Railtour Management. Isn't it time we had some?

Alright, I'll bite - last figures I have readily to hand, 80% punctuality between Grosmont and Pickering and 90% for services on the Whitby branch - hardly "running on time" being "a novelty"!

Steven

 

Is it just me getting a false impression, or is it NR are gradually giving longer and longer timings as time goes on ?, say a destination used to take 4 hours to get to in 2000, is now taking 5 1/2 hours.

Yes there's more traffic about in 2013, but on the whole, timings now feel like there's far too much slack, being looped for a non existent freight or a passenger train, where if allowed to run, woulden't be catching you due to it's station calls, I understand the delay minutes thing, but the current approach feels over cautious, and these 5 mins here, 10 mins extra there, etc, soon add up to a day 2 hours longer.

Last year I was on a tour at that got looped at Abington (admittedly for water too) for 90 mins, in that time, the grand total of 3 trains passed, which begs the question, why a 90 mins top instead of 30 ?.

 

Very possibly, but that has been standard for some time now and yet Promoters continue to publish optimistic timings which rarely translate into reality, the effect of which must be one of the main reasons such tours often leave a nasty taste in the mouth, and why this discussion keeps cropping up in one guise or another. I don't see it changing however while the "forgive and forget" attitude of many regular passengers prevails.

 

You may well be right in all of the above, so who is best placed to take the issue up with NR ?

 

That's certainly my impression.

 

But how can you advertise a tour on the basis of "we don't know when we'll start and we don't know what time we'll return until we hear from NR and that may not be until a few days before the tour?" Seems the organisers are in a Catch 22 situation.

 

Very much so, I don't claim to have the answer, if indeed there is one, but the current set up isn't sustainable in the long term. My fear is there is no will to change things as there's no pressure to do so.

 

The thought occurs, that timetables excluding STP and VSTP paths, are generally known about some months in advance, is it not possible to times tours at the time of planning an announcement than wait until a week beforehand ?, the job has to be done anyway so why not get it done asap, that way there's plenty of time if any "tweaking" is required and the passenger can decide if the itinery is acceptable or not.

 

But you could invert that logic: As a punter, "why should I book on a tour when I don't know when it will leave, when it will arrive or even if it will go to where it says it will?" Not a very attractive consumer proposition, is it? Afterall, if you booked an airline ticket from Heathrow to Munich leaving at 9am, only to be told two days before that actually it was departing from Luton at 7am and actually going to Nuremberg - well, you'd hardly recommend that airline to your friends, would you? So why should it be different for railtour promoters?

Tom

 

Quite!

 

Let's be clear about this. When you say "...Promoters continue to publish optimistic timings..." you really mean RTC and, to a lesser extent, Steam Dreams, don't you? Vintage Trains, for example, have a pretty good strike-rate for their expected start/end times and also for their routing/loco offers. When they are uncertain about some aspect of a planned tour, they say so in their advertising. I'm not sure how Pathfinder compare - I think they have a better record than SD but quite quite as good as VT.

There are lots of reasons to be very glad that RTC do what they do, but there are lots of things that they could improve.

 

Yes, but... It depends why you are travelling. In your example, if the point of the trip is to fly in an old plane, then a change of destination might not be a reason to stop you flying. If the point is to travel to Munich, then obviously going to Nuremberg is worse than useless.

 

On busy routes (ECML, LSW, etc.) I think you are probably correct. However, this year's regular Sunday trips from Bristol (Weymouth Seaside Express, Torbay Express, Royal Duchy) all seem to have faster timings than last year. Certainly it has been harder as a gricer to get ahead of them!

 

It shouldn't be any different, but as I've said already, the railtour business has enjoyed a very loyal and forgiving following over the years, which rather than encourage it to negotiate improvements and a higher standard of service from NR etc, just result in the same déjà vu scenarios year on year.

 

The underlying problem is not enough suitable locos and rolling stock with too many tours being promoted cartels are not good but maybe the tour companies should co-operate more between themselves driving anyone out of the market would not really benefit anyone we are lucky to have so much mainline steam so long may it last we are not so much long suffering as loving mainline steam so much!!

 

I try not to attribute these issues to specific promoters as it usually gets controversial, and most of us can probably make the connection that you did. You're absolutely right about VT however. They communicate a lot better than the others, and have been more consistent in what they advertise against what they deliver. Unfortunately, their example doesn't appear to have rubbed off on their competitors.

 

The airline parallel is not a particularly good analogy IMO as certain budget airlines do what you say and worse yet they continue to flourish.

 

But the point is, if you use Ryanair to fly to Oslo, but actually it is Torp, at least they are up front about that in advance. Whereas from what I gather, it is changing start and finish times and maybe start and finish points at short notice that is the problem. If I think I am catching a train from Victoria leaving at 9am and then suddenly they tell me two days in advance that it will be leaving at 7.30am, that makes the trip suddenly untenable without an overnight stay, which may be impossible to arrrange at short notice.

Tom

 

I have to agree that since the Whitby run became part of the equation timings have become a bit strained
This is my opinion
Henry

 

Love that one - will use that sometime soon !!