Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

I'll quickly comment on this as a certain volcano has my attention at the moment hehe

Ffestiniog do not actually seek to have trains cross on most days, but do have certain days where the timetable is adjusted so that they can be seen crossing at a station. Of course you can add a premium on those days for the "photo opportunity".

For a basic timetable I would guess the crossing point would be somewhere around.... Hmm, Bratton Fleming, not sure without checking distances so that's a guess.

 

A few thoughts:

1. Traffic will be very lumpy. Nothing before Easter, ok for two weeks, then quiet again until Whitsun. Steady increase in numbers to the peak summer weeks (mid-July to end August) then increasingly quiet to October when it will then drop off a cliff. Within the week it is likely that there will be considerable variance day to day. That’s reducing with more staggered changeover days in B and Bs etc, but Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday might be a lot busier than other days (other patterns might exist).

2. 0930 starts don’t work in general as visitors either need to travel to the railway or are still at their B and B. There are a couple of places where this trend is bucked, but not many.

3. 0930 start 1730 end of service plus ECS and prep and disposal means that loco crews will be nudging 11 hours on duty, and that’s not a great plan, not much room for things to go wrong. Splitting the duty means more crews needed. That might not sit well with the busier times. Crews more available Saturday and Sunday that weekdays for example.

4. People will usually want/demand to return on the train they arrived on. This and crew needs and the lack of on train toilets and the desire to get secondary spend means you don’t want a quick turnaround at the destination. Minimum 35 minutes and for preference (provided there is “something to do” 50 minutes.

 

As others have hinted here we have to work in today markets it will be impossible to run the L&BR as it was with the 1935 timetable, unless you have found someone to cover the shortfall. No the reality is that we need to treat this as a commercial venture and like it or not that will mean having the capacity to have seating available to anyone that turns up and having both the locomotives and the rolling stock to satisfy that demand.

Like I said above I don't dislike the Manning Wardle's design, but there is just so much wrong design wise with them that before any new 2-6-2's are built we really need to find out what worked and what didn't and put that into the mix.

I am concerned that the two that are being built now may turn out to be white elephants, I do hope I am wrong, but most of the engineers I have spoken to about them tell me that the proportions are all wrong.

 

Listen to this man. He knows of what he speaks!

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I'm going to be picky and say that the question is not about the Manning Wardles, but the requirements that they - or anything else - will need to meet.

 

Machines, track, signalling etc all must be built to a specification which addresses commercial requirements. That's true in every industry.

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I'm having a beer!

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A point which is both true and which is at a tangent to the motivations of many of those involved in preservation schemes.

 

The art is to find common cause!

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Our “B” service train today had seven carriages ranging in build date between 1889 and 1922 … But maybe they haven’t heard of it down in Devon!

I suspect our trans-Solent correspondent may have a view on the matter as well …

Tom

 

Ffestiniog have a first start of 08.40 in high season so there must be some call for it. And that early start in my back of a fag packet timetable is only on the first outrun to get to one end or the other. The first full run is 09.30. Their last train is running well into the evening and not back into Porthmadog until gone 8pm.

So I would magine they must have relief crews. An hourly service service of 3 rakes would pose an even worse situation for crews for us.

Perhaps booking is a way to go, seems to work for them and warrants earlier trains than 10am.

It's an interesting discussion.

 

@Tobbes asked "...A related question which will drive infrastructure is where will the two trains cross? (I appreciate for galas we will need to design signalling and infrastructure to accomodate three or potentially four trains running, but lets assume the base case is two train sets out per day.).....What does this mean for Bratton Fleming or the new station at Wistlandpound?"

I would admit that, with the passage of time, at least some of the planning work done originally for Phase 2A may well be out-of-date, if not even completely irrelevant now. However..

Firstly, WD was viewed very much in the same vein as KL, namely a terminus that was located where it was planned to be simply because that was as far as the line could get south of BR for the foreseeable future. Once the line was extended to BF then WD would either disappear (as no longer required) or remain just as a simply halt no different from the original PE on the basis that, as it was already there, it might as well stay. There was never any plans made or foreseen for it to be a block-post in any form.

Secondly, it soon became apparent once work started on looking at train schedules (not my area of expertise) that for at least 75% of the year there was simply no justification for any sort of block-post or passing-loop at PE (as originally suggested in the planning application), as the anticipated traffic could be managed quite easily by a single set doing a BR-WD shuttle. There was no doubt that it could be useful for 'high days' and Galas, but did the necessary extra costs in installation and ongoing maintenance (something which far too many people overlook) nullify any potential benefits in the business case?

A further factor was the need to staff the proposed signal-box at PE when it was 'switched in' as a block-post. Not only was PE likely in fact to be switched out for most of the year (little or no demand for trains to pass there), but so too would be WB for the simple reasons that (a) the service level did not require it to be open as a block post (BR to WB could operate in much the same way as WB to KL does at present) and (b) there was uncertainty if the CIC could even manage to roster a signalman at WB in addition to one at BR anyway!

A lot of (my) time therefore was taken up looking at the various ways in which WB and PE could be made to switch out in various combinations - by no means as easy as it sounds. In the meantime there remained an ongoing discussion as to whether or not the idea of a loop at PE should be abandoned, so a lot of such planning work was being done which might ultimately be nugatory effort. From what I could tell, no-one at Board level was prepared to make a decision one way or the other, so we had to keep planning on the basis that it might happen so we needed to have plans ready 'just in case'.

Given the problems encountered just for a line from WB to BR, you can imagine therefore the potential complications for a much longer line, especially in the (current) absence of any firm over-arching strategy.

 

One reason is that modern people tend to want more space than their Edwardian forebears (though less luggage space ...)

As an example - I gave an example that on the Bluebell we had 7 carriages in a train running today ranging from 1889 to 1922. The most modern of those is an SECR 10 compartment third, generally referred to as a "hundred seater". That is indeed its official capacity. But that means ten people per compartment; 100 people in a carriage 60 feet long. Get to that level of usage and it gets quite uncomfortable; generally people will look for a less well-filled carriage in preference. Indeed, with compartment stock, it is common for people to walk down a train ignoring any compartment that already has a group in unless they have no other option. So I suspect in modern usage, once you get to about 60% capacity, people will form the impression that things are actually quite crowded. The compartments were designed for 10 single city gents commuting to Charing Cross; but in modern usage, if you get to 6 people in a compartment, you are probably already talking about two separate groups.

There's also the point about splitting groups: again, take my example, and assume five families turn up with four people in each. That's 20 people - so on your desired 100% occupancy they should fit in two compartments, right? But you can only achieve that by splitting one family up. Realistically those five families would probably be looking for five compartments if they could.

So in practical terms, there is a difference between nominal and realistic capacity - I suspect if you get to 60% occupancy, you are probably up near that practical level.

And that is before you get to the issues others have raised about how your traffic ebbs and flows through the day and year. Often your daily capacity is based around what you need for your most busy train, but that may be just one or two out of four or five in a day - but you aren't going to knock carriages off for later in the day if your busiest train is the first one. Shunting costs money just as carting around air does.

Realistically, for a lot of the year your traffic will be weekends; mid week will be sustained by coach traffic (who, on a long line, may wish to only travel one way).

Tom

 

Yes the other railways I have been to and worked at have had the same issues. 10.30 is about the earliest you can expect to start from.

The loco fleet also needs a bit of variety we will need medium size locos for the start and end of the season but much more powerful locos for the high summer period.

Loco crews we need to get this down to an eight or nine hour shift max and no more if you want more trains then we will need to have a a shed shift whose sole job is to light and pre the locos to go out that day and to then put them away at night.

I think the FR used to have a system where you would enter the Harbour station via the ticket office then board the train and afterwards to get out you had to go via the pub and or the station shop.

Clean toilets and a hot drink are a must at the destination of the ride. The big thing always used to be think like a Woman as they have a much higher standard of hygiene than men, clean toilets will result in repeat custom and good word of mouth recommendations to family and friends.

 

It is, and there will be no "right" answer - just a number of compromises, of varying quality.

Going back to my earliest trips along the A39, one of the things that most concerned me about extending the railway was staffing. It still does.

A comparison with the Ffestiniog is useful, but we also need to remember that the Ffestiniog has the major advantage of having been running, and cultivating volunteers, for the last 70 years. That gives it a base of a very different kind to the L&B.

Others with experience of other railways will tell different stories about the ability to recruit crews, and ensure services are covered. The common theme is "it's difficult". Last time I was at Woody Bay, I ended up offering a lift to one of the crew, as the bus to Barnstaple had missed the stop. That's a 15 mile run on public transport, because of the difficulties of finding suitable (and affordable) accommodation. And that was at 4pm on a sunny May day. How will that work early doors, or after disposal on a cold October night? Porthamdog's no metropolis, but it's a much bigger settlement than Blackmoor Gate!

I then keep coming back to bog standard maths. Before you can assume "run it and they'll come", there needs to be a view of what that demand actually is - and how it relates to the available capacity. Read the WSR threads, and you'll see a number of discussions about how tidal the demand is there, and what that means to demand, therefore average utilisation, and therefore what can be sold.

 

Definitely the case with us and other railways I'm friendly with folk on, surprisingly perhaps footplate crew in particular. I speculate that the supply of newly retired people of a certain age 'looking for something to do' that don't necessarily have a particularly strong railway interest and want a relatively straightforward role like guard or stationmaster isn't drying up too much. But that's not usually the same demographic as found on the footplate, and it does seem to be showing, things are running pretty tight.

 

...and somewhere to sit and drink/out away from the extremes of the weather.

As regards the female view of toilets, there is one railway of which I am a Life member where - in earlier days - my wife simply refused to use their toilets at all as they were 'not up to scratch'. She also went through all 4 coaches of a train and then got off as none of the seats or tables were 'clean' enough ! And actually...she was right

 

The earliest Porthmadog departure on the FR in any timetable this year is 1040. The last arrival back to Porthmadog of a public train is 1735.

 

I hear the same most places although the scale of the issue varies quite a bit. My observation over many years is that 1 driver requires something like 10 cleaners, because of the those that don’t make it to fireman or move away or lose interest or don’t want or cannot make the step to driver. You need a lot of willing people starting off as cleaners if you want to sustain a pool of drivers.

 

Yes, just double checked, their download PDF was for 2020 and was what I was going by.

Mind you, the new timetable/calendar says that what's advertised is the basic service and "additional trains may run according to demand".

So looks like they have gone mostly pre-book and a huge amount of flexibility.