KESR axle loadings

That is not my point at all. The weight of rail or the sturdiness of the civil engineering structures are hardly noticeable except to the specialist eye. Mainline style trains on a branch railway are. It's all too easy to lose any individuality a line may have had.

PH

 

Quite right Paul - whatever next eh? Some Ivatt tank running on the Isle of Wight? Or a Romanian engine in the welsh borders? Where will the madness end?

 

One has been disposed of whilst the other (by contrast resoundingly successful) is of a type utterly appropriate for a "little" railway. Tourist railways have to change inevitably to cope with circumstances but they need to exercise some care in this change. As I said before, the K.& E.S.R. is a fragile flower.

PH

 

No you are quite correct - everyone should follow the 'Paul guide to preservation'. There's nothing like blind certainty.

 

Wish I had "blind certainty".

PH

 

I tend to agree with Paul. Surely it is better for a heritage railway to have a USP and stick to it or they all start to look the same to Joe Public? As he says for the KESR to portray a light railway, the SDR the typical GW branch or the GCR the 'main line' to quote just a few examples. Those that are just a 'hotch-potch' of inappropriate locos and rolling stock such as the 'industrial diesel and Mk2 coach' set-ups don't provide anything other than, at best, limited tourist entertainment and, at worst, merely an opportunity for the operators to 'play trains'. As far as Ivatt's on the IoW go, a batch of the similar 84xxx were actually earmarked for use there and one actually reached Eastleigh for modification so I think that is a legitimate 'might have been". Just my 2p worth.
Ray.

 

Thanks for your thoughts. Eastleigh did in fact design a (rather neat) arrangement for fitting the airbrake. By great good fortune a copy of the drawing survived and was most useful.

Paul H

 

Does anyone outside of diehard gricers really think 'oh I particularly want a trip on an accurate representation of a secondary main line, preferably from the 1950s, better go to the Mid Hants'? Heritage railways are all providing a nostalgic false but pleasant representation of the past. An Ivatt tank on the Isle of Wight is historically inaccurate, but quite useful given that the railway now operates far busier trains than during its 'golden years' and it doesn't look too bad if you ignore the incongruous air brake.

 

The straight and accurate answer to this rhetorical question is in fact "Yes" I meet people all the time who are remarkably perceptive, even if they know very little about trains. It surprises me sometimes.

In any case, even if such perception is not present, there are few preserved/tourist railways that don't have an educational charity somewhere in their structure. Really, such lines ought to justify this status by presenting something educational. By this I don't just mean a museum room full of old pictures, valuable though this can be. Old pictures of branch line trains inside but the "Scotch Express" waiting outside does not, IMHO, fulfill the remit.

PH

 

So Sierra Leone and Caribbean sugar locos are typical for a Welsh narrow gauge railway then? As for an Ivatt with air pumps, is that authentic?
I have no problem with either but as your two favourite lines have made compromises to aid their development/survival, why do you criticise others who have gone down a similar route?

 

Here we go again. By their very success, heritage railways are carrying many more passengers and running more frequent trains than most ever did in their heyday so to accurately represent their history they will have to run shorter, less frequent trains. That will equal a lot of disappointed visitors, negative publicity and less income. Good for survival? Don't think so.

 

Quite right Paul. A little tank engine, two carriages, four passengers and only three trains a day. Because we want to be authentic don't we?

 

Here we go again. The word "heritage" should mean a little bit more than keeping the outfit in existence.

PH

 

Your argument is a reductio ad absurdum

 

So what should it mean? Is the Isle of Wight doing it sufficiently? How about the WLLR?

 

I know it is Paul. But how about giving some practical examples of how railways could do it better without disadvantaging the hundreds of thousands of visitors that many of them get. Generalisations are tiresome.

 

That is a necessary minimum though...

Tom

 

My hands on experience of preservation ended about 20 years ago, and it was on ships - Waverley & Balmoral, not trains.

On Balmorals last movement as a P&A Campbell ship in 1981 an engineer hired for the run was quite to the point, the conditions on most historic ships were such that these days nobody would work on them. Indeed as long as I was involved, and I believe to date the living conditions certainly on Balmoral made crew recruitment & retention a significant problem.& have - quite rightly been improved.

Similarly the pre 1980 passenger accommodation & catering on Balmoral were barely adequate then & would certainly not be acceptable now, ditto Waverley. Both ships have benefitted from significant investment to bring them up to the standards passengers expect these days.

In the same way, conditions on a BR era Steam worked line were pretty grim, do we want cut up newspaper in the toilet? The famous BR Cheese sandwich? The all pervading dirt?

Oh & do we have enough stock to replace most of our our MK1's.

But you can still ride in a steam era carriage behind a steam loco on a line signalled by semaphores................

 

How about using a gents with a grey slate slab backing and no roof?
No idea if the Ladies would be in a similar equivalent.
Or would you prefer something a bit more up to date?

There are limits to applying "Heritage"

 

Appropriate compromises though. A very briefly held idea to bring back a 4-8-2-2-8-4 Garretts from Sierra Leone wisely never progressed beyond the "wouldn't it be nice" stage. Like the F.R. and the Corris, the W&LLR has brought replicas of long scrapped passenger vehicles into service and, at this moment, is well advanced with a replica private owner wagon. Done for heritage reasons of course.

As for the air brake issue you seem to be looking around for stones to lob. In order to haul passenger services, any locomotive brought in would have to be equipped with the automatic air brake. In order to obviate this, it would be necessary to convert all stock to vacuum braking. Firstly this is not sensible in 2016 and secondly is goes against over 100 years of I.O.W. history. Pure heritage in fact.

PH