Recommissioning after Coronavirus

It will be interesting to see if heritage rail has to follow mainline rail or shops when it comes to distancing. Mainline rail have to facilitate - but not enforce - distancing, hence lots of advisory stickers on platforms and seats but no limits to how many people travel or how many tickets are sold.

 

Heritage railways are no different from the big railway or any other place open to the public. Facilitate but not legally enforce. There is a glimmer of hope emerging in that the two metre rule may be relaxed to one metre, which would be a big improvement.

 

LNER

LNER are certainly restricting the number of people that travel on their trains. You have to reserve a seat before you can travel. This action, no doubt, ensures that social distancing is being carried out.

 

However, SMG are publicly owned, & so will have much easier access to public funding.
The same applies to council owned museums & galleries, & Historic England etc etc

 

Partly. It will be if talking about those that are largely 'outdoor' attractions, so castle ruins etc, show gardens like Alnwick etc. Even places like Beamish & Black Country Museum.

The issue with heritage railways is that so much of it is 'internal' or crowded spaces like platforms.

Even with timed journey tickets, you still need time after the journey for people to disperse & leave the platform/station.
eg. A 10:00 train does a 1hour round trip, so gets back at 11:00. You need to empty the train & platform before you can allow the next group onto the platform, so the next train isn't going to be until 11:30.
Then 13:00, 14:30, 16:00.
It also means that people can't hang around & use on-station stuff like shops & cafe's.
So that's 5 trains max, at a maximum 50% capacity. Would that be financially worth it?

 

A lot of these will be location specific.

To give two different scenarios, the IWSR has an island platform at Havenstreet in the middle of our site, with shop, cafe etc all separate to this. It feels possible to have some sort of queuing area and one way system for the platform, together with enough space to distance when looking at the museum, shop, cafe etc.

Compare that with Sheffield Park on the Bluebell, you have to walk down the platform itself to go from the entrance to the shop, cafe or anywhere.

Let's hope that Steve is right and the 2m becomes 1m...

 

Indeed - my thought really was that those outdoor attractions ought to be potentially the easiest to open - so if they remain shut, not much chance for a railway, for the kinds of reasons you outline.

@andrewtoplis is correct in that the logistics and practicalities will vary from line to line. I can imagine running an operation at the Bluebell somewhat similar to a Santa operation, in which each group of passengers are kept well separated. But it will crucially depend on what is a viable occupancy; and also does remove some of the amenity from the visit; for example there may be a much reduced ability to visit cafe / shop / museum / loco shed while maintaining a one-way flow of people; and precooked trains means essentially no ability to visit intermediate stations, break journey etc.

Tom

 

I do wonder if having seen it will now be the driest May on record in the South East and a similar April, plus such things as the Wareham fire that took a week to put out with the hot spots flaring up again, that maybe in the south and west we would be in mainline steam ban territory now anyway without Covid. Not sure I could see NR allowing the attack of Whiteball Dainton and Hemerdon on June 8 (although I even forget what the loco was due to be, Duchess I think).

 

I don't think our part of Yorkshire has seen any meaningful rain since the end of February. I was joking at Easter that the lockdown had saved us having to shut the railway due to fire risk.

 

A problem that has arisen in the South West, which has caused serious fires in woodlands has been the careless disposal - or just left where it was initially placed - of portable barbecues. Given lockdown, which has resulted in manpower reduction in many instances, fire services are extremely concerne about fires in the countryside.
A steam ban, would seem a possibility if the dry weather continues. But as we ll know come the major holiday time the monsoon will have arrived.

 

The other issue is a probable second wave, & even a third wave.

The holiday for VE Day & more recent easing of some restrictions will start the second wave.
The thinking from people in the medical world is that we will see the impacts of that from mid-June. As lots of the suppression measures are still in place, it won't be a major wave. However, it will still require measures to remain in place to deal with it. This first wave has taken 3 months. Even if the second wave took less time to deal with, say 2 months, that still puts you into mid-August. That doesn't leave much of an operating season.

There is also concern about a third wave during the winter, when any socialising allowed is likely to take place indoors.

 

I don't know if this has already been mentioned but what does everyone think the effect of covid will be on the demand for open coaches (TSO for example) surely compartment stock will be far more in demand in the future?

 

The issue with TSO carriages is that the through access is centrally down the middle. For social distancing either a compartment Mk1 (with a side access) or a TCL type vehicle (with blocked off central through access but side doors straight into the booth) would work better.

 

I'm not convinced compartment carriages are a panacea, not corridor ones anyway. You've still got 8 passenger "units" that can contain anywhere between 1 and 8 people, but once 1 person on their own is in that "unit", it is full. There are still lots of problems that need to be solved, and I feel like once they are solved then what type of carriage you have probably will be fairly insignificant. In any case, it's not like a railway can suddenly magic up a rake of compartment carriages if it has previously committed to open carriages, and those railways which have done that with the most enthusiasm are probably the ones most keen to get running again as well.

 

HSB running extra trains now due to high demand. Meanwhile we're still hiding behind our sofas.

 

passed loughborough central on the way to my allotment and took this photo




both locos had engines running
Also the Blue 101 set normally stabled in the south carriage sidings was conspicuous by its absence, heard it 2 ton horn heading south .
on returning from my allotment at approx 20.00 the 101 set had still not returned. As a member of renaissance railcars (owning group of the 101 units) I will ask around to see if any body knows what they were doing.

Cheers

Colin

 

Yes they are just getting on with it. Germany of course is further down the line of recovery due at least in part to the early implementation of track and trace. Opening our lines with pre booking etc doesn’t appeal to me at all so I will wait until some sort of normality returns which it will eventually.

 

Nene Valley Railway:

"We are pleased to announce that the Refreshment Kiosk will open at Overton Station on Monday 25th May and Saturday 30th and Suday 31st May. Sales of Hot and cold drinks, Ice creams and light refreshments will be available, contactless payment is strongly preferred. If visiting please respect the social distancing and our one way system. So if your out and about around Ferry Meadows you can now take refreshment at Overton Station."

 

I don't really think that central access is as big a problem as some think it is.

Compare and contrast with buses, social distancing advice for buses is all passengers to use window seats, leave alternate rows empty. Access to those window seats is via the central gangway, which means passing closer than two metres but that is ok as long as you keep moving. (Remember W.H.O. advice is one metre distancing)
Similarly buses receive overnight cleaning, including anti-viral solution applied to 'touch points', but during the working day passengers are expected to use hand sanitiser before boarding and after alighting. Use of 'face coverings' is recommended but not compulsory.

 

Germany is already about to find a new status quo:
The heritage railway sector (mostly charities) already uses the time to do important delayed tasks:

• moving on to extend the railway line: https://www.facebook.com/Schwarzbachbahn-eV-233503850062475/?ref=py_c https://www.facebook.com/haertsfeldbahn/?ref=py_c
  
• changing a platform for a newer concrete structure: https://www.facebook.com/kj1.de/?ref=py_c
• and maintaining the railway lines with changing a lot of life expired wooden sleepers: https://www.facebook.com/kleinbahnmuseum/?ref=py_c https://www.facebook.com/windbergbahnev/?ref=py_

In Germany you have to stay 1 metre away from each other so many workshops of heritage railways are starting doing jobs on the diesel/steam engines.
The loosening of the lockdown went quite fast and we can see in the cities, that social distancing seems not as important as it used to be (especially among the younger generation...). Hopefully not all the people loose their mind and keep acknowledging the fact that COV-19 is still a potent threat.

Cheers and take care!