Bluebell Railway General Discussion

Nice to see someone willing to fund the necessary costs for overhaul/operation for the small engines to meet these purposes.

I think, particularly given the financial constraints at the moment, that is no longer as viable as it once may have been. Open mindedness and the ability to appeal to a broader audience, feasibly save on costs etc. will always do a Railway good.

 

...and finding the extra volunteer hours for manning and prep/disposal of them.

I really don't get the anti-diesel etc stuff. In spite of WJ Audrey said they don't spread coughs and sneazels. Of course you want to be pulled by steam, and see it working - nothing wrong with that, but back of house stuff? Do you want the pw gang to eschew modern plant and lift the rails by hand? How about in the running shed? All tools powered by a shaft overhead.

Diesel galas are a choice for the railway, but if they bring more revenue in, I really don't get the loss.

 

A few years ago when I was looking at annual mileages, I was interested in why ours had fallen from a peak ca. 2004/5 of nearly 45,000 per year to nearer 35,000 per year. There were a number of reasons, but one was that certain infrastructure tasks that historically would have required a steam shunt are now done using road / rail vehicle (and therefore no longer appear in the mileage charts).

Tom

 

And what do you do in the event of a failure? no one now steams a loco just for the fun of it, if a loco fails, it will take hours to steam a replacement, At least having a diesel stand by, that is ready to go means you can still run that service and swop back over later, once the replacement steam loco is ready, having a diesel at the head of your train is better than having your train cancelled.

 

And how stringent is this "ban"? Are we banning diesels from bringing in mainline tours? Is bringing in a tamper allowed?

 

The 08 has, I recall, come to the rescue on a few occasions to run the service - think of how much potentially lost revenue that might have been if they had had to turn people away if it hadn't. Whilst I agree it would be nice to be entirely steam, diesel does have his uses.... sometimes!

 

Indeed. Actually it’s an 09 which gives it a higher top speed of 25mph rather than the 15mph of an 08. So that does make it a bit useful for the purpose of running passenger services. I wonder if we’ll one day see a bigger diesel (class 33 perhaps) permanently based at the Bluebell.

 

Are we banning tractors, diggers, generators anything powered by diesel?

Back to the traction engines and hand labour?

There is within the organic farming movement a move/group seeking to de-mechanise and use just horse power - good news for @Ploughman

 

Going back to the idea of further Bluebell, extensions, I think that the railway's policy on extensions as set out in the most recent Long Term Plan is very sensible - ruling nothing in but ruling nothing out. Buying the trackbed as far as Ardingly when it came up on the market made sense, but sitting on it and finding alternative uses for it (Did I read about some plans for a distinctly non-railway use for Lywood Tunnel? ) seems the be the best option for the time being.

The main priority for the railway at the moment has to be to get the entire SP-EG route up and running again and to build up passenger numbers. Given that even extending to a point east of Ardingly Station (and operated with steam traction) would require substantial expenditure, not least due to the need to replace Sherriff Mill Viaduct, it's hard to see any serious consideration being given to this for at least five years, given the knock which Coronavirus has given to the railway's finances. On the other hand, will Hanson always want a terminal at Ardingly? Will a Wareham-type operation to Haywards Heath be possible? Will the line ever go south towards Newick and beyond? Looking at things from the perspective of 2021, the costs of any extension are huge, the obstacles immense and the benefits questionable. Tom may be right (he usually is!) and these negatives could be just as great in, say fifty years' time, but given we can't predict what life will be like that far ahead, "never say never" does seem the best approach.

 

One issue with the 09 is that although in principle it is a 25mph capable loco, it can't do 25mph on our gradients with our trains. You can't run a service to normal service timings with it. So you can rescue a train with it, but it will lose time on the journey. If you had to use it all day, you can at least get some of it back by quicker run rounds by not taking water etc.

A class 33 - the problem is you can't heat the stock, so no good in winter. I would also re-iterate the point about opportunity cost: how would having another locomotive to store and maintain help progress the overhauls of the existing ones?

Tom

 

Anyway, moving on ...

The March issue of The Bluebell Times (issue 18) is now available for downloading from https://www.bluebell-railway.com/bluebell-times/
Preparations for reopening after lockdown are in the March issue of The Bluebell Times newsletter.
Issue 18 also contains detailed reports and photos of the work which has been carried out at Bluebell Railway over the winter months.
In Issue 18:

• Updated schedule of events for 2021
• Government promotion of our virtual tours
• Memories of trainspotting in the 1960s
• And much, much more.
  

The Bluebell Times is published monthly on the second Friday of each month. The April issue is due out on Friday 9 April. Contributions to editor Tom James bluebelltimes@bluebell-railway.com

Tom

 

Indeed so ....


[Image courtesy bluebell-railway.co.uk]

The Bluebell has to be one of a vanishingly small number of places where the range of steam locos awaiting tlc is on a par with tarp'd carriages!

I've shifted my reply to @Monkey Magic's post [#4256] to the battery thread on the Diesel & Electric section.

Edit: Just been through the latest BT ..... superb, as always. Cheers Tom

 

Are Messers Radcliffe and Riley playing Sheffield Park then?

 

Tom all you’d need is a loco with a working steam heat boiler, it’s not that difficult to do. Although for authenticity on the Southern a Class 24 tucked inside a 33 would be more appropriate. Damn the Southern for being so far sighted for ordering a ETH fitted diesel from the start!

 

So how many of them are around these days, even on railways that have a diesel fleet? I may be wrong but I think you could count the number of working steam heat boilers on one hand. A good theory, but practice suggests otherwise.

Peter

 

That takes me back to the Easter Holidays, 1966. Brighton saw steam twice a day back then on the Brighton -Plymouth, out in the morning and back in the late afternoon. The locos ran light to and from Fratton for stabling. I made several trips to Brighton to see these trains. I saved up some pocket money to go back to boarding school via Salisbury instead of on the school special train from Paddington.
I even met my sister off the train hauled by 34098 "Templecombe" at Brighton on Saturday 30th April after she had stayed with grandparents at Sherborne. I can still feel the pit in the bottom of my stomach on Tuesday 3rd May as I walked down Platform 2 at Brighton to find a Crompton (as we called class 33s back then) at the head of the train. What I did not know was that the Southern only heated trains from October to the end of April and that this was the reason that the "Plymouth" was steam hauled all that winter. And to think that my sister was on the last scheduled steam working into Brighton and couldn't care less about it. The trauma could have scarred a chap for life.

Peter

 

Peter I’m aware there’s not that many, it does tend to be those railways that are a bit more proactive using their diesels when it’s a bit cooler that have tended to have steam heat fitted loco’s. As ever it all comes down to cost. I do know that one of the reasons of having 40106 at the Severn Valley in recent years has been it having a boiler and being able to act as a Thunderbird during Santa Season.

 

Surely Bluebell has more than enough locomotives - they don't need a 33?!

The 09 for rescue and back of house stuff seems ok, but there isn't a 'need' for more

 

If only you could 'like' a post multiple times ...

There was a long thread on Facebook a week or so ago in which people were earnestly saying we "needed" to rescue the Dartmoor Thumper. None of those who proposed such a course could provide an answer to where it would be stored, who would restore it, what wouldn't be restored instead to make space, nor even quite what we would do with it once restored beyond some vague concept of "off peak".

There are a very small number of carriages and wagons which the railway would like to acquire if they ever became available primarily for certain heritage objectives. But in the main, we don't "need" any more stuff, and certainly no more motive power.

Tom

 

Weren’t they also the most unreliable part of a diesel loco in the old days?