The Links page is the central clearing house for all external links and all pages on the website, allowing easy access to any external site and any well-buried internal pages.
Most of these external sites are from the planning department. Further down is one requested by our Health and Safety Department, a couple off How To... and a few General Interest pages, which are little to do with us.
Sites may move on and off the page depending on our mood. They are included below in some sort of order. The current total of external links is 26, serving 24 websites. At the bottom is a list of all of the 76 pages at present online. A few gaps are left where numbers are retained for long-term projects or where pages have been withdrawn, either as obsolete or just plain not wanted. Some pages have "simple" versions, without background pictures or exceptionally large maps, and these are marked with "(alt.)" below. Click on the main link for the full page, or the word "(alt.)" for the simplified one. Apart from some references to the background picture (Page 7) and a large map and associated comments (Page 31), the content for both types of page is identical. Where two pages with simple versions are linked, the two simple versions link to each other and the two full versions link to each other.
Links to the links (click on the title at the top of the section to go to the actual department homepage)
Planning Department (21)
Health and Safety Department (1)
How To... (2)
General Interest (2)
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http://www.deanforestrailway.co.uk/
The Dean Forest Railway site, for the railway which is the local preserved railway to the Wye Valley Railway. The WVR is mentioned by the Planning Department at length.
We mentioned milk floats as a battery-powered vehicle, and provided a link from our future service plans page. We are not all-knowers on milk floats and so cannot provide a jargon buster.
http://www.railcar.co.uk/hisOthers/BMUintro.htm
Also as a battery unit is this unusual train, a lightweight unit with batteries for remote branch lines. The "failure" of this train, like many British Rail innovations, was mostly down to a lack of follow-through. BTC stands for British Transport Commision, while RTC is the Railway Technical Centre.
http://www.semgonline.com/gallery/class419_01.html
The third battery units site, this one stars the Motor Luggage Vans. We are now plotting using milk float technology of charging a battery up and making a journey rather than charging it en-route (like these units) but the site is still good.
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/m/monmouth_troy/index.shtml
Monmouth Troy station - a little page dedicated to this unfortunate station with a few details. There is also a link back to this site.
http://www.geocities.com/cardiffrail/Wye-Tunnels.html
There were four tunnels to go through if you travelled from Chepstow to Ross-on -Wye by train. This page studies all four, with a lot of detail and brilliant pictures of Tidenham.
http://www.geocities.com/cardiffrail/FoD-GWR-Tunnels.html
Same site, but another set of tunnels. The Redbrook ones are on the Coleford branch, and this was originally linked to from here. Commodore C64 is a type of computer, now obsolete. This shows how long it is since these two tunnels were last checked. Mierystock Tunnel is on the Severn and Wye line from Serridge Junction in the Dean Forest to Lydbrook Junction on the Ross and Monmouth Railway. The tunnel shape is probably unique. Mosely Green is a small tunnel which does its best not to be noticed and is in a greater state of disrepair inside than many. Puddlebrook Tunnel is one of the nation's most curious and weird tunnels. Used by the Admiralty for storing missiles and explosives in World War Two, hence the narrow gauge track, it was abandoned in 1948. It is impossible, even now, to find any pictures of the tunnel before or after the war and information after construction is scanty, except that it was abandoned immediately after completion in the 1880s. Today the narrow gauge line is a ruin leading into an open portal which is blocked some way in and abandoned stock covers the scene. Naturally the Admiralty wished to keep it under wraps which means that nothing survives and the exact uses of the tunnel, photos etc. are now almost impossible to come by.
Leaving these pages will offer you a lot of other stuff on South Wales that you never even dreamed existed. Only responsible people are advised to visit, so most of our staff haven't read most of it.
http://www.sungreen.co.uk/Default.htm
The Forest of Dean photography site, with good photos of the area's history, including the local railways.
http://www.tintern.org.uk/note2000.htm
One of the earlier Wye Valley sites that we found, this one has the local plans for 2000 of which nothing further has developed. The details are near the bottom of the page.
http://www.tintern.org.uk/station.htm
The Old Station at Tintern has a website - here it is.
http://www.urban75.org/photos/wales/wye.html
It's a very good site and it's a shame that his information mostly comes from the same places as ours. The site contains a lot of other stuff and some good pictures of the Monmouth Troy station building during disuse.
Dayhouse Quarry at Tidenham is now a diving centre and this is the website. Blasting may take place from 9 am to 10:30 am, 12 to 1 pm and 3 pm to 5 pm.
http://www.pontypool-and-blaenavon.co.uk/index.html
We include a reference to this on one of our Planning Department pages on the Wye Valley Railway, so as it is an external link it has to go in here. This railway owns Britain's highest railway station (something alarmingly high and barren which they won't own up to but is over 1300ft).
It was a locomotive now owned by this organisation which hauled the last WVR passenger train on Sunday 13th August 1978 (exactly 21 years prior to the founding of the OB). Therefore we have mentioned this in our page on the WVR, and added a link, which duly gets in here.
http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/media/play16.htm
We mention this advert in relation to train jams while explaining why trains are better than cars and bikes. So here is the external link.
http://www.monmouth-today.co.uk
The Monmouthshire Beacon reported on most of the railways around Monmouth and is a useful local reference. So we thought we'd give it a link.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nigel.nicholson/hn/publications/
Ok, this could be argued to be an internal link - but it links to outside the OB main site so it gets a link. We have provided a link to some books on Garway as it is on the Monmouth to Pontrilas route - and so here is said link.
http://www.railwayholidays.co.uk/
Pontrilas station building has found a new use - a holiday cottage. Here is the website.
Monmouth Troy station building has also found a new use. It was dismantled in 1986 and taken to a better place - this is where it went. It's Winchcombe station on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, which runs from Toddington to Cheltenham Racecourse.
http://www.tinternsteamrailway.co.uk/
The currently defunct proposal to replace the miniature-gauge railway at Tintern station with a new one is detailed here. The History section is copied from the opening section of our page on the Wye Valley Railway.
http://www.wyevalleycycling.org.uk/
This lot seem to be winning the campaign to be the first organisation to run a transport link through Tintern since the 1960s with their gleaming new cycleway going through the little comfy station of Tintern.
It's this often irritating and over the top bunch ("we don't know why the railways object about us... the bus and aeroplane companies have no objections..." - at the last check, you did not manage bus or airline safety, and now you don't manage the railways either) which we attack with our Health and Safety Department - we are now considering whether to ban 4x4s altogether as our latest high priority move as HSE doesn't seem to be bothered about these dangerous objects. Did you know that a 4x4 can do more damage to a brick wall than an average car?
http://stronghold.heavengames.com/
Mentioned in How To... while telling you about taking castles.
http://www.castlewales.com/home.html
All the castles in Wales, UK, and a few on the English-Welsh border. With a fair bit of detailing, and lots of pictures.
General Interest (these pages have little to do with the website and are mostly put in because we think they might interest you)
http://pathetic.org.uk/index.html
The competition for medium distance traffic with the railways. Pathetic. Well, maybe not all of them, but several of the ones on this site. Ever seen the local motorway of Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire? How many motorways were due to make up the London Orbitals? Wondered where the M64 and M59 are? What happened to the M531? How important the M50 could have been? The answers are all here. The Pathetic Motorways of Britain (M69 not included).
PS: We don't count aeroplanes as competition for medium distance traffic as flying a meduim distance by air is stupid - far too expensive if there's an alternative route And very bad for the atmosphere.
http://www.infocom-if.org/index.html
Infocom: a company which existed from 1980 until 1986 when it was bought by Activision. They wrote computer games, and continued to write until 1989 when Activision killed the sorry remnants. Only second-hand versions are available now. This is the closest to the official Infocom site you'll get until Activision realises that they are sitting on a potential gold mine. Infocom made text adventures, which they described as being "like waking up inside a story." The games were addictive - but noted for verging on the impossible. Versions available include Commodore C64, Atari ST, Apple II, Amiga, PC... but this website doesn't sell them. It just offers histories of the company and famous writers and a narration of each game, as well as a link to Activision and eBay, now the best place to get these things. A library for them is not an option as each game would probably be out for over a year and maybe 15 (we spent 18 on one and then got a few hints). You also get a good chance to die of starvation, being beaten up, being attacked by trolls, and of high blood pressure. These include Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Wishbringer, Planetfall, Ballyhoo!, Enchanter, Sourcerer, Suspended, Deadline, Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy and the all-round irritating but funny Bureaucracy.
Also on this site (page number has little to do with age of page or location, although pages have been created in groups and the lower numbers are generally the older pages):
Currently the only absent pages are 27 and 88. 27 is a revision of a popular story which isn't going very well. 88 is a page on the proposed Wye Valley Cycleway which we are having some difficulty balancing.
11/02/09