Swanage Railway General Discussion

Seen heading through Oxford

 

Ever a noted far outpost for Southern locos, Oxford!

 

Should have been Monday but a GSM-R fault caused the light engine movement to be stopped at Burton ot Wetmore Sidings and, after being fixed, resumed it's journey south on 24th.
Next scheduled movement for D6515 will be hauling 50026 (still at Swanage) so they both appear at next month's K&WVR Gala: https://kwvr.co.uk/event/diesel-gala/2022-06-10/

 

Reposted from Project Wareham.

Reading the headlines on "travel chaos", hope the SR do better over the next few days with the "jubilee" timetable, should give an indication if things will get back to normal over the summer.
Hopefully with Manston getting ready for return there should be enough steam locos for the timetable.
I also see the preparations for the Road to Rail event is progressing with an evening diesel service, not clear if this will be DMU or 33 with MK1 carriages?

 

Give those DMUs an outing! Don't the experts tell us not to keep our cars sitting too long,. Brake pads, engine lubrication etc
so,if indeed, numbers are down, that is going to make for some very interesting AGMs as ambitions are(again) curtailed.
The matters of volunteering, fuel etc have been exhaustively discussed. Its not going to get any better any time soon is it?
I always thought that it would be Swanage that led HR into the evolution of our "saved" railways
So cue the dissenters and........
GBR and Restoring your Railways could be part of the 21st century Preservation scene. Hold On!

 

Very good article on Dorset Live re. The most traditional Dorset seaside Resort.The "train" station is featured. Industrious bunch those Victorians.
Are we progressing or regressing?

 

For the first time this year there are sufficient visitors to have to use the overflow car park. So maybe not a great day for the railway to be having another "unscheduled mini gala" day with three different locos on the first three trains.
The U seems to have been a little like an F1 car where the mechanics can never quite fix the problem this week.
It seemed to be going OK when I took the image at Dickers when it was working the 10:00 service, but after Dickers it sounded as if it slowed towards New Barn and sounded unusual as I walked back up that steep hill to the Valley Road. D6515 worked the 11:20, although I had noticed 257 had been lit up this morning, maybe as a precaution as there is Wessex Belle tonight I believe.
The appearance of 257 interrupted my lunch, but worth the walk as I have only have an image of that disc code on a freight working before (how sad am I to have a disc and lamp code section on my Swanage Smugmug site).

 

The pollution will get even more of the coal cut off and disalowed the government will be sending inspectors round soon to cut all coal burning in houses that have them

 

For goodness sake SR be a little more careful about chucking smoke out like that particularly in the middle of a town.

 

Sadly, due to the well known supply issues, this new batch of coal is naturally more smokey.

 

I hope it is no more than not adapting firing technique so far to suit different supplies. Don't assume those who are living nearby will be tolerant for ever. Incidentally I just watched a webcam where the locomotive had an absolutely smoke free exhaust.

 

Give it a rest will you, I had to leave the forum before when you p*****d me off so much, trying again are you!
Most railways seem to have to use coal that burns darker now, the loco based on my observations was steamed in a hurry yesterday and was covering a failure.
Of course nothing ever goes wrong in that rock out in Swanage Bay does it?

 

Yes its possible, but it just takes a trip or two to adjust to it. I'm sure everything will be fine once crews get used to it.

 

Meanwhile a bit of proactive PR might not go amiss.

 

A reasonable response to this picture would be along the lines of "sorry for this, as we get the hang of this stuff, things will get better''. Perhaps in the present situation it would be better to bring out the diesel rather than a hurriedly prepared steam locomotive.

Every line has problems from time to time. However, the fewer pictures of clouds of black smoke coming out from steam locomotives the better for preserved lines.

 

It's rising quite far up but doesn't seem to be drifting onto the road so it isn't quite as egregious as fire raising.

 

Same loco, same day, I suspect same crew, loco warmed up (only the headcode made be bother to go out for the image for my collection) .
More to your taste!

 

If Swanage are using the same batch of coal as we are, then it is quite smoky - not the worst I’ve seen, but much smokier than the dreaded ovoids which, for whatever their other faults, were essentially smokeless.

That said, I’d be careful over-interpreting one photo which is only a snapshot in time. A photo may not lie, but it can tell a partial truth: what did the loco look like 15 seconds earlier, or later?

There is steam from the drain docks, but judging from the position, it has either not moved, or at most half a wheel or so, from rest. So I think a plausible scenario is that the fireman has built up a fire in the normal way; with this coal you can control the smoke by keeping the doors open. The guard gives the right away, and the fireman shuts the doors (to prevent a big wodge of cold air being drawn onto the tubes with the opening hard chuffs). The driver opens the regulator, then immediately shuts it again to pre-empt a slip. At that point you stir up the fire, creat a cloud of smoke which hangs around because there is no real draft to disperse it and no top air to consume it. Driver opens up again, loco starts to move and very quickly as he notched up, the fireman can crack the doors and the smoke disperses under a harder draft.

Whether that is precisely what happened none of us will know: we weren’t on the footplate. I only mention it as a common scenario, but to caution against interpreting a single photo as a depiction of the prevalent situation: fifteen seconds before and fifteen seconds after there may have been no smoke. (Had the loco been sitting for many minutes creating smoke, I might have expected more haze in the air).

Smoke is an issue, and I don’t mean to downplay it. I think it is beholden on everyone involved in the movement to think carefully about how we portray ourselves, and excessive smoke is one such issue - no point giving those antipathetical to our industry another weapon against us. But equally, it is also important to understand the reality of a situation, rather than just repeat the perception.

Tom

 

Assuming the picture shows a departure from the normal starting location then the train has moved about half a coach length.
It is still standard practice on the railway, I believe, to be taught to 'pump' the regulator of a Bulleid on starting from rest.
From reports elsewhere it does seem this was 257 Squadron's first departure after being prepared somewhat faster than usual to cover a failure.
I believe the blower may have been on hard, rather than just cracked, judging by the vertical exhaust this early in the journey. The regulator would have been nowhere near fully open to cause such exhaust.
Fortunately the boiler was already warm but, unfortunately, the fire was not able to be built up in the normal way due to pressure of time.
Not an excuse - just an explanation from my viewpoint as a retired driver on the railway.

 

With the best will in the world, burning coal will create particles of carbon, more commonly referred to as soot. It is even the case when burning the lower volatile coals. When stationary these particles of soot tend to settle on the tubes and other surfaces in the smokebox that they come into contact with. If the loco has been stood for a while, this build up of soot can be significant. Once the regulator is opened when the loco leaves the station the through draft thus created picks up the soot particles and they are ejected as black smoke. It may only last a few seconds but it is inevitable. Take your photo at the wrong moment and you have captured this brief emission forever.