Swanage Railway General Discussion

Well 6 coaches runs with two locos now, so today it is an issue of how many you want to put in steam I guess for only two trains a day. I imagine if you needed to run 6 all the time the numbers may stack up differently.

 

It would be a clumsy operation and would still require an extra loco crew, but wouldn't a diesel shunter performing a shunt release manoeuvre be a more cost-effective solution?

 

No, you’re right, I agree, I’m struggling to place the picture exactly.

 

If it is going to be anywhere it will be Ponderosa - with regard to curvature of track. Am 99% sure its not though.

 

I agree the trackbed profile fits Ponderosa but with less vegetation (I assume it has grown up since), I would have thought you may see something of the Valley Road and also is the railway not in a shallow cutting between there and Nursery Bridge. Did the railway build up the sides to form a cutting as shown here?

 

Shunt release is both going to be time consuming and tie up people to do so. The passengers have to get off before anything can happen and you can't have people getting on, either. The shunter has to come on, attach and pull the set forward sufficiently to release the train loco. It then has to set back, detach and scarper before the train loco can run round and attach. Whether you allow passengers to remain on the set whilst doing this will depend on the railway's risk assessment and rules but I would suggest not. Such moves may once have been a common happening but not in the 21st century.
I guess the decision to build the 'box where it is was probably a right decision at the time but has created a bottleneck in doing so. There may have been no alternative, though. I don't know.

 

Shunt release often happens when a railtour visits due to the length of the tour stock. My observations show it is a guaranteed way to ensure your timetable becomes a work of fiction quite quickly.

 

No the cutting is a per built in 18xx

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear in the earlier posting, but you are quite correct that it was creating enough space between the two platforms for a platform for the 6th coach (and the dead-space required to cater for stopping short) that created the issue with extending the loop in a useful way. The only option for realigning is the main platform line as the bay line is constrained by the good shed road, which is itself constrained by the goods shed building and the boundary with the bus park on non-railway land.

When put forward in 2005 the passive provision for 6 coaches, was intended to be a way of incrementally and at little or no cost giving better flexibility for those occasions when six coach trains would already have been considered - mostly for galas or other special occasions, when reversing a loco on to the train in Platform 2 was the normal mode of operation anyway.

 

I've not been to Swanage since 1991, so am a little out of date! How does the current layout compare with the pre-closure layout in terms of capacity? Looking at the NLS site, I think I see that the signalbox has been built on a new location, replacing the old (demolished?) one the other side of the line, but can't tell more from that level of detail.

 

I used the word "clumsy" as a bit of a cover-all to include "time consuming" but timetables can be adjusted if necessary to allow the extra time needed and it might be the only alternative if expensive civil engineering works are to be avoided. The third option of increasing frequencies and staying with the same capacity also brings with it potential timetable issues. It's a real life Gordian knot!

 

Trouble though is if your loading to 6 bogies, and need a shunt release, and don't timetable in the time needed to shunt release, that means your going to be using two engines to work that service as the only way it can work is to operate on a turn, and turnabout system, so your having two engines doing half the work instead of having 1 engine and loosing the 6th coach, how much difference does it make if you can run the service with 5 bogies all nearly full, compared to 6 with a few empty seats, and save on steaming that extra engine, ort having a diesel crew to work some trips.

 

Exactly, Where else would you have placed the signalbox? When the embankment was excavated in 2001 the first thing that occured was an earth slip, the result being that it had to be pile driven before the box could be built, As it happens platform 2 DOES hold 6 coaches but the problem of course is running round the train, Room is at a premium and always has been, hence the need to top and tail.
WIBN to have two loco's in steam to T&T, but of course coal or the current price of the stuff is a major factor.
I suspect that the current need, apparently caused by overcrowding of some services, will cease at the end of the month. TBH cannot see what all of the generated fuss on here is about but there you go.

 

The real trouble is, to put it succinctly, there's no easy answer to the problem.

 

Of course it may not be on the Swanage railway at all. It’s just that when I first saw the photo I immediately thought Harmans Cross

 

I'm fairly confident its not the branch. Its the nicely trimmed bush that's throwing me. Cannot think of anywhere on the branch that has those features together, but it does feel like the branch.

 

I agree they look like the boundary of a domestic location. I think there are some similar bushes on the end of the down platform now. Must go through my images and have a close look

 

In extending the line we used FBC crane to lay pre ensembled panels of track and not laying sleepers on the ground before laying the rails.
So I would be very confident in saying this is not a photo of Swanage

 

Yes most of the line was rebuilt using pre assembled panels. However in the very early years track was laid by putting sleepers on the ground like that. So could it be the outskirts of Swanage somewhere, with the well tended bushes in a garden backing on to the line?

 

Not far off I think. The concrete sleepers came from the Northampton end of the branch to Bedford,if I remember rightly about 2000 were purchased. The track panels arrived a bit later from the Alton branch.