70013 & 30777 ECML lineside fires 02/09/11.

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Although the second low water incident mentioned above from mid-August is unsubstantiated if it is true it is worrying as the loco referred to (which as it is hearsay evidence I won't name) was not 70000. However I was there further up the platform on the day the remark was supposed to have been made/overheard and given the other operational difficulties that were happening that day, I think it can be given a 75%plus rating as likely to be factual.

 

Dear God - they are all coming round to what I have been saying for years - Careful Guys or you will have promoters or TOC reps agitating for your posting privileges to be withdrawn, or tour promoters refusing your custom.

This situation has been a long time coming, but no-one in responsible positions is listening and the clock is ticking further on towards midnight.

SLOA C21 must be created - NOW - and it must include a voice for the client. This industry is out of control and heading for disaster.

I'm afraid that siren voices who can't separate gricing from realistic and prudent management are leading us to perdition -12 coaches over Shap with a black 5! Crazy - pure crazy! If she had sat down on a greasy rail what would have happened? 6' 9" drivers up the West Highland - why didn't the real railway do it? - Because they weren't daft!

We need an industry that is properly served by an infrastructure owner that provides a railway fit for purpose, as to planning, gauging, timings, vegetation etc.

We need loco owners who refuse to allow their locos to be put at risk with overloadings, silly distances between water stops, etc, and TOCs who refuse to plan in such nonsenses and thereby create risk - or to operate into impossibility - The West Highlander last year, The Lindum Fayre etc etc are clear examples of ppppppp.

We need promoters who don't think that days out aren't viable unless "home to home" is of more than twenty four hours duration, and who don't promise what they never could deliver. The problems this week don't quite fall into that category, but they are emblematic and one must wonder about the performance of modern lubricants as the 6115 and 34067 problems would appear to point in that direction.

Come on someone - break the mould and admit that a properly organised industry that communicates amongst its partners and its clients is actually needed.

 

Yes indeed, a lot of good sense there. I thought I was a voice in the wilderness, well me and my younger yeti brother that is. We both hail from the real days of steam and can see the way things have been going for a while-to a sticky end. Lets get some co-ordination and planning before its too late.

 

I second the "lot of good sense" comment. From personal experience I've had two shortish trips this year with Steam Dreams (Tangmere and bang on time) and the Spitfire trip on Sunday - again bang on the money. Perhaps I've just been lucky? I was very tempted by the ACE but couldn't justify the cost and boy I'm glad now I didn't go - how many others will be keeping a tighter hold on their plastic cards from now on? (Hope I haven't jinxed the 6201 trip to Carlisle in October....)

I would like to hear from one of the big steam operators like Steam Dreams or RTC as to their view of whether this is a viable market looking ahead - after a summer like this everyone must be thinking hard about a better way.

Lastly - I am not clear whose problem this is - and I may well be underwriting the call for a SLOA mark 2 - but given the fragmented nature of the railway today someone/group is going to have to pull this together and gain agreement to a way of working which will not suit every company involved nor their commercial aspirations. This is not going to be easy.

I simply love mainline steam - medium to big engines on proper trains doing what they were designed for - I don't enjoy overloaded engines/crews on impossible itineraries dumping me 50 miles from home at 1 a..m. Give me a good product with a reliable record and I'll pay.

Best wishes to all on the forum,

Mike

 

Bryan,
The concentration of resources already exists for a number of operations. The Jacobite pool, The SSE and Waverley pool, Fellsman, Moorlander and Scarborough Flyer pool, Shakespeare pool, Weymouth Seaside Express pool, Torbay Express pool and Dorset Coast Express pools are all good examples of regular tours over a regular route with a small pool of locos for each. The vast majority of these runs and others go without a hitch but when there is a problem it's usually a hight profile one with all the ramifications that come with it.

 

.....

 

A Black 5 on everything in the North West sounds just like the good old days when they were greeted by cries of "scrap it." Whilst I'm a keen photographer myself, I'm not aware that these tours are put on for our benefit so be thankful its steam even if it is only a Black 5.

 

Ian, too many locations/routes there! LOL!

Taking a total guess, centers in London, York and Carnforth(ish), could be the absolute limit of the very significant concentration of resources etc that I envisage needed to get back to enough people working on main line steam on a virtually daily basis as their only employment. With maybe the idea of a couple of outbases in/near Wales and Scotland.

Of course a lot of Business planning would have to be done to see if there was even a remote chance of commercial viability of such a small number of main line steam centres. And if it would in reality give a significant and reliable improvement of my view on what main line steam will become in the fairly near future: box hauled trains with a steam loco marshalled as the second loco.

 

I personally agree with much of what is being said. However, I can't see the product changing as long as the public keep booking seats. I'm amazed that people will book for the early starts / late returns of many tours, but they do. There have been a fair number of incidents involving late running, diesel assistance, last minute loco/route changes, etc., yet the trains keep filling. More and more tours seem to be scheduled to run on the same day in peak season, yet they generally fill. All this in the middle of a significant financial crisis. It leads me to believe that the typical steam day out customer is not particularly discerning. My theory is that provided folk get a decent meal or two, you could almost stick them in a siding with a loco with sufficient pressure to blow the whistle now and again, and they'd still say they had a good day out.

It might be short-sighted of the operators to appear so complacent, and it seems hard to believe that people keep coming back, but they do. Until that changes, I can't see anything changing.

 

I would add Bristol as a fourth centre. It already seems to be the starting point for tours to Devon/Cornwall, South Wales and Weymouth on a regular basis.

 

Agreed - I am amazed that during a recession the trains keep filling as they do with people paying £150 or more for a ticket if they are in dining class. I have a good standard of living but cannot justify the cost of more than 5 or 6 tours a year in the current climate, and that's in standard class!

I think you are probably right in saying that many customers are not very discerning. Those of us who are "enthusiasts" are more demanding and expect the product to deliver what was advertised. I doubt that many of the dining customers on a trip like this week's ACE really cared that they were not getting as much steam haulage as advertised or that the locos had changed.

But returning to the original topic - the potential fallout of the 30777 mishap last week, the point is not whether the customers will continue to turn up but whether the powers that be in the rail industry will continue to allow things to carry on as they are at present......

 

Don't think that's too many routes and locations at all Bryan. The Jacobite and Shakespeare Express operations are obviously stand alone ones but the York pool can cover the SSE and Waverley operations, the Crewe pool can cover the Fellsman and Moorlander (pretty much the same route just different organiser) and Scarborough Flyer operations and the Bristol pool could (if the two rival TOCs agreed) cover the Torbay and Weymouth operations. I also think you are being a tad pessimistic regarding box haulage. NR will always get twitchy in long periods of dry weather but the steam operations I've listed above have all proved to be fairly reliable this year - OK there's been the odd failure but that happens sometimes - and if they continue to be so then barring drought like conditions I don't see NR pushing for boxes on the front. I do realise however that even if steam was 100% reliable there are those within the industry who want rid of it pure and simple and the concentration of resources you propose won't change their mind one bit.

 

What will eventually end steam on the major main lines is track capacity aka pathing issues, as traffic (incl freight) grows and grows and grows - and it will; just wait till road toll charging becomes more widespread than the M6T and the price of diesel goes sky high for good measure, then watch the mass switch to intermodal trains.

Ironically for a few posters on these forums, relief will not be in sight until HS2 opens. Though I think the crisis for steam will come much earlier than 2026, and even then the WCML north of Lichfield would still be chock-a-block until the Manchester HS2 section was finished. On the ECML, nothing changes until HS trains run into Leeds.

And once banned or more likely priced off the line, would tours be allowed back onto the old WCML even when capacity is freed up?

Then of course there's the issue of nursing ageing locos on towards or beyond their 80th year to keep them reliable enough for main line running. Have we been seeing the first symptoms of this issue over the last couple of summers?

All in all, "enjoy whatever you can, while you can" would be my advice.

 

If freight does increase significantly, then the railways are going to have to find more "slow" paths. There's no evidence that the majority of freight operations are going to start running any faster than 75mph, so steam is a comparable proposition to path. There will always have to be capacity built into the system, as things frequently go wrong and you can't have a system that has no contingency. You only need to look at the vast numbers of unused freight paths already in the system. So, I would suggest if more freight does run, there will have to be capacity improvements on the network, so it may well be a similar proposition finding steam paths in the future, as now.

Having said that, steam excursions have always been a luxury, so I agree with your sentiment to "enjoy whatever you can, while you can", I'm just not convinced the future for mainline steam is as gloomy as you make out.

 

Paul - Hear Hear! Mug punters deserve what they get. And boy, have they got it recently.

Steam does not have a privileged position on the main line - it has a legal right to be there under the provisions of the Railways Acts - provided it is professionally managed and operated. Whether it ever had a place on the WCML or ECML post HST speeds etc, is another matter entirely.

We don't know what happened last Friday yet, but neither WCRC or The 5305 Group have a track record of getting it wrong - so we should not jump to conclusions.

What we are entitled to do is to take a long hard look at the realities of managing, operating, and merchandising steam on the main line and that is an absolute shambles on more occasions than I care to recall - but every time I mention it I get howled down by the puffer nutters.

Until NR does its bit, and provides a proper service to the industry, the final customer might as well throw his money down a grid for all the certainty as to advance planning, routes, timings, gauging issues, etc that he receives. No other industry can operate in this manner without falling foul of trading standards. Why should this one?

The Tour Operators are complicit here as they can't request timings - only TOCs can do that; but why don't both turn up at Marsham St with a dossier of how poorly the industry is treated by NR, and demand top level influence to change this. Its not rocket science - its communication.

Finally there is us - the market - Would you accept an 850mb pc when you had ordered a 200Gb? Well that's what we do every time we accept that a promoter delivers a change of route, or loco, other than due to force majeure at the eleventh hour, or on the day - and we let them get away with it. Poor Planning is called negligence in other worlds - it is in this one too.

I haven't pushed any promoter for compensation - in the hope that valid critique will lead them to change - but I know people who have, and have won - but the promoters don't want you to know that in case there is a flood of claims - as there should be if we exercised our consumer rights as the law provides.

Have they changed their approach? Well the evidence is still out there. Paul is right - some punters wouldn't know they have left home considering the level of service they seem prepared to accept.

Well I'm not from that club - when I pay - I expect to get what I pay for - and that is the customer's right! All I want is fair play - what's wrong with that?

 

I agree that part of the country would need something, that's why I mentioned an outbase in that sort of area. I guess if I get a rainy day or three I may sit down and analyse the number of steam loco days there have been, and where, in each of the last few years. Then try and equate that to what frequency of use per week would be available for 2, 3 or 4 centralised steam loco depots. Maybe allow for an increase in shorter distance operations. And see what sort of answer that gave. I do have a really horrible gut feeling it may show only two depots would be sustainable at the level of activity that may be needed.

It really needs someone with lots of get up and go, and a burning desire to keep main line steam running for few more decades to get stuck in to all the aspects.

I just don't have that anymore.

I'll be just as happy getting the occasional run behind an H class or a Brighton Atlantic at 25 mph. With maybe a swan song run or two on decent timings to Salisbury and/or Bournemouth. But I won't lose sleep if that doesn't happen.

But I am happy to lose sleep following the activities of the Barn Owls on the Isle of Sheppey! Looks like there is one pair returning to the nesting box they used for this years brood of five: could be good for an autumn and winter of owl watching. And I'm on the case of the other pair I know are somewhere in the area!

 

Somehow this discussion has turned from several instances of what appears to be human error causing serious issues to other operators, to another debate on tour promotors not delivering on 'promises'. Can we keep the debate on how the industry can collectively raise it's game to try and eliminate these errors as that is the most pressing issue? I don't see how tour promotors can influence this. As far as I can see it should be up to West Coast (or DBS) to say 'X' isn't achievable but 'Y' maybe, when tours are first conceived to prevent subsequent major changes. They should have a good idea of what is possible with steam from past experience. I have already said that tour companies should go to a more of a pool policy of steam locos, which is what has happened this year to much better success.
Steam can't be pushed off the network, the only thing that will stop it is being priced out of the market or lack of steam locos. However, if we want to be trusted to haul trains alone without 'insurance' then we have to show that this can be done without being too much of a risk to other trains. Avoidable mistakes won't help this, there are already many out there, in senior positions, who view steam as being run by hooray trainspotters who live in a bygone era with little knowledge of the current world. This is totally unfair as we all know that there are many professionals who do a superb job, but steam has to work harder than most to continuously prove itself. Senior managers won't remember the 19 faultless runs that passed down the East Coast, but they will remember the 20th that caused huge delays to their services and upset their customers. I don't know enough about mainline operations to suggest how this could be achieved or what is the cause of this increase in errors, but someone needs to investigate and come up with an industry wide approach to nipping it in the bud. If steam is to continue to expand and operate at this level of intensity (or more!) then plans need to be be formulated to ensure that supply can meet demand and more importantly, reliably. Maybe the rumours of West Coast acquiring further locos (73096 & Bodmin) are already a sign of this, but this needs to be supported by more staff, training and more consistent levels of operation.
I don't want my posts to sound like I am criticising West Coast as I believe overall they do a fantastic job and I firmly believe that without them steam would have finished some time ago. However, we are getting to levels of operation (especially over summer) that are no longer a collection of one off trips that was the pattern perhaps 10 years ago. We now have regular steam in many locations which is brilliant for us enthusiasts but require far higher levels of planning and organistion of resources. Unlike some on here I think steam has a fabulous future on the mainline but we need to make sure we have the infrastructure and standards in place to meet this level of demand comfortably, without having to run to stand still, which has been to often the case this year.

 

Martin - this forum's refusal to recognise and address railway operating, commercial, and legal reality is getting boring! If it wants to be regarded as relevant it needs to up its game and reflect modern railway management practices, or it will continue its slide into irrelevant frothery and trivia - and - believe me, its not only me with that view!

The whole point of an internet forum dedicated to railways and preservation is actually discussion on that topic - or have I missed something? and if elevating that activity from bar room level about paint, and today's photos and youtubes, to how the industry actually operates, is a problem for some mods - then that says more about them than it does about me!

Change will only come from the top - and be eventually led by commercial dictates. If that's hard for this audience to understand - they will just have to learn the hard way in the long run.

If you regard objective commercial comment as rant - by all means be my guest - it doesn't change reality one jot!

By the way Alan - good post - exactly my point about overloading, taking unnecessary risks with the national network, and running the risk of stalls and sit downs, which some can only see as criticism of their precious promoters! The inital requests start at promoter level and go up and down the system via TOCs and NR accordingly. Such unreal proposals shouldn't be taken upwards in the first place.