Swanage Railway General Discussion

A couple of the activities of the "orange army" during week 2 of the engineering shutdown.

 

Looking at Carl Watson's great site: http://www.carlswatson.com/trains.html over the past few weeks it looks like refurbishment works are proceeding apace.
Refurbished bogies [with new axles/wheels] seem to be fitted now on 'Bubble car' 55028 as well as Class 117 vehicles W51388 DMS and W59486 TCL.
W51356 DMBS seems to be the only vehicle awaiting new wheels and axles although it looks like one of it's stored bogies has new wheels/axles.
Three of the four vehicles seem to have restored bodywork with W51388 still in progress.
The pictures don't show interiors so don't know how upholstery, etc. is proceeding.

 

Good to see they are coming along. Hopefully there won’t be any delays to the start of the 2018 Wareham services. I think the Swanage Railway was hoping to have them back by the end of 2017, ready for testing and staff training.

 

Could anyone give a run down of what winter works are happening at Swanage?

 

I am sure there is a plan, not sure if it is published for public consumption though, but there are more details on the latest issue of Swanning Around.

http://www.srstaff.co.uk/swanningaround/swanningjan1818.pdf

 

Thanks for providing the link. It is always interesting to see what the unsung heroes of the movement are doing to enable services to run. I'm sure we owe them all a debt of gratitude for their efforts.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-42801933
September 2018 now.

 

Seems slightly odd not running on the same basis as last year until the stock is ready - I can only assume that it must have been very costly, and standing that cost for another summer is not seen as being worth it to build demand - a constant, expanding service will build demand quicker than a stop-start pattern of service provision.

Are the Swanage also planning to act as operator themselves from September 2018? If so, I wonder how much that is a factor.

Steven

 

Very very costly..

SR intend to be the operator yes.

 

The 2017 service made a big loss so is not sustainable and therefore cannot be repeated in the same format this year

 

A great shame but fully understandable. Even if David Smith offered all the coaching stock FOC you still have the cost of a driver and guard for every service, plus accommodation which of course really ramps up the cost.
I am a little surprised the article implies a start in September as that seems to be mainly the restart of "coach tour time" post the school holidays down here, so not sure what the market may be. As last years service ended on the first weekend in September I guess no one knows until they try.

 

Shame, but understandable they dont want to lose another £70k this year.

I wonder if the planned 90 days will still run in 2018. If it’s not starting until September then it would need to run 5 or 6 days a week up to the end of the year.

 

90 days does seem unlikely however on the good side, the announcement contained the prospect of running some steam specials to Wareham and at least one of the Galas (Diesel) will include Wareham shuttles. These will contribute towards the 90 days and also provide useful data. We always knew that the only way a regular service would be viable is to operate it ourselves with our own stock. Just getting there has been challenging and our needs understandably do not get a high priority in the Main Line Rail industry.

 

If the A351 were, for whatever reason, to go belly-up for longer than a couple of days, just watch how quickly that would change!

 

Sadly I doubt that a large German foundry a German wheelset subcontractor and well known American roller bearing manufacturer give a flying about the A351. Even if they did their ability to change speed is doubtful.

 

I can understand the issues with the wheels, but shouldn't the DMUs otherwise be ready to go by now? They've been at Eastleigh since September 2014.

 

Parkinson's law states; "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"

Also to be fair, I think it was difficult to move the coaches in to the paint shop without the wheels so they waited on their stands until it became obvious that the wheels were a long time off then 'accommodation bogies' were found.

 

A 2 or 3 year delay from 2016, must be grounds for compensation surely. They literally, haven't delivered.

 

Depends what's in the contract. Time is often inversely proportional to coast and cash strapped organisations will invariably go for a good financial deal.

 

Aren’t Pacer withdrawals due to start soon? Maybe that’s another option