Steam engines available for traffic in 2014

I have completed a quick scan of Industrial Steam Locos available in 2014, & I was quite surprised at the low number which was 80.
I appreciate that I may have missed a few.

Andrew Barclay 19, Austerity 19, Peckett 15, RSH 6, Bagnall 4, Hudswell Clark 3, Sentinel 2 (inc Gervaise),Hunslet 2,Manning Wardle 2,Kitson 1, Hawthorne Leslie 1,Dubs 1(crane tank should not be inc)Kerr Stuart 1,Haydock Foundry 1, Vulcan Foundry 1, Aveling Porter 1.\(PERHAPS SHOULDN'T BE IN) Cockerill 1.

Top 8 sites, Foxfield 5, Lakeside 4, Ribble 4,Buckinghamshire 3, IOW 3,KESR 3,Middleton 3, Tanfield 3.

Allowing for a few missing, & the unknown others which could be completed this year, I would think that it is highly unlikely that the Industrial numbers will excede 100 during 2014.

Please feel free to update me if I have got some wrong

3155 at RSR

 

GFG is rightly concerned with costs. But of course, there is the other side of the equation: income - and it never seems to get discussed much. A lot of costs are fixed, not proportional to the number of passengers. (For example, your station needs repainting whether 25,000 people walk up the station drive or 250,000 - the weather doesn't differentiate). So who is doing what to raise passenger numbers? How many people are running an evening dining service on days they already have an engine alight, so fairly small extra loco cost? (No addition lighting up costs etc). How many people are targeting extra passengers with discount tickets on days when they would normally be quiet? How many people understand their core market - and then are actively looking for new, untapped sources of passenger growth, to broaden the diversity of their passengers and thereby reduce reliability on one demographic that is susceptible to specific economic conditions?

Actually, I'm sure many railways are doing these things, and are well managed. But it is just a reminder that there is more to financial viability than just ruthlessly cutting costs: adding income is also worth trying!

Finally, just as a counter argument to the seeming paragons of virtue that are the L&H or the P&DSR: maybe they do have stuff to teach the rest of us. But how dependent are they on a single core market? If there was a tourist slowdown in the Lakes or in south Devon, how secure would those lines be? Whereas the strength of many heritage lines, especially those not in obvious tourist honeypots, is that they have a rather broader diversity in income sources.

Tom

 

just thought of 2 more Industrials in use in 2014, add Embsay to the 3 list

3155 at rsr

 

Whilst railways in popular tourist areas will always seek to tap that market and there are more of them than just the two mentioned above, I would argue that the success of those two is built largely on the tourist market. Railways such as the Foxfield and Tanfield succeed by taping a different market. Ergo no one business model fits all.

 

Which is really my point: the Swanage and the MHR are both ex-LSWR lines about 25 - 35 minutes long one-way with a broadly 1960s BR feel: but the Swanage model will never work for the MHR. Which doesn't stop the MHR being a successful line it its own right, just different.

I'd also suggest that, long-term, a line relying too heavily on a single core market (for example, the L&H or P&DSR in tourist areas) may not be as resilient as a line with a more diverse passenger and supporter base.

Tom

 

I

A fair point Steve, and I should also thank you for your Middleton bank balance gen, which is encouraging and positive, and unusual, perhaps unique, in current conditions and at this time of year. Few railways are really cash positive even by September. It certainly betters the industry standard for cash at bank and reserves. A short railway, small engines, lots of people within a 60 minute drive, almost no payroll, good financial awareness. Seems a good model.

But before I give up annoying people, especially those who don't like numbers, this thread is attracting 1000 page views a day. If they were all unique views, which sadly they are probably not, it would be in the same league as the trade press. It is however a very high number by Nat Pres standards, current or historic. Clearly people are as interested in this subject as any other. I am quite glad I started it!

 

Quite agree. You could argue that the Swanage market is largely captive in that many people go there anyway whereas the MHR need to attract people to their neck of the woods. Different marketing strategies needed I would think.

 

The Bluebell have Fletcher-Jennings No. 3 "Baxter" available for traffic, which I don't think was on your list.

Tom

 

GF-G: Vote of thanks for diverting fire !

 

In my earliest days at work in business, I was advised to be sceptical about published accounts when assessing the financial health of businesses as said accounts were put together by Accountants to "conceal more than they reveal"

 

Has Charwelton (KESR) fallen by the wayside, then? There are two operational Manning's at Middleton so, if Charwelton is a goer, that makes three.

Surprised at how many Barclays are operational although UK Steam does list 124 of them, in total.

 

Beyer Peacock 1827 is in traffic this year, still at CVR I think

Jon

 

It certainly had a spell at Foxfield IIRC.

 

Yes - moved to Foxfield in 1996 having visited the year before, ran there (as well as visiting other lines) until 2009 and has been overhauled at Churnet Valley 2010-14 . Now into its third ten-year ticket.

Jon

 

I have been watching this one with interest for the last few days. A few observations:

The IWSR is pretty close to the ideal 'no deferred maintenance and a health balance sheet' railway described a few posts ago. It also has more engines on site and more in traffic than when I started in 1999 and runs more trains on more days, thus it apparently bucks the trend suggested earlier of declining steam days.

Certain contributors appear to be trying to use 'normal' business practice on an abnormal business sector, as I believe 21B put it earlier. One cannot simply transfer conventional main line railway or conventional tourist attraction logic to our sphere as it does not follow quite the same rules. We are not Alton Towers, no-one goes there to admire the old roller coasters stored out of service! We may, however, compete with them to a degree.

The thread started with the theory that we have around 1000 engines and only about 200 in traffic, so our asset utilisation is poor - now people are suggesting that engines are getting too expensive to overhaul so we ought to build a fleet of new standard 3 tanks! Again, conventional business logic which ignores that in the main we are consciously trying to use old equipment, not modern replicas, knowing that this may be the more difficult choice. Many times I have been on the footplate and visitors have been fascinated that the loco is over 100 years old.

Now I agree that we should be 'businesslike' in our actions and our thoughts. We should understand the market, understand and drive down our costs, grow our revenue, maintain the asset base and plan, prepare and save for the future. We have to prepare for a future with fewer volunteers and probably less money too. We will have to face rising costs (coal, for example, is only going up long term) and I believe we will have to bite the bullet and employ more trained artisan staff on better wages.

Byzantine ownership structures is another. Yes, often locos are owned by groups that perhaps made sense in the past and now do not, but this forgets that we have what we have today because those people went out and saved it in the past. Gradually I believe these groups will fold into their host railway as I believe the SECR locos on the Bluebell have. Often these bring something to their host as well, like the Maunsell society, so we should not be too quick to criticise.

And lastly, statistics. Some people are assuming that because the NatPres forum users cannot exactly answer the question of loco numbers, then this means "the movement does not know and must be sleepwalking into a disaster". What it really means is "this information is not easy to find on the internet" so they assume it does not exist. I bet if we went down to each railway we could find maintenance records that would answer our question...

 

This is not a fair question:
1. Work can be found for any loco, but we would be wasteful to have to many at any one time
2. Share issues always take time in this field as it is not about making a profit immediately (Royal Mail...)
3. There are often issues that exceed the available budget in any given year, but sensible forward planning allows these to be worked around, balancing the books in a different way. Any sane company does this...

 

Mm, but I bet there is no-one who could actually put together all those maintenance records and get a complete picture, which was what I understood to be the original point. On the other hand, I'm not at all sure it matters. In my own industry I bet it would be just as difficult to get a complete list of all the current computer data centres in the UK, but no-one cares or needs to know.

Each line will have an excellent handle on loco availability from their own resources and from owning groups which are intimately associated with it, and will also have a pretty good picture of availability from other groups it has associations with. If there's an upcoming hole then they'll seek to make plans to fill it. They don't really need to know or care what the sum national picture is. GFG seems to be concerned that resources are diminishing and thus every line has a hole in resource ability upcoming and is not making plans to fill it. Well, I guess that's possible, but even if it is the case - and there's no evidence either way that I can see - there's no national organisation that can do anything about it, so in each line will have to make their own plans to fill availability problems - which I bet they are already doing, and in a good number of cases we know that they are. Lines that make no plans, should there be any - will probably be in trouble, and so will lines that find themselves unable to implement plans., but there's nothing new about that.

But a few numbers have come out of the exercise which I think are encouraging:-
At the moment all the services are being run with about 30% of the total steam locomotive population in service
About another 30% of the population has been steamed in preservation and most of these can be steamed again without heroic restoration efforts, needing "just" heavy general overhauls
Only about half of those are currently under repair, so there's a substantial pool of locomotives that could be repaired if necessary, and the pool of runners and ex runners *is* increasing as further locomotives run for the first time.
What this says to me is there is no intrinsic locomotive shortage. Either there's a surplus, in which case no worries at all, or else there are insufficient resources to repair locomotives as fast as required. As those resources are principally, for each line's plans, locally available volunteer labour and money, there's nothing that having a National picture will really add to the mix.

So the movement doesn't need to know, and we know that at the very least many lines are not sleepwalking into a disaster because they make the broad outline of their planning public. yes, the Bluebell have had problems this year, but my understanding is that problem is because of unexpected success of the line extension. Bet everyone else would like that problem too!

 

Paul,
Another way to look at things is to think that we are fortunate to have such an array of machinery to use. If all we had was Bulleids our economics might be different!

The 'folding' process, why does it have to happen quicker? If the locos are covered by appropriate agreements, does it matter who is the ultimate owner? I am thinking of SECR 65 here, which is privately owned but seems secure in its place on the Bluebell.

The Ivatts are an interesting case, when I first joined NetPres there was a thread that was very critical of the trust for not giving them up for 'the greater good' - one even said that the movement would be better off when they had passed away - vile thoughts! I think the trust realised they were not able to restore them by themselves and so came to an understanding with the Island. But really, I think this same understanding could have been reached with the ownership staying with the trust. Where there is a will, there is a way...