West Somerset Railway General Discussion

It doesn't have to be 'either/or'; 'and' produces a perfectly accurate description, IMO.

Noel

 

Some say it's a heritage railway, others prefer tourist or leisure attraction.
All they know is that it's a place where they can have steam train ride and they don't care what its called.

 

In the news is the comments that today will be the hottest July day since records began. I would like to say thanks to all the staff who have turned out today and on other hot days so that everyone can have a ride on a steam train. Alot (though not all ) of the people on duty today are not in the first flushes of youth and the heat will take it out of them all so I say to them all "Thank You You are all Hero's"

 

You maybe haven't, but I have, a number of times and in a number of places. Meanwhile, you do yourself down by trying to defend your opposition to on train catering by implying that because nominal weights are sometimes wrong, the arguments about relative weight are somehow compromised.

 

I am not doing anything of the kind merely having in mind an instance of a vehicle which had two very different quoted weights according to source. Fittingly it was halfway between the two. There have been cases in the past of drawing offices consciously underestimating weights in order to avoid trouble with the Civil Engineer. There was an instance of this on the L.S.W.R.

 

Then I suggest you should have distinguished it rather more clearly from the main thrust of your argument.

 

It's not particularly pertinent to your original argument though that RMBs are significantly poorer on the passenger capacity per ton front though, which they really aren't. I'd submit that they don't really take that much away from the heritage experience either, given that a full train of Mk1s was probably pretty rare in the first place.

 

You clearly haven't been on an early departure from Pickering to Whitby or a late departure from Whitby to Pickering, where has not been uncommon to have all seats taken and passengers standing, although strenuous efforts are made to avoid that.

And, exactly how much difference is there in running and maintenance costs between a Manor and a Hall. I don't have the figures so I'm going tro guess at relatively little, but as you are very dogmatic on these matters I'm sure you must have some evidence to the contrary!

 

... or on the first train out of Bishops Lydeard, when there are a couple of pre-booked parties of any number up to 120 on what is usually the busiest train of the day anyway.

 

The first departure from Cheltenham and last departure from Broadway are usually pretty much full too with 8 coaches. This notion that railways pull extra carriages just for the fun of it is daft, complaining that engines in use are over powered is one thing, but you'd have to have a really low opinion of a railway to think that they would purposefully pull around more carriages than they needed to, often at considerable inconvenience to various departments and staff, just to make the loco work a little harder.

 

But then again, 9351 is such a beautiful looking locomotive.
Its overhaul and restoration is a credit to everyone involved in it.

 

How does 9351 compare with a Large Prairie?

 

I must admit to having serious doubts about the changes when they were proposed, but having seen the loco ‘in the flesh’ I have to say it looks magnificent and is a credit to all those who worked on it and helped finance that work.

 

Does the Duchess come off at Norton and turn with 7F taking over train or 6233 runs in to Bl for swap.

Need to plan photography as traveling on shuttle service, thanks

 

As I understand it they change over at BL.

 

As far as I recall there is a wye track layout at Norton Fitzwarren making it easy to turn the loco for it to head home. Highly unlikely, I would have thought to work the branch. Whereas the loco will just, with adaption, fit on the turntable at Churston so it makes sense for the Duchess to go to NF/BL and 60009 to go to Kingswear.

 

Viewing the WSR webcams today it was apparent that the morning timetable had taken a hit as trains were about twenty minutes late and the crossing procedure was certainly not swift. I wonder how the general public react to waiting in a loop until the opposite working has arrived. I understand that these circumstances arise but we are in an age that encourages complaints and one down train appeared to be waiting at Williton for over fifteen minutes.

 

If you had talked to any of our passengers today, you might have found, as I did, that everyone that I could find was happy and satisfied and unconcerned about having to sit in a heritage train for a few more minutes. And in any case by the end of the day the last up train was just three minutes down at the end of its journey (I know because I was the guard). All operating staff on the West Somerset (and I am sure other heritage railways) work hard to make sure we keep as close to the timetable as we possibly can, and if there are any delays that we keep passengers fully informed of what is going on. We are helped by the fact that almost all our passengers are on holiday or on a day out and tend to be in a cheerful frame of mind to start with. As some have told me on previous occasions, they view extra time waiting at a crossing point as an interesting bonus, although we certainly don't aim for this as a regular occurrence! If you have a look at Trip Adviser you will see we very rarely get complaints from the paying public about anything - quite the contrary. But we are not complacent...