Llangollen Railway

Check rails not fitted because running rail joints not yet welded. This is Trust work and nothing to do with receiver.

Bob.

 

2014 a few boiler stays failed, I can't recall if Llan had to lift the boiler to replace those and others from the same batch.

 

7760 at Tyseley was offered for sale a few years back. The rumour mill put the price at anywhere between £200k - £250k, I have no idea how accurate those figures might be!

 

There is definitely some money there (almost certainly not sufficient though). It has been partly waiting for man power to enable work to start, also with lots of other engines going, room to store parts. I think it was stopped for most of a year (2015?) with problems with some of the stays. There was a big court case which the group lost to do with the wrong material being used, quite a lot of money went with this. Also I remember someone saying it ideally needs new tanks and bunker.

 

Something not adding up here

We're told that the Trust actually own most of the assets, including loco's & carriages.
There appear to be some carriages owned by the plc.


The Trust are attempting to raise funds to buy assets from the receiver.
What assets, & are they really needed?

In order to raise funds, the Trust may sell some loco's that they don't have the 'resources to own & maintain'.
If they can't afford their own loco's, why would they be able to afford to hire? Or are these 'spare' locos.

 

The Trust don’t own most of the coaches, only some. They probably need to buy several of the Plc ones to have enough to run the railway. MK1 coaches aren’t cheap, hence why they are looking into options to raise cash now.

 

The assets the plc own seem to be things like the carriage lifting jacks, various wagons, road railed, about 10 MK1s. I think they range from being almost essential to nice to have.

As has now been stated numerous times, the trust owns 3 engines (Austin 1, Jennifer and 7754). There may be some question over which of these can be sold due to the nature of them being donated. Neither Austin 1 or Jennifer are idea for hauling 5 coaches to Corwen everyday and have been hired out for almost all of the time they’ve been operational in recent times. The reality is as with most steam locos it probably costs more to keep them operational than is got back through hire fees. 7754 is probably an ideal engine for the line, so is probably very unlikely to be sold.

Therefore if Austin 1 and/or Jennifer can be sold and the money used to buy the essential/very useful assets from the plc this is probably a good idea.

 

Indeed. Can't remember if it was ready to run or needed an overhaul, which may have had an impact on its market appeal

 

It needed an overhaul, but Tyseley were prepared to do it as part of the asking price.

 

If they are expensive, why buy them? Why not hire? OK, that puts the revenue cost of the service up but on the other hand reduces the maintenance cost (if you own your own carriages, you have to budget for their periodic overhaul). People hire locomotives to run a service, so why not carriages? Doing things that way would enable the Trust to preserve cash for things that were perhaps more essential.

If things worked out well, you might in time want to gradually move back to a position of owning, rather than renting, your rolling stock, as finance allowed. But it isn't an essential on day 1 - it is essential to have access to carriages, but that doesn't have to equate to owning carriages.

Tom

 

There is a ready market of locomotives available for hire. Does such a market exist for coaches, if I wanted to hire 5 MK1s for example?

 

Well, I know coaches have been hired for short periods, for example to boost fleets for Santa season. That suggests to me there are at least some places with more carriages than they strictly need to operate their own service.

I guess the point I am making is not to be constrained in thinking. If railway A needs carriages to operate, don’t assume the only possibility is to buy what it needs. There are multiple models of Loco ownership, so why not carriage ownership? Just then comes down to how you assess the balance of capital and revenue spend, and long-term operational security.

Tom

 

I think most of us are agreed that the hire market for locos doesn't have much depth to it, and I don't believe there is much evidence to suggest that the situation for carriages is actually any different. Indeed I suspect that it is worse, for it is very rare for more than the odd vehicle to be hired in from a different railway If a railway is in the position of having to hire in a set of carriages and does not have an NR connection then it is facing a large road transport bill - and probably quite a large one for a rail movement. The other point is that most railway's fleets are either restored and in regular use or stored awaiting heavy maintenance. There don't seem to be many stored as serviceable but unneeded.

 

Indeed I don’t see any market for coaches to be hired in, other than on a very short term basis for specific events. For example the Bluebell’s Bulleids to the MHR for Flying Scotsman’s visit.

That’s probably why the LR trust are prioritising purchase of some Plc Mk1s potentially funded by selling locos.

 

I wonder whether the likes of WCR/SRPS might be prepared to loan some coaches for say 12-18 months whilst the charter market is competitively quiet, albeit as you note with the LR the lack of rail link means a lot of lorries!

 

Indeed, it is the transport costs that are the biggest factor in making hiring in carriages unfeasible in most cases I think. Hiring in a single loco makes a big difference, but hiring in a single carriage much less so, if you're in a position where you're that desperate for carriages chances are you want more like 3 or 4 at least.

 

It's a good idea in principle, but maybe the receiver wants the money now.

 

A supporter might want to buy a carriage & the Trust do a hire-purchase agreement.

That way they would get use of a carriage, but pay for it over time.