New SMR Carriages

BBC News article + video - Snowdon Mountain Railway taking delivery of new carriages

A new livery too by the looks of it.

Chris

 

Does anyone know the builder?
P.H.

 

They don't look as bad as I was expecting. I thought they would be more like the "new" coaches at Brienz-Rothorn Bahn in Switzerland, with huge, curved sliding windows. And good to see they're planned to be used with the diesels instead of steam.

 

Not too sure on the black part of the livery but otherwise they seem pretty fit for purpose, the SMR is really more for transport to the summit than a heritage railway, the Steamers only usually come out to play once all the servicable Diesels have been allocated.

One thing I don't understand though if they wish to increase capacity, wasn't the the originally intended max train length load 2 ?, why has this never been looked at again ?, it wasn't an a factor in the LADAS incident and the Swiss equivelents regularly run with load 2/3.

 

I wonder if they will offer the old ones for sale?

 

I must say, I'm a little concerned about the condensation on the windows. You'd think they would have taken the opportunity to introduce double-glazing!

 

A little more detail of their construction in this video - looks like the main concern was reducing weight.

Chris

 

Thanks for the link Chris, one detail is of interest, reading the piece it appears there are 4 coaches being delivered - the price - £1.2 million!! WOW!!

Cheers

Alan

 

Their new so-called 'heritage carriage', the Snowdon Lily, has been unveiled for the 35 quid heritage steam experience...

http://instagram.com/p/Z3P0KHDhuB/

http://www.itv.com/news/wales/2013-...ge-makes-debut-on-snowdonia-mountain-railway/

Having read this blog post I rather naively expected something that actually resembled a former SMR carriage, in reality it appears to have more in common with one of the modern Winson vehicles built for the Welsh Highland.

Chris

 

That's a bit of a slight on Winson, not to mention Boston Lodge, which builds all our carriages these days.

 

...oh, and according to the North Wales Rail site all but one of the steam loco's has been withdrawn, which would fit with the comment on their website that steam would only be used with their new 'heritage' (cough) carriage.

Chris

 

The SMR engineering boss told me yesterday that the intention is to keep four locos for operation - 2, 3, 4 and 6. The other three, which were being stored outside and basically rotting, have been moved offsite to undercover storage with nothing likely to be done to them any time soon.

The heritage steam service will be part of the daily operation and once the heritage carriage - which is built on the underframe of carriage 2 - has proven itself the hope is to build a second.

We have to remember that unlike most of our narrow gauge railways the vast majority of passengers who ride the SMR are doing it not to experience a steam locomotive but to get to the top of Snowdon. The new contemporary carriages with their higher capacity have created the means to run the heritage service as part of the timetable - the SMR constantly faces a problem that other railways would love to have, finding enough seats for the amount of people wanting to travel.

Regards

Andrew Charman
Narrow Gauge World
http://www.atlanticpublishers.com/magazines/narrow-gauge-world/

 

Having looked at that North Wales Rail site I see that the latest issue published a few days ago says all the locos bar Wyddfa have been withdrawn - it was no 2 Enid that took us to the top of the mountain yesterday!

 

Thanks for the update Andrew.

 

Does anyone know whether this is still the status / policy on the SMR?