Pathfinder: The Marches Castle - Nov 29th

I am told its going to be DL throughout

 

I'm afraid it is class 67 throughout. Regrettable but unavoidable at this late stage.

 

Tangmere - no since the toc for this trip is DBS. I doubt that this route been gauged for an A4?

 

Hmmm, I'm booked on this and have just spoken to Pathfinder who can only offer me a £20 credit note, whether I travel tomorrow or not. I'm not in the least bit interested in listening to a class 67 for 7 hours but I don't really want to lose £80!! Is there any point me arguing with them?

 

Take a pair of earplugs ! Id' Take the credit note and hopefully, try to enjoy the day ! You'll have a chance to see the Fives, depart Shrewsbury, which is a positive.

 

TBH,I very much doubt it - its in their T&C's. I really sympathise, exactly the same thing happened to me on an SD trip to Exeter last summer(2013) with Clan Line,didnt even know till on the platform at Woking and it drew in with a 67 on the front. It was made very clear you only had 2 choices,travel and have a £20 refund(I think it was £40 if you took it as a credit to another trip), or cancel and lose your money.

 

I feel your pain. Take the £20 and spend it on good ale.

 

Feel sorry for passengers, as well as Pathfinders staff. Also not much fun if the train has to stick to its path and make scheduled water stops. Standard and First were fully booked as well according to Pathfinders website. :-(

 

Is this confirmed ?, curious what was only noticed at the FTR that woulden't be beforehand.

On the bright side it means I can see 60009 before the Black Fives now.

 

Its £20 credit towards another trip. My wife is going mad at me wasting £98. As usual the tour co. is hiding behind the T&Cs. At some stage this needs to be tested in Court as in other cases, not related to steam tours, Courts have ruled that T&Cs have to be reasonable. Is it reasonable to advertise a trip as steam hauled and then for it not to be.?
Don

 

As mentioned above, you could stay on the train until Shrewsbury then loiter 2 hours before seeing the pair of 5s arrive at Shrewsbury, then twiddle thumbs a further hour before your train sets off back...

...or alternatively get off at Ludlow on the off-chance that after a 2 hour wait you can manage to snaffle a pay-on-the-day seat behind the double-header from Ludlow to Shrewsbury. An hour at Shrewsbury before then returning on your diesel.

Clearly that isn't going to be an option for a whole train's worth of people, and I'm aware there are some locals round here hoping to get pay-on-the-day seats from Ludlow to Shrewsbury & return. If all goes well you get 45 minutes of main-line steam for whatever they charge - hopefully not much more than the £20 refund you've got. If you can't manage to swing that then you end up with 3 hours to kill in Ludlow with the ability to see the other charter arrive and depart whilst you're twiddling thumbs.

Which sounds better:

4.5 hours in Ludlow (and see the other steamy charter pass after 2 hours),
3 hours in Shrewsbury (and see the other steamy charter arrive after 2 hours),
...or the chance of 2 hours in Ludlow, 45 mins of steam & 1 hour in Shrewsbury?​

 

Steam Dreams quoted me £20 single, £40 return hop on fares Ludlow to Shrewsbury yesterday but I don't think we will be going at all now.

Don

 

This is a very bad situation for everyone. In the case of a failed FTR,it will always happen less than 24hrs before the trip. Its easy to say cancel the trip and give everyone their money back but its debatable as to how feasible that would be in the time available(i.e. to let everyone know). There are also substantial cancellation costs for the Railtour company,such as catering supplies ect which would presumably have to be paid for by somebody. How often could Pathfinder,or whoever,take that kind of hit and stay in business? There are no easy answers.

 

Tangmere tucked up at southall now


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I was also on the SD trip to Exeter. I only found out on the morning of the trip and had to tell my friend who really hates diesel haulage. He was not pleased when I met him at Aldershot! The worst part was seeing the reactions of all the passengers on Woking station when the stewards came round telling them. Some of the passengers had already had diesel haulage on the three previous SD trips.

 

Unfortunately, this sounds better:

Avoid paying to get to Bristol
Avoid paying for lunch in Shrewsbury
Avoid sitting on a squashed mk1 carriage for 7hrs plus
Avoid paying for numerous teas and coffees on the train to break up the boredom
Avoid having to listen to a whiny class 67 instead of a Castle

I can do all this by staying at home and I get the bonus of spending the day with my wife and 2.5 yr old son and I might get to see Wales beat S Africa at rugby.

Yes I lose money but that's what I'm going to do. I understand it's all pretty unavoidable but if something's advertised as steam hauled trip and there's no steam haulage at all, then a refund should be forthcoming and the owners of 5029 should be liable for failing to deliver their part of the deal.

Interestingly there is nothing about this on the Pathfinder website despite the fact that the lady I spoke to at Pathfinder at 14:10 knew all aboit it. If I hadn't looked at Nat pres today, I'd be blissfully unaware.

 

It sounds like you're after no steam on the main line. No loco owner is going to agree to those terms, therefore no locos are hired, therefore no steam runs, and you dont miss out on any trips. Everyone's a winner!

 

Sorry but no railtour operator or loco owner could possibly go along with that. You also ignore the fact that many on the train(obviously not members of this forum!) are possibly not that bothered about the lack of steam,or certainly they would rather go with a diesel than not go at all.

The fact is that failed FTR's are very rare(1 0r 2 a year maybe?). I have every sympathy with your situation but it may be something we have to put up with if we are to have steam on the main line.

 

I did have plans at one time to get down to the Welsh borders to film both tours, and said I would take her indoors to Hereford for the weekend (she is a native of the place)
I started to get doubtful when the route on one started changing, so gave it the elbow in favour of bagging a shot of '09 which has been rare-ish down south lately.

 

But how can you run the Marches Castle without the Castle? Surely a postponement would have been the right thing to do. Like jamesd my party will not throw more money at this train. So disappointing that there was no backup loco. The loosely connected "group" including LSL promised that this wouldn't happen on the Torbays in future and I assumed, obviously wrongly that this would apply to Pathfinder/Riviera/LSL steam hauled trains too. Sadly this shows this not to be so as 4464 is only at Southall and could be made available. Sadly Pathfinder do love their diesels don't they? We haven't been contacted by them yet despite them having our email, phone, mobile info so we could well have been a group of Mr Angrys tomorrow if we'd spent more money getting to the pickup point when they knew early today.