What-if....?

GWSR might have a nice castle class...

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Bulmer's would've gone bust and there'd be no NR gauging issues..... Next question?

 

David Smith certainly had a plan to re-open part of the Scarborough-Whitby line and accumulated quite a bit of track for it, which was stored in his yards at Wakefield and Horbury.

 

Oh them...... well, we've got loads of "austerities"!

Seriously though, I recall the DVR (the bit which is now the South Devon Rly) abandoned their mainline connection due to access charges. The attitude of BR in the early 70s was decidedly less than helpful. With notable exceptions such as the Swanage line, much which lost all services back then and was rapidly ripped up is lost beyond recall.

The "second generation" heritage lines are all those which kept a tenuous grip on existence courtesy of freight services (meeting the Beeching criteria... be it noted!). Whether folk such as the estimable Mr Hoskins would have considered the investments they have made in mainline steam is doubtful. Without "The Jacobite", would West Highland services have survived west of Fort William, or even north of Crianlarich? Would Okehampton have been on the verge of full re-opening? Hard for those under "a certain age" to realise that we came within weeks of losing the S&C line and even London's Marylebone Station, both of which mainline steam helped put back on the map.

Now, if you'll kindly excuse me, as my nieces have tucked the sprogs into bed, I together with sundry nieces, nephews, wives and husbands (plus a couple of grand nephews and nieces old enough and not terminally embarrassed by their parents and reprobate great uncle) are about to continue only the second gathering of the clan this century which hasn't involved a wooden box!

Thank Bob two of my nieces are (a) not drinkers and (b) clinically responsible. Me and my hangover will rejoin the fray, none too early, tomorrow. I wish you all a very good night!

 

David Smith is not a man to mess with, about 25 years ago he sued BR for trying to suppress his Railtour business, what became West Coast came out it.

 

N

As we have found out, not a man to mess with. Back to What ifs... What if BR hadn't banned the GWS vintage train?

 

U's, Q1s, Dub dees and early black 5's spring to mind

 

I must adimt though that on a modern railway - even on a 1950's railway trains of wooden bodied coaches were sadly proved unsafe

 

And, if the Council had permitted it, the knock on effects would have been huge. Mainline steam operations would look very different, especially in Scotland. Steamtown would either be a working museum or a housing estate. 'Galatea' would probably, and 'British India Line' would certainly, still be wrecks. Then again, you would have been able to ride behind an 8F from Cloughton to Ravenscar.

Which brings us to another What If...?, namely the abortive plan to relay part of the Scarborough-Whitby line to 2' and run NGG16s on it. That would have been rather fun.

 

They still manage it in Europe. I've been into a very large mainline terminus station on a train of wooden bodied coaches and wagons, and none of them or the loco were fitted with more than a handbrake!

 

Hairy!!! The Ffesterbahn and Corris run the odd unfitted (and unsprung) gravity train too! ...but one read of Tom Rolt's "Red For Danger" would be a jolly good idea for anyone seriously wondering why safety standards developed as they did.

 

I don't think they did ban it, but they demanded that coaches were lifted regularly, I think possibly the body even off the chassis. Basically they just demanded so much maintenance that it became uneconomic which is a real shame. The same could happen with steam in general, they could introduce so many hoops to jump through that owners no longer wish to do it. Already with the fitting of TPWS and On train monitoring, air braking etc it puts many owners off as being too expensive/difficult and many just opt to do preserved lines only especially if they would only do an occasional main line trip.

As for West Coast, it would be interesting to know more about how the company was set up, plans for the future etc

 

Admittedly the coaches are replicas built in 1947, but the loco is from 1858. Sadly the loco is now out of ticket, but you can imagine how much fun it was travelling in an open coach into the middle of Zurich Hbf station with everything else whizzing past!

 

Same here in QLD. Speeds are far more leisurely than the UK though!

 

The FR's gravity trains do tend to be liberally fitted with brakemen nowadays. Unlike in the Old FR days, when brakemen would have to walk back and forth on top of the moving train to adjust the brakes!

 

Wasn't it something like 15-20% of slate waggons (FR spelling) with any sort of brakes in the first place and 3 os so brakesmen per train? Waggon hopping along an unsprung moving train in horizontal monsoons must've been all sorts of fun!