The future of main line steam

Manchester to Blackpool with a Black Five

Run with co-operation between WCR and TransPennine with tickets available from TP and National Rail...

 

Maybe something like the Newton Abbot Festival Of Transport could be organised again?
Only on a region wide basis taking in Devon & Cornwall and utilising an integrated timetable so that people could travel by bus or train .
Something for the Devon and Cornwall tourist boards and local councils to look at maybe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBPC2Ep9e4

 

Yes please! Those runs from Paignton with the pannier were fantastic. Easilly equal (even dare I say more fun)than a King or Castle up Torre Bank / on the seawall!

 

Lack of run-around springs to mind as the obvious problem with St. Ives, Fowey, Looe. Added issue with Looe is the reversal at Coombe Junction. Now a mainline registered GWR Auto train set-up would sort it out...wonder if that would ever be allowed?!?!?

 

Are any of the surviving auto-coaches all-steel? If so, there's a chance. If they are all wooden-framed, I don't think it could happen.

 

Actually there isnt. Mainline registration for vehicles not previously registered requires the structual integrity of a MkII. even a steel bodied autocoach would not be crashworthy enough.

 

Time to convert a pair of Mk2's, then, much as BR(S) did with pre-war Maunsell coaches. Could one provide two sets of control gear, I wonder? Mechanical GW system and pnuematic (Westinghouse pump) SR system. M7-hauled auto-trains to Exmouth, Oakhampton and Barnstable, anyone? (Realms of fantasy again...!)

 

I'd personally like to see more in the way of steam specials around eastleigh. As it is an old railway town and steam trains are really quite popular in the area (just see the people that turn out to see 70013 on easter monday). It is not as though people in thearea can't afford things like this either.

However mainline registration is a pain in the a*** :-$

It is not as if the old railway vehicles (ie not BR Marks) were dangerous, they were crashworthy. It is not as if people died all the time in such rolling stock. [-X

 

Especially when you realise some wooden framed passenger carrying vehicles are running on the mainline, with grandfather rights.

Dave

 

i suppose that counts the VSOE pullmans?

 

Two points worth mentioning.

The VSOE goes round with non passenger carrying Mk1's at either end, these also act as barrier vehicles.

The Queen of Scots (which i presume is mean by the wooden framed stock) is exempt due to it non carrying fair paying passengers, i believe the system is someone hires the set and travel is by invite only (please correct me if wrong)

I've always held the belief that if you hit something at a combined speed of over 120MPH it's goodnight vienna whatever your travelling in, even if the vehicle stood up well think of all those flying people and luggage etc smacking into walls and fixed seats, so maybe it might be sensible to look at some of these older coaches with barrier vehicles ? remember with TPWS & OTMR the mainline is the safest it's ever been,

 

Exactly - its overkill. And of course there is a difference, in that unless like the German ICE that totalled itself into a reinforced concrete abutment, any impact will be cushioned by staged deceleration - albeit forcible.

Look at the Pendolino at Grayrigg - the design earned its spurs that night.

I do think that we have been tremendously lucky with mainline steam never to have had an incident at speed in almost forty years.

I think that speaks volumes for the state of maintenance and the operating capacity of those at the sharp end.

 

Barrier vehicles are all very well, but no good for the auto-train idea. You would end up with more barrier vehicles than usable train!

 

:-$ :-$ :-$

 

A thought right out of the blue for an Auto train, if some of the Cornish branch lines have a low line speed and the service on a particular or day of year is less than intensive, is a plandampf a possibility ?, if there was only one train on the entire branch you could argue theres nothing to collide with.

 

I'm sure an Autocoach could be produced from scratch to modern-day specifications if time and money allowed with all the extras (window-break hammers, glo-sticks etc.) cunningly concealed about the carriage (compartments in the seats?) with safety instructions placed within every other poster frame around the carriage. All we need then is the small matter of mainline registering a 14xx class!