Swanage Railway General Discussion

Looking at the webcam, 31806 is hauling service trains today. Loco facing out of Swanage with 5 green Mk.1s.

I feel a visit is due to the Swanage Railway. Tomorrow looks very good weather wise. Does anyone know if 31806 is rostered please? TIA.

Happy New Year to you all. <BJ>

 

Was good to see the WCR managed LU 4TC train working in 2017 which was successful but expensive to run. From
https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/travel/public-transport/purbeck-community-rail-partnership.aspx
The DCC has brought rolling stock and there was a sum of £1.4m to refurbish them and provide maintenance facilities.
Guess these are the the 2 railcar sets at Eastleigh and not the 4TC set at Butterley (which is also taking time to renovate).
As this is public money would be good to have an update as if a daily service to Wareham will start in 2019?
Was good to see the Flying Scotsman on BBC4 earlier this week and how the crew took care not to waste coal (and reduce smoke) will be good if it makes it to Swanage in 2019 from comments in the other thread?

 

I would imagine that the current situation is that a 2019 service is still planned and hoped for by the Swanage railway. However they are still working towards this, and so it’s too early to give a definite yes or no at the moment.

I remember it was very touch and go with the 2017 services, and it was quite late in the day before everything fell into place and the SR were able to confirm it was happening.

 

Thanks a google search shows a picture of the refurbuished DMU in April looking good.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128828453@N05/26783721017/in/photostream
I expect the testing needs to be rigorous before it is allowed on network rail?
Was the news on Dec 6th saying an engine needs work on it, or a rumour, hopefully can be fixed under the refurb funds?

 

I live in Swanage and I look down on the railway whilst eating my breakfast. I can tell you that all the locos are having problems with black smoke. This has been going for a while now and I thought was due to the poor coal rather than bad firing. I understand that coal has to be resourced from abroad now and is inferior to home produced coal and contains large amounts of dust.

 

Adding to the "smokey Loco" debate here. OK most locomotives produce dark grey/black smoke when first light steam raising fire from cold.This can't IMO be helped goes with the territory, though to a degree controlled by the way to add coal as you raise steam. It also as Swanage 452 has allured can be down to the sort of coal being supplied/used.......

 

Large amounts of dust is usually indicative of Welsh coal but it could simply degradation during transport and transhipment from afar. Does anyone know where the present batches of coal at Swanage are coming from? I'm unaware of any bad coal being imported by the usual suppliers.

 

Think it was Russian, last time i chatted with crew, but that was a year ago.

 

Could you 'light up' with smokeless?

 

I’m always slightly wary of terms like “Russian” - Russia is a vast place and surely the coal from different areas could be very variable. Even in a country as small as Britain, we know that the coal varies massively within a fairly small area, and Russia is much larger. So “Russian” is no more a synonym for smoky than “Welsh” is a synonym for low smoke.

FWIW, the last coal I used at the Bluebell was said to be Russian (on good authority) and it was nice stuff: fairly low smoke, didn’t form clinker, almost dust free. But what we have on my next firing turn, even if still “Russian” may be similar or completely different. Bear in mind as well that the larger railways are probably getting through a lorry load on average every one to two weeks during the season, so what a railway had a year ago is long gone and essentially irrelevant.

Tom

 

Mind you, we had a consignment of Scottish coal this summer when there were problems at Ffos-y-Fran or wherever it is in Wales, it was used up ages ago but crews still keep finding pockets of it in tenders, and it's pretty obvious when they do!

 

Depends on the smokeless fuel being used. Most require a bit more draught than you'd get with a cold engine as there is little flame.

 

Anyone know anymore?

 

Given the information on this thread there are only two possibilities.

1. Its not true
2. Swanage don't want anything in the public domain for any number of reasons such as contract terms or uncertainty

In either case speculating here can only be counter productive so the best way to find out for sure is to look for formal announcements from the normal places.

 

Come on Nick, this is N.P.
Idle gossip, speculation and rumours are the foundation of this site.

 

of course, some of the recent lineside incidents may have made any management wary of too much early publicity ...

 

Could simply be that it is working a Railtour, at which point there isn't really much for the Swanage to advertise?

 

I notice in the timetable a diesel service between Swanage and Norton will restart April.
If they get the refurbished railcars approved for mainline by then, it could be extended to Wareham?

 

Could well be a case of crew training/refreshing, which would make sense IMO. Not that I'm having a dig at you observation, by the way. In anticipation of introducing the service to Wareham.

 

Driving through Eastleigh this morning, I’m sure I saw the bubble car outside the works with it’s headlight on. Mainline tests or my eyes deceiving me? I only got a quick glance