Swanage Railway General Discussion

Success begets success. Well done!

 

The Kitchen Car is now back down from the jacks and sitting on its bogies. Work in progress to get the dining train ready for service.

 

Just having checked the date of the post you cited (within the last week), it's most heartening to see such rapid progress made in recovering from the year from hell.

 

Anyone know whats running on Saturday?

 

34028

 

Thank you

 

Being involved with a line never likely to be entangled with dining cars I have always wondered whether they are truly profitable in view of the capital and revenue costs. Swanage also has a great number of competing outlets.

 

I think the profitability of dining trains is unquestioned - if they are marketed correctly, high standards maintained and customer expectations exceeded. I believe the GCR is to operate two dining trains - and they are quite shrewd financially. Of course they are even better when a "large chuffer" is pulling them .
Although Swanage has many dining outlets.....only one has ever changing scenery as it goes through the countryside.

 

Only confirms my suspicions of ''folie de gricer'' being a factor.

 

I saw a financial analysis of our Pullman dining train that indicated to me that it was clearly profitable, including an allowance for the capital cost of providing the train. I don't think we would be spending hundreds of thousands on overhauling Pullman cars if that wasn't the case.

It is dependent on loading: there is a degree of gnashing of teeth on a certain railway that their dining train isn't able to turn a profit, but with a four coach train having only fifty-odd seats it seems to me they have got the wrong set of carriages.

An important point is that it diversifies your market, which is important in helping to balance out the highs and lows of different market sectors.

Oh, and we frequently use a Class 1P tank engine or class 1F 0-6-0 goods engine for our dining train ...

Tom

 

That is a positive step to contain costs and maintain a branch line feel at least.

 

....and highly authentic with a train of Pullman carriages.... not!

 

So how do you maintain a Main Line feel on the GCR without "Big Chuffers"?
...but back to Swanage....and I'm hoping to visit over the next few days and looking forward to a ride behind "Eddystone" if possible.

 

The railway is only permitted to do 25m.p.h. It has a 2 MT which would be perfectly adequate.

 

Paul, you are entitled to your opinion. But it is a stuck record.

 

They are in exact agreement with comments made to me a couple of years ago by a GCR supporter.

 

Yes, as we all know, all GCR supporters think exactly the same way and therefore if one person has one opinion it is identically shared with all other supporters. There is no difference of opinion at all among them, they all think alike. (Spot the sarcasm)
I'm sure for every GC supporter who thinks having a class 2 at the front is fine, there is another who thinks having a 9F or 8F or Brit or class 5 adds something extra that a little loco doesn't offer. Open your mind to the possibility that there can be more than one acceptable way to do it. (Last time I checked the GC hadn't gone bust from running bit engines so it clearly is at the bare minimum, good enough)

 

There are people who are in agreement that COVID doesn’t exist. Just because someone agrees with you doesn’t make you right.

 

And it's not like the GCR has a line of 2MTs sitting out of use in preference to 9Fs and black fives either...