(Boltar) wrote in message . com...
(TheOneKEA) wrote in message . com...
Today (Sun Oct 10, 2004), the Epping Ongar Railway Preservation
Society ran a train service using a single class 117 DMU from Ongar to
North Weald and back; a week previously, almost 10 years to the day
since the Central Line service was withdrawn, a test service was run
on Oct 3.

http://www.eorailway.co.uk/news.htm

I wonder if this means that the EOR actually has a future. I also
wonder about that DMU livery, and the precise relationship between the
original EOR company that bought the line and this new EORPS that ran
the trains today.

A dreary DMU running through some flat dreary countryside. Yeah , that'll
have the tourist flocking in in droves. Why did they bother.

Because the EORPS, past sins aside, feels that some folks really do
want to ride a so-called "dreary DMU" through the Essex countryside.
If half of their newfounnd plans come to frutition they may have
something on their hands.

If they'd
been running old LU rolling stock borrowed from Acton or the Cravens group
with a track connection at Epping it would have been wonderful.

Unlikely. The HSE (or the HMRI) would have killed them through
cottonesque nanny-state policies WRT unshielded third and fourth rail.
Best case, they would have had to use side- or bottom-contact power
rails, and get new shoegear for all of their old LU stock. Worst case
- no rails. Which seems to have happened.

But this?
I'll give it a couple of years before the line is derelict again , this time
for good.

B2003

As I said previously, past sins aside I hope the EORPS really is able
to get things going again.