After our comments in the rest of the Helpful Asides series, you may wish to know what other green plans we have. After all, the fact that we claim to offer a commuter service will be misconstrued by some as an effort to create more traffic in the Wye Valley. It isn't, incidentally - we just want to carry what traffic is there already.

However, we do have various ideas for being green. More will be added on here once a basic feasibility study is completed.

The first one is to re-use an old idea of a "Camp Coach". This is a coach which spent a lot of time working on some part of the rail network. Following withdrawal, it is taken to a depot and overhauled to include a kitchen, beds, a toilet, and a lounge area. It does not need to have much accommodation because it spends all summer sat in a siding in some attractive spot, acting like a holiday cottage or a large caravan, and then spends all winter dumped in a siding in some rather less attractive spot with a few dozen similar vehicles, while they get refurbished for the next summer. Camping coaches were used on lines out of Monmouth in the 1930s and 1950s, with Kerne Bridge, Symonds Yat (both on the line to Ross) and Tintern benefitting from this scheme.

Our new Camping Coaches would be carefully positioned along the WVR, probably at Tidenham, Tintern, St Briavels, Whitebrook and possibly Redbrook. Tidenham and Tintern could be got up and running very quickly, simply by planting a coach at Tidenham as soon as the station is clear enough for anyone to appreciate it, and by laying a section of track at Tintern to park a coach on near the car park at the Old Station. A suggestion was made to plant one of these coaches on Monmouth Viaduct, but that flopped, probably partly for safety reasons.

The coaches would be old British Rail Mark 1 vehicles. These can be seen in varying states of dereliction on any heritage railway except the Isle of Wight, generally painted in 1960s maroon with 1970s interiors. Some particularly long-lasting ones ran on the former Southern Region until 2005 (eight Mark 1-based vehicles are still in regular traffic - six on the Lymington branch near Bournemouth, one on the Princes Risborough to Aylsbury line, and one on the Cardiff Bay branch). We would simply buy a load which are in reasonable condition and do them up with retention toilets. They would be highly suitable for environmentally friendly people, as the Mark 1s had gutters (so all the water you need will be collected off the roof and put into a storage tank), low energy light bulbs (often consuming no more than 0 units of electricity throughout the night), and windows which could be opened, unlike on modern trains, which have air conditioning.

Result - environmentally-friendly accommodation which you can reach using environmentally-friendly transport.

We have suggested using battery traction, but this does not look very likely at the moment (battery technology is not progressing quickly) so we will be looking for some vehicles which can be refurbished as a reasonable dual-voltage fleet, probably with first class style seating, lots of luggage and bike room and an obeservation car (plus a cheapo set for Friday and Saturday nights). We would provide the blue-sky thinking and determination, so all we need is the stock (our suggestion is pictured below; however, that fleet has now been sold to Bulgaria so we may have to settle on something else) and the money. The stock can be bought with the money, so that means that all we need is someone to provide the much-needed cash. Most of the stuff in this proposal eventually ends up with a £ sign in it somewhere.

Consequently if you are in a position to allow us to do all of this (for example, if you own the trackbed or have a personal fortune so big that you are resorting to donating it to political parties) please get in touch. All we really need is cash. Lots of it (around £5,000,000 - cash or cheque). It can then buy practically everything else we need¹.

¹- Including, but not limited to, somebody with some get-up-and-go, a skilled workforce, a headquarter building, the required equipment, the stock, a maintenance shed, the Act of Parliament required to be allowed to build the line, and happiness.

In the meantime, here are some hopes for the future.

Today Monmouth Tunnel at the west end of Monmouth Troy on 31st March 2005. The station was used by a coal merchant for some time who did all distribution by lorry owing to the WVR being closed - hence the old tyres. The tunnel portal is bricked up with an access door and overgrown by young trees and ivy. The difference in height is caused by the filled-in platforms.

Tomorrow? AC electric loco 87 001 in British Railways blue in the tunnel portal. The loco lost its former job as an express locomotive on the West Coast Main Line in June 2005 after working there for 32 years. At least this member of the class has a reasonable future - now owned by the National Railway Museum. The tunnel has been tidied up and re-opened although the ivy is still present. The future?

We also have views on how to generate any electricity required for the line, provided at From Rags to Power>>>