2015 Mainline Steam Review - Worst Year ever?

and more repeat itinerary shorter day type tours ear marked for the day trip market, for instance a Sunday tour that takes in an interesting route for instance Victoria to canterbury,/ ashford where if steam, the engine runs tender first ,down to Eastbourne,,or with deisel haulage, with time to spend in Eastbourne whilst the engine is serviced , train then returns to london via Lewes ,Waterloo to Salisbury, maybe some eastern region local trips Cambridge etc,

 

One would hope , that where two steam locos are planned, you have more chance of getting at least one!

 

You "could" say that steam in the northern fells, the Settle Carlisle in particular has been "the best year ever". With the addition of the Dalesman's and there being no fire ban to speak of, the number of steam hauled journey's must be the highest in one year there has ever been in the preservation era, and I can only recall one of those involving a diesel being tucked in behind the steam.

It depends how you measure it, but for quantity, no diesel tucked inside, I'd say 2015 has been pretty good for the enthusiast, particularly compared to the previous 2 years.

Obviously the S&C isn't the only part of mainline steam, but it's not all doom and gloom.

 

the failed attempt to get to Bleanau Ffestiniog was not very good.

cheers,
julian

 

I was talking to some German participants on the Welsh Charter about the problems on the mainline this year and they told me that despite what's happened the rest of the world still look at this country with envy. In Europe Germany has the best programme of steam operation but nowhere near the volume of trains run here even in 2015 and where else will you find daily steam trains through spectacular scenery throughout the summer (Jacobite).

We really don't know when we are well off, let's hope that 2016 sees WCRC out of trouble a bit more reliability.

 

Nowhere to turn a loco at Cambridge. You can do it at Ely but in recent times Ely trips have seen the train go to March for turning and servicing.

 

But the Germans get such wonderful stuff as parallel running, something that we only had with steam on the Met. And German main line steam is very good value for money. If only we could combine the best of UK and German practice.

 

5/6 December saw around 30 steam locos working on the mainline in Germany on various tours! But other than narrow gauge, there are very few preserved lines in Germany, so it's their way of running Santa Specials or Christmas market tours.

 

Does anyone have, preferably in a spreadsheet so the data can be analysed, data for number of trips announced v number of changes cancellations etc over a number of years?

 

http://www.uksteam.info/tours/index.htm holds tour data back as far as 1997. Not in the form you're looking for but no doubt would make interesting reading though I suspect you'd lose the will to live trying to compile a spreadsheet from the data.

 

Yes I know its all there. I was wondering if anyone had produced what I was looking for. I'm not going to do it, but someone, most years, on here does produce some stats.

 

I've mentioned this a couple of times. London-Canterbury and London-Salisbury were Steam Dreams' staple diet in its early days. Fair enough, there probably isn't the market year in, year out, to run to these two destinations as frequently as they did when the company was "finding its feet" but to go from 1 operator running about 15 trains to Canterbury to several operators running only one between then (SD on a Sunday in July) does seem a bit strange. Someone posted a comment which someone in the SD team had made ot them (possibly Graeme Bunker?) stating that about 3-4 times per year for Canterbury was about right. Well, where are the other 2-3 trains? There's certainly two customers in this household who'd book - as long as it wasn't on a Sunday.

As for Eastbourne, RTC was due to run to Eastbourne via Lewes last week but the tour was cancelled due to 34067 not being ready. This tour has run in previous years with a diesel on the back to take the train to Hastings, then back via Battle and Tonbrudge with steam on the front. Fair enough, but I remember SD running to either Swanage or Weymouth a couple of years back without a diesel - the steam loco uncoupled near Southampton, ran round and then ran tender first to its destination. The Eastbourne-Hastings line does not boast any trains running as fast as those on the Bournemouth Line nor such an intensive service, so I would have thought you could do the whole thing with steam alone, running round at Eastbourne and at Hastings. Perhaps the fact that SD was using DBS when it went in for tender-first running may have been a factor, but I'm only speculating here. Living in East Sussex, I'd be delighted to see more steam down this way and Eastbourne isn't a bad place as a destination at all.

 

The German way of doing it I'd these one off mega steam events but they have nothing to touch our countrywide railtours with hardly a week without mainline steam somewhere on the system in a normal year

 

But German main line steam is more than just "one off mega steam events." For example, the guys with the 41 at Eisenach do about 20 trips a year and there are other groups who do similar so whilst there may be more main line runs in the UK, they're far from starved of them in Germany.

 

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Thanks for the hard work @99Z So in terms of cancellations we've been in something of a purple patch prior to this year and 2015 was indeed a annus horriblis but no worse than the early Noughties. As for Electrics, I'm not aware of any sparky assisted trips?

 

I wonder if the issue isn't the other way round - steam hauled tours aren't really about enthusiasts any more - they are part of the "leisure experience" business which covers everything from hot air balloon flights to driving ferrari's around a race track. The core market for the likes of SD, RYTC etc will be people wanting a special day out to mark an occasion like a 40th birthday or 50th wedding anniversary - or a nice trip out like visiting the Christmas markets. For most of those punters provided something coal fired turns ip on the front and makes a few chuffing noises, that's fine - diesel assistance isn't a real issue because most wouldn't know the difference, and if it happens to be Tangmere instead of Mayflower most of them probably couldn't tell that either.

The key to that is that if you change the nature of what you are selling from a specialist enthusiast day out (thinking of the old Pathfinder steam specials or things like the old GWS Vintage train runs) to a mass market money maker, then the decisions that are made get changed. Run for profit means sticking more carriages on that you can fill with punters in the booked track slots - OK so that means sticking a diesel on the back to cover the power needs. Most of the tours run on fairly generic routes with a lot of repeat runs - that makes pathing easier - which to some degree with a lack of steam support infrastructure makes sense as there are only so many places you can stop for water etc.

The reality following on from that is that unless there is sufficient enthusiast market for a niche operator to cater for us, we are increasingly going to be the jam on the tour operators sandwich - they'll advertise something tempting (6023 going out next month etc) to get us booking to fill the extra places on a tour they can't quite fill with normals - they then hide behind the terms when the tour actually runs behind 34067 with a diesel helping out. To a degree VT are closer to the old style enthusiast tours but with obvious limitations on the haulage available if they restrict themselves to locos they maintain. Maybe when the Icons of Steam group develops further there may be a bit more added on the enthusiast side.