more support if we're going to be restoring and running trains in the future.

[jhb171achill]

2 hours ago, GSWR 90 said:

A brief update to fill you in over what has been going on at Downpatrick over the past while:

• We have added up the total cost of the flood damage with the help of assessors/insurance adjusters: including locos, machinery, infrastructure, etc. we will be out of pocket up to approx. £2,500,000 (€3,000,000) – no, that is not a typo!
• We have not received anything from the government's assistance scheme. The requirements for the next round of funding applications are grim reading – I would bet money that we will not receive a single penny.
• Cleanup is well underway, as far as I have seen the sheds are generally cleared now but the floors will likely need to be professionally cleaned. It's sad to see tens of thousands of pounds of equipment being simply chucked into a skip in a matter of seconds. We're at the point where we're gathering up wooden sleepers/debris which have floated around the yard.
• Passengers who had booked tickets on our Santa trains had the option of either receiving a refund or attending an alternative Christmas event that we organised in the nearby Down County Museum, who went to great lengths to very kindly host us. Although the vast majority of passengers did opt for a refund, the static event slightly softened the financial blow of losing our Christmas + diesel gala revenue.

I don't think it would be an understatement to say that this is one of the greatest crises ever faced by railway preservation on this island. You can donate to our recovery appeal here – many people have been extremely generous, for which we are extremely grateful, but we'll need a lot more support if we're going to be restoring and running trains in the future.

As one who was involved in the financial "cleaning up" after the fire years ago at Whitehead, when the local walking sewage burned out half a dozen carriages, I would say it most certainly IS the biggest disaster to hit preservation here, ever, and by a factor of maybe ten times the second worst.  Again, great sympathy for those closer to the action than i am these days, and we must all direct our wallets this way as far as we can.

[Horsetan]

On 3/2/2024 at 1:00 AM, jhb171achill said:

.....the local walking sewage burned out half a dozen carriages....

Society has become a lot more feral since then. Now they're burning down any buildings suspected to be for asylum seeker / refugee accommodation.

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, Horsetan said:

Society has become a lot more feral since then. Now they're burning down any buildings suspected to be for asylum seeker / refugee accommodation.

Sadly, yes - pity those who set these fires don't forget to leave the premises when they torch them!

[DJ Dangerous]

So, is €3 Million the final estimate or is the tally still rising?

It would be wonderful if there was some way of boosting income, even temporarily.

What is the situation with the waterlogged ground? Is the ground itself drying out or is it still largely saturated?

[Horsetan]

1 hour ago, DJ Dangerous said:

So, is €3 Million the final estimate or is the tally still rising?

These figures never stand still and I think we have to realise that this only covers the place until the next flood, unless the powers that be are motivated to design and introduce flood prevention/diversion measures.

[DJ Dangerous]

4 hours ago, Horsetan said:

These figures never stand still and I think we have to realise that this only covers the place until the next flood, unless the powers that be are motivated to design and introduce flood prevention/diversion measures.

I wonder would flood prevention cost more, or less, than the damage from a few floods.

[Galteemore]

The issue of course is not simply the cash. It’s replicating 10s of thousands of hours volunteer labour, not to mention sourcing obsolete parts. These last two can’t be fixed by a bank transfer.

Edited February 19 by Galteemore

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

So, is €3 Million the final estimate or is the tally still rising?

It would be wonderful if there was some way of boosting income, even temporarily.

What is the situation with the waterlogged ground? Is the ground itself drying out or is it still largely saturated?

Ever since the 1860s this area has been very flood-prone. From the day the railway opened into Downpatrick, the BCDR had bother with flooding in the area. Once a generation there's a really bad one, like recently. The DCDR, like the BCDR before it, has experienced pretty bad floods here before but the recent one was exceptionally serious. Given that the ITG has their operation base here too, it hit the ITG also.

[jhb171achill]

49 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

The issue of course is not simply the cash. It’s replicating 10s of thousands of hours volunteer labour, not to mention sourcing obsolete parts. These last two can’t be fixed by a bank transfer.

Very very true. That bit on its own is soul-destroying. Obsolete parts, more often than not, have to be manufactured, carved or cast from scratch. Even that can involve very intyricate and time-consuming making up of templates, drawings, patterns, etc, beforehand.

[Horsetan]

2 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

Ever since the 1860s this area has been very flood-prone. From the day the railway opened into Downpatrick, the BCDR had bother with flooding in the area. Once a generation there's a really bad one, like recently. The DCDR, like the BCDR before it, has experienced pretty bad floods here before but the recent one was exceptionally serious. Given that the ITG has their operation base here too, it hit the ITG also.

The question is whether the really bad ones will happen more often.

[Gabhal Luimnigh]

1 hour ago, Horsetan said:

The question is whether the really bad ones will happen more often.

Exactly, I think the water level is getting ever closer to the ground surface, a week of dry weather is easily undone by a half hour of rain, it was never this damp and soggy.

[DJ Dangerous]

What about selling some of the damaged stock to a UK line, a private collector or a scrap yard?

That would both bring in cash and reduce spending on repairs.

Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions.

Do we try to save everything, spread ourselves too thinly and end up saving nothing?

Or do we do as much as we can, and try to make our efforts last as long as possible?

Before anybody responds without thinking, I've been involved with voluntary work for a long long time, and those two questions are borne from experience.

[GSWR 90]

I will try and summarise my own thoughts on some of the questions/comments above:

• Is €3mn the final estimate?

As Horsetan mentioned above, people will continuously find bits and pieces to add to the bill, but €3mn seems to be the ballpark so far according to an independent assessor + our own calculations. I think it's important to emphasise that it's not a case of DCDR never running again unless we get the entire €3mn – we'd have raided Moyasta by now if things were that bad!

• How are you able to boost your income in the meantime?

Like I mentioned before, we offered a non-railway related alternative for our Christmas passengers, but while we wait for insurance/government funding if either ever materialise) our main source of income is through donations. We've had a quiz night a few weeks ago and we're having a fundraiser at the Strand Cinema in Belfast on the 24th of February. We'd love to organise more events but we need more people + resources, we are a bit overstretched at the moment. A few people have even very kindly donated some models for us to auction online, and I have organised some new merchandise which we will hopefully () be able to sell online at some point.

• Is the ground currently waterlogged?

No more than usual for this time of year.

• Will the flooding happen again?

It is possible, but there are a few of things to bear in mind:

1. A flood like this has not happened in Downpatrick in approx. 70 years, and it was the wettest November in County Down c.100 years.
2. The Department for Infrastructure is currently assessing flood mitigation measures. Parts of it were blocked with so much sediment that its discharge was reduced to less than 50% during the flood. Yes, 'freak' weather events are becoming more frequent, but this will massively help drainage in the future.
3. We know what to do if there's a flood risk – a while after the floodwaters subsided they started to rise again while the water table was still high, so we moved the locos/railcars up to the end of the yard where the water didn't go above rail level. A person also very kindly took drone footage of the line during the flood, so we know where we can store other items of rolling stock out the line during a flood if necessary.
4. We know that the water will go no higher than platform height before it drains off into Market Street – so it won't get inside any of our carriages or locos bodies.
5. We are now storing a lot more stuff on shelves, and we'll be particularly careful when storing things during the winter.

• Should DCDR invest in flood defences?

There don't seem to be many viable flood defence options where we are apart from enhanced river maintenance (i.e. removing potential blockages more frequently). In addition, flood defences are extremely expensive –  we’d be spending tens on thousands on assessments and consultations to be told either that we can spend millions on flood defences or that we don’t have any suitable options. If we spent all our money on that, we wouldn't have enough left to run trains.

• Can you sell rolling stock to a UK line?

Anything we'd want to sell is stuff that we don't want because there's something wrong with it – it would be difficult to sell even if there wasn't the gauge problem. It would be very hard to even give stuff away.

• Can you sell rolling stock to a collector?

Same as above. Also, there aren’t really any collectors of 5’3” rolling stock.

• Can you sell rolling stock for scrap?

At the very most we'd get a few thousand euro per vehicle – that's a drop in the ocean, and will not fix any of our problems. There needs to be a very good reason to get rid of something which is historically valuable or will be useful to us eventually, even if that's in the very long term.

• Is there a risk that we end up saving nothing?

No, the railway doesn't have €3mn to hand but it's not insolvent. We will not go under if this sum of money doesn't materialise, but the less funding we have the more difficult things will be and the longer the recovery will take. The A class, B class, G class, and the 450 are all under repair and are currently operational at least to some extent.

 

Edited February 20 by GSWR 90

[Mayner]

3 hours ago, Horsetan said:

The question is whether the really bad ones will happen more often.

Whatever the causation severe weather events and so called 1:100 years appear to have been happening more frequently or more talked about during the last 20-30 years.

Towns, Cities and Railway Yards tend be built in river valleys often on flat land formed by silting up of rivers and flooding.

In some parts of New Zealand there has been an element of 'managed retreat" from areas prone to damage from flooding or coastal erosion as a result of severe weather events such as the Cyclones that affected much of the North and East Coast of the North Island last year.  Basically insurance underwriters have advised the Government that they are no longer prepared to insure properties damaged in previous events, the Government (Central and Local) compensate the owner by payment based on the current valuation of the property. Twelve months after last Februarys cyclone people are living in temporary accommodation and business and farm owners struggle to resume operations as the Insurers and Councils argue over whether or not a property is insurable and the level of compensation for a property that has become effectively worthless. Councils struggle to fund and manage flood protection, against demands to keep business and domestic rates down and reducing levels of Central Government funding.

Its likely to be a long road with many setbacks for the DCDR to recover.

[Westcorkrailway]

I wonder did anyone end up biting on RB3…

[Mayner]

8 minutes ago, Westcorkrailway said:

I wonder did anyone end up biting on RB3…

As far as I know RB3 is part of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum collection on loan to Downpatrick.

Think there are also long term plans to restore SLNCR Railcar B for use at Downpatrick

[jhb171achill]

57 minutes ago, Mayner said:

As far as I know RB3 is part of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum collection on loan to Downpatrick.

Think there are also long term plans to restore SLNCR Railcar B for use at Downpatrick

There was a funding app prepared for "B" some 20 years ago, for which the cost was Stg.£160,000. The app passed its first stage, but during the convoluted correspondence the funding criteria changed, so that closer to the time it would be going anywhere, there was no longer funding. I had kept the firm to whom it was to be sent, fully up to date with developments, as I tried to sort out what instalments would need to be paid, and when.

The company was based in Shildon in England.

Those who are familiar with recent RPSI restoration projects will raise an eyebrow here.

Yup - it was the very same firm to whom No. 171 was sent some time later.

They went bust, and the RPSI (very luckily) managed to repatriate 171 before the scrapman could sieze it to pay their debts!

SLNCR "B" would very probably have ended up in the same precarious position, so it is lucky that it never went there at all.  Still, with a proven background in bus restoration, and a great familarity with Gardner engines (which "B" was going to get), I am sure a good job would have ensued. It would have been great to have it operational there now.

As for RB3, yes, indeed, it was part of the UFTM collection. Under museum rules, a museum in possession of a listed artefact can't just chuck it if they get tired of it. They must first offer it to kindred bodies, properly registered with museum status, thus pre-fulfilling all normal standards for the care of the artefact. If nobody wants it, then they can sell it to a farmer to keep chickens in. Nobody wanted RB3. While I stand to be corrected on this, I think it is now DCDR property - and THEY don't want it, as it has never proved to be reliable, and in all reality is of very little indigenous Irish railway historical interest. Maybe it'll see chickens yet.

It was in use one St Patrick's Day, as I recall, as an extra train. It did a single return trip. I was travelling as guard on it on the way back in, and the driver struggled with it to persuade it to exceed walking pace. That's the walking pace of a chicken, by the way. As far as I am aware it was never used for fare-paying passengers again., even though DCDR's experts did try to persuade it to behave. Useless oul thing.

[airfixfan]

RB3 was offered recently by the UFTM and accepted by a group in England?

[GSWR 90]

The railbus isn’t on loan from the UFTM, it’s owned by DCDR. Someone had the not-so-bright idea of bringing it to Downpatrick in 2001 for regular shuttle services, without understanding that there was a reason why it wasn’t put into mass production. We now have the 80 and the 450 for such services anyway, which are more historically important, are wheelchair-accessible, have a much larger seating capacity, and are easier to use.

As mentioned in one of our members’ newsletters last year, DCDR agreed to transfer it to a relatively new project, the Gwendraeth Valley Railway in Wales. As there are a lot of moving parts involved in setting up a railway, it’ll likely be a while before it moves to Wales.

Edited February 20 by GSWR 90

[jhb171achill]

2 hours ago, airfixfan said:

RB3 was offered recently by the UFTM and accepted by a group in England?

Really? Didn’t know that. I thought DCDR owned it now…..

[Westcorkrailway]

An Irish locomotive leaving a meuseum going to wales….I bet you won’t see half the wibble when the reverse happened !!!

[jhb171achill]

5 minutes ago, Westcorkrailway said:

An Irish locomotive leaving a meuseum going to wales….I bet you won’t see half the wibble when the reverse happened !!!

And it’ll have to be regauged to narra gauge!

Ill tell yiz a wee secret. On the basis that it has little real history here, HAD it been reliable at Downpatrick, and HAD SLNCR “B” been fully restored, I had this notion of getting both painted together to save money (the treasurer’s job…)

…….in matching SLNCR livery.

Yup, jhb171 promoting a wrong livery…..  

Edited February 20 by jhb171achill

[Westcorkrailway]

I know where they can get dimensions….
 

https://preserved.railcar.co.uk/RB002.html?fbclid=IwAR3y2AeXx-8gZwqFaEqxfo5syJrCmOCyzAkrPr_E7ov-Iy1I2ldsGLA75Ns_aem_AS8Dz_oDDEOgwQX5krh59ix8KC2Icx83SDv01y3YaLHO_gvq1CJN0hP-jv-EcO5qUXU

[Horsetan]

25 minutes ago, Westcorkrailway said:

An Irish locomotive leaving a meuseum going to wales….I bet you won’t see half the wibble when the reverse happened !!!

There's a few items of Irish 3ft and even 1'10 over the other side. I'm not sure there was much, if any, wibbling when they went!

[Galteemore]

20 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

And it’ll have to be regauged to narra gauge!

Ill tell yiz a wee secret. On the basis that it has little real history here, HAD it been reliable at Downpatrick, and HAD SLNCR “B” been fully restored, I had this notion of getting both painted together to save money (the treasurer’s job…)

…….in matching SLNCR livery.

Yup, jhb171 promoting a wrong livery…..  

it had occurred to me that Manorhamilton would probably have hoovered up RB3 from BREL had the SLNC  lasted until the 1980s so you’re not a million miles off….would have suited that Belcoo scheme nicely…,

[GSWR 90]

3 hours ago, Westcorkrailway said:

An Irish locomotive leaving a meuseum going to wales….I bet you won’t see half the wibble when the reverse happened !!!

It’s useless to us and it originally worked in Britain for BR, so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

[seagoebox]

[Galteemore]

Interesting that her sister also remains fairly closely located to Downpatrick…..http://preserved.railcar.co.uk/RB002.html

[jhb171achill]

33 minutes ago, seagoebox said:

What on earth is "Ulster broth"? Something that foams from the mouth of Paisleyite preachers on the Sobboth?

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, Galteemore said:

it had occurred to me that Manorhamilton would probably have hoovered up RB3 from BREL had the SLNC  lasted until the 1980s so you’re not a million miles off….would have suited that Belcoo scheme nicely…,

Often wondered about that. I'd say that the company would have become part of CIE in the split of 1958, but if it hadn't, and remained today, I suspect it most likely (on financial grounds) it would simply have increasingly leased CIE stuff - which would have meants a diet of 141s from the late 1960s to early 2000s - and perhaps bought a pair of new 2-car 2600s when IE were getting theirs - as EU and Peace Money grants were all over the place then. A "G" might lurk to this day at the back of a shed in Manorhamilton, still in faded CIE livery, used for shoving things about when necessary. Goods would have vanished about 1975/6.

Edited February 20 by jhb171achill