Tornado to haul certain timetabled trains on S&C: Feb 14-16

Not going to help. Everyone has to detrain as the train is being shunted from P2 to P3 so you'll have to join the scrum with the rest of us with 'guaranteed' tickets with no seat reservations. The Northern Bulletin says the train consist is 4 Reserved and 3 non-reserved Mk2s.

The Skipton shunts are on these links:
morning train
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U55183/2017/02/14/advanced
evening train
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U55184/2017/02/14/advanced

not long to rejoin the train!!!

 

Either you are young or you have a short memory. In BR days there were a number of scheduled services in the holiday peak that were subject to "seat regulation". To ensure no overcrowding and therefore no standing, ticket sales were restricted to the number of seats on the train. Pretty much ensured "pay on the day" wasn't available and they were the trains to avoid when planning a Rail Rover or had a period return. Tornado's trains are basically no different from these and IMO fall into the category of scheduled "regular" services.

 

It's steam, it's on the mainline and you can use a normal ticket... Call it what you want, it is still unique and unlikely to be repeated any time soon.

 

The difficulty perhaps stems from the fact that standing is usually permitted on UK trains. By contrast TGV services in France have always had a mandatory seat reservation system in place which meant that if you turned up on spec and tried to catch it you could find yourself out of luck and left behind.

Of course if we could trust people not to stick bits of their bodies (or recording equipment) out of the windows, standing wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately as a large quantity of enthusiasts refuse to obey said instructions the only way of preventing such actions is to ensure every traveller has a seat which they can be told to stay sitting in during the journey.

 

Not an issue on commuter trains though is it.

 

No - because even where scheduled train services operated by franchised TOCs still feature opening windows (e.g. HSTs), you don't generally get people sticking body parts or large recording devices out of them.

Given all the effort that goes into railway systems to prevent trains ending up experiencing a sudden deceleration, standing passengers is not a safety risk as such (naturally it is uncomfortable, causes issues with station dwell time, etc)

The same is not the case with charters where its obvious a large proportion travellers would like nothing better than to lean out of windows to better experience whatever motive power is being used. Hence the ban on standing passengers on charter services - if all passengers have seats there is no excuse to hang around next to open windows (unless queuing for the toilet)

 

Too young! I travel by train to and from work everyday and a seat is a luxury but it's interesting to know seat regulation used to happen. Is there a reason why the trains are only 7 carriages long?

 

There are some good stories in Widdowson's books of waiting to see what was on the Bradford-Bridlington train, rushing to get a seat regulation ticket and just making it. And another one at Blackpool to Halifax behind 45694 which was a return working almost empty yet still required a seat regulation ticket.

I think most of the summer Saturday trains out of Paddington and Waterloo to the West Country were regulated. There wasn't any other way to manage the crowds. I can recall locating my Dad at Platform one at Paddington by his hat.

Jumping ahead sixty years or so,next weekend and the one after there are works between Stevenage and Peterboro on the ECML. East Coast have done everything short of seat regulation, so the Scottish trains are pick up/set down only, people are advised journey time extended by 75 mins, nice view of Ely Cathedral. But my reading of the poster was that you could still turn up and go if you were willing to risk doing a Jeremy Corbyn for a few hours.

 

Can't imagine anybody other than a politician wanting to sit on the floor when there are seats available.

 

It occurs to me that anyone travelling on the steam hauled cannot reserve a return seat, perhaps possible by buying two single tickets.... ?
Perhaps not too much of an issue for people boarding at the busy end unless people get earlier service trains to catch the steamer back...
Of course its not mandatory to travel on the 'Plandampf', I am intending to get the service train back, but I am concerned that a two car 158 may be completely swamped by overspill from these services and that the service trains should be reinforced accordingly...

 

Was going to do this but decided otherwise in regard of this no standing debacle, Ridiculous that Northern will happily load a 158 to crush depth, yet will turn away more money from this, Their loss, Brum to Skipton is too far and too chingy to take a chance on winning or losing a bunfight for unreserved seats.

 

We just booked returns from Appleby to Skipton. We'll be taking the Diesel southbound and the 17.15 steam northbound.

Seems illogical to do it this way round, as we live in West Yorkshire, but I'm guessing that the 17.15 will have a lower load factor, and we have reserved seats anyway. The other drawback is that it will be dark by the time we get to Appleby, but there's something special about steam trains at night, so I think we'll enjoy it.

 

Yea, same here David, why give up a peaceful linedside view, their loss as you say.

 

The booking is confusing to say the least. We're going up for the three days and have booked all trains but have no reservations for the 1044 SKI-APP and 1457 APP-SKI trains on the 15th and 16th, despite the system and Email Confirmation showing we've booked 2 seats on each of the trains. The tickets they sent out are Anytime Singles so if they've not got controls on numbers it's going to be chaotic if the weather's nice and lots of people make late decisions to try to travel. I'm taking the Email Confirmation Printouts with. I'm sure that when I booked any of the individual Plandampf Trains the system didn't allow me to add a return journey.

 

But it's not a Northern operation is it?

 

Its not ridiculous - and in fact Charter passengers have bought this on themselves by still wanting to stick body parts / recording equipment outside opening windows for the past decade despite everyone telling them not too.

I don't care that it was allowed back in the 60s or whatever - it isn't today and it would seem the only way of enforcing it is either physical measures like window bars or making everyone have a reserved seat which they stay in for the duration of the journey (toilet visits excepted). Just because Northern are a franchised TOC doesn't make them exempt from normal risk assessments - and as with all charter operators, the insistence on a seat reservation is an inexpensive way of complying with ORR regulations.

As you rightly point out standing is a regular feature of many services across the UK and is regarded as perfectly safe by the industry regulators - precisely because either its impossible for travellers to stick things out of windows or for those services that still have opening windows 99% of ordinary users show no desire to do so while the train is in motion

The Cumbrian coast loco hauled trains are an exception - but that is only because they are regarded as a short term fix to the DMU shortage and if a serious incident were to occur window bars would be fitted ASAP.

 

It sort of is and sort of isn't. The train itself is operating under DB(S) safety case (I think) as Northern do not have an A1 class steam loco or Mk1/Mk2 carriages down as traction units / passenger vehicles they are licensed to operate. On the other hand Northern are the ones putting the whole thing together and are the ones facilitating the use of national rail tickets on the services. The best way to think of it is Northern are acting in the same way as the likes of Steam Dreams - i.e. putting the arrangements in place, selling tickets and so on, however the actual operation of the train on the day is being done by chosen 3rd party.

 

Not forgetting that when class 108s ruled the roost on the Coast, they all had bars on the windows.

 

The Cumbrian coast trains already have window bars due to very tight clearances at the northern end of the line.