THE CATHEDRALS EXPRESS 11/6 Paddington-Shrewsbury

I feel sorry for people like 'Another' who appears to be one of the general public, books one thing and gets something else, for whatever the reason. At least the majority of people who use this site have the knowledge to know about all the potential wrinkles. The moment we knew that Tornado wasn't available, surely all bets were off for this trip? There were early clues such as the SD St David's day trip truncated at Cardiff (for which we got a little reimbursement).

The idea of calling everywhere to pick up people near to their home is fine provided that you haven't got a long journey to your destination. On this trip, the planned two and a quarter hours to get to Swindon (only 77 miles from Paddington). immediately made the day an extended one.

 

I now understand that the reason Tornado was really the only option is that the train would have left London at 0804hrs, had 90 minutes in Shrewsbury and then back into London at 2330. Only the A1 or one of the Britannia’s with roller bearings, self cleaning smoke box, etc could have been serviced quickly enough and turned. Other loco owners I am sure would be able to do it, but the risk was too high. A Britannia would have been fine for the servicing but with its lower water capacity could not have done the trip with just one water stop. its also not helped that there are three charters in the Severn Tunnel area that day, two very close together.
Whilst 4492 might be able to run the distance it would have been slower as the second tender weighs 73 tonnes (2.5 coaches) full and 30+ tonnes empty so equivalent of a coach even when empty. So now there is a harder servicing job and even bigger performance risk. 4492 is a fine loco but a bit of a square peg round hole scenario for this itinerary in the end.

Just as a comparison, the A1 on 1/3/10 (a weekday) took the same time as that allowed for the Class 47 from Acton to Bristol Parkway, albeit the Class 47 has the additional stop in at Swindon and pathing at Reading vice the water stop at Challow that the A1 had.
All East Coast Pacific’s are not equal, 4492 can go non stop to Newcastle which obviously the A1 cannot. The timings for 4492 to Bristol Parkway were 25 minutes longer and meant it would miss the path on the Marches.

The best option that can be put together, given Tornado cannot be used, and to give everyone the trip to the Marches that they wanted, a good destination and lovely scenery, is an ambitious itinerary, something Forum members push for, but it rather undermines any endeavour to do such things if this is the response when circumstances defeat that option. A lot of this seems to be from people not booked on the train.
Anyone who doubts the commitment of SD should look at the efforts that were made, along with Ian Riley, to get 44871 to Fort William in May when 45231 had failed. Going further back, they ran the King and Castle wrong line in the middle of the night to ensure GW steam was at Penzance during GW175.

Also, the King has been confirmed with Richard Corser, General Manager for Royal Scot and General Steam Trust, who own the locomotive. As it's late notice, not everyone is aware of all the changes including Jane!

Anyone who has booked is entitled to criticise and SD will be happy to discuss it with individuals on a one to one basis be it on the train or ahead of time. If they feel they haven't got a fair hearing from the team in Surrey then email Graeme or Marcus. Email addresses on the web site.

Lastly it has also been noted that some people are repeating something from Railway Herald not a quote from SD the way it is written in Railway Herald doesn't represent the full story, probably space precludes it.

 

The times I have quoted are the latest from Steam Dreams, those from the brochure are the original outline times that SD would have put forward to Network Rail, but NR invariably amend the timings at anything up to just a few days before the tour actually runs. This is a regular occurrance with charter trains.

 

Please give a thought for the team at Steam Dreams and WCRC who i'm sure have spent the last week trying to iron out all the problems . It is their livelyhoods and business too and they share many of the same frustrations that the passengers do . People booking on the tour will have done so for various reasons . Many will be for a day to Shrewsbury with the bonus of steam thrown in . Do you let down what may well be a majority and risk alienating a larger portion of the customer base or try to deliver a great day out . They also have 3-400 passengers to try to get in touch with to inform of the changes , not an easy task with a relatively small staff base .

Equally many will not appreciate the trials and tribulations that arise in trying to organise a long distance railtour on today's fragmented system . That 43 years after the end of main line steam we can still enjoy this despite all the odds being against it should be a cause for celebration

 

the engine needs to disembark passengers , turn , stable stock , take on coal and water , clean fire and empty smokebox , oil round and then be back in time to embark the passengers for a prompt departure

 

You are right Neil, but don't forget servicing does not start the second the train arrives, once the passengers have disembarked there is invariably a wait until a road is given for the train to leave the station to where ever the servicing will take place. Loco moved off stock, again waiting to run to triangle to turn etc etc ... before the crew can actually start work. This is also taking place, in this instance, at a station where the NR staff are not used to these kind of movements.
Yes a competant crew can do the job in less time, once they have the loco positioned.

 

And I have seen some very tardy signalling allowing loco movements as well.

 

I've done a little analysis on this thread which I'll outline below

One of this issues this forum has is credibility and however Admin and the moderation team try to engage with senior people in the movement and get them involved on here , the challenge that comes back is often that the content of the threads are often provocative , anti the company and so on

This thread illustrates that perfectly.

We have 90 posts from 23 unique posters .
only 5 of these are actually passengers (who have the vested interest in the tour)
of the remainder 3 are moderators
that leaves 15 all with no connection to the tour but all having an opinion (good and bad)

the highest poster with 13 very anti posts isn't even a passenger on the train

The passengers account for 41 posts out of the 90
Moderators have posted 10 posts

So a third of the non passenger posts are one individual . There is a separate debate on whether the moderators should remove this individuals posts but we do strive to allow free speech although in this instance it's questionable as to whether we've allowed too much !

I know it's chicken and egg but if we are so unfriendly on here towards those that really matter then we are not going to get them engaged and actually posting on here the real reasons , rationale and explanations that people crave