Swanage Railway General Discussion

Well thats about double the number of "santa specials" that used to be operated. 4 trains per day and 13 (approx) operating days.

I wonder what the capacity per train is - the old Santa Specials were about 222 IIRC.

 

I was the guard and blooming wet by the end of the day.

 

Looking at the booking website 376 per train
5 x Mk1
1 x Maunsell
Plus an access carriage, half brake?.

 

Thats a lot of capacity to shift! I wonder how the staff are going to manage the "crowds" when they have 300+ people getting off a Polar Express and 300+ people waiting to get on the next one.

The platforms (well it really is one) at Swanage Station seemed full to the max on the old Santa Special days. Likewise managing the toilet capacity at Swanage Station may be quite a challenge.

 

It is only one more coach than the lights trains have been and they were at an interval of 2 hours and it seemed to work OK. Maybe more of a challenge if a lot turn up early and what to hang around outside the station, but that did not seem to happen with the lights, perhaps too cold or wet in December. I am sure there will be a plan.
Your toilet point is well made, especially as I can never seem to get those combined soap, water and dryer things to work for me.

 

Really hard to say but if there are more day time departures (like the Santa Specials) then experience suggests that quite a few come over to Swanage to make a day of it - especially the day when it is the Swanage Christmas Fair. If the ferry is out on overhaul then again that may encourage some to come over earlier. As all Purbeckians know the time to get on or off the Isle of Purbeck (or to / from the Bakers Arms roundabout) varies enormously.

Let us hope that the plan is sufficiently robust and flexible to cope with any eventuality.

 

https://thepolarexpress.seetickets....s?outputStyle=Default&pageIndex=1&pageSize=30
Looks like they are encouraging passengers to arrive early!
"TRAVEL - Sadly there is no main line rail station at Swanage, so please allow plenty of time to reach Swanage by road. If for any reason you arrive too late to board the train you are booked on, we will do our best to accommodate you on the next available train, but we cannot always guarantee this will be possible on the same day due to the large demand expected for the experience."

Sadly no Wareham DMU shuttle as this could have helped those traveling on the mainline (there is still the bus! but with railtrack all the way seems a retrograde step)

 

Allegedly, the 'fiasco' that was last year's major overhaul, should mean the ferry does not need much (if any) time out of action this winter - but I'm not holding my breath!

 

So apart from needing more volunteers (DMU driver and guard, Norden Gates box, HX box? signallers, maybe someone at Wareham as a steward for those who are not regular rail users) it would also need (a presumably WCRC) mainline driver and guard at some cost.
You then have the issue of what sort of connection you are offering with trips every two hours, and some allowance for late running, especially by SWR, it really does not work, and means that for the first trip at least you have to run ECS back to Wareham to pick up those for the second trip.
Then how many are going to want to spend time in November and December on Wareham station, a place with no open waiting room and no facilities for most of the time these trains would run.
The only place you could put the DMU at Swanage if it ran would be in the bay and there may be other plans for things to be parked there for all I know. Plus with a 7 coach two loco train not even sure if the signalling circuits would allow you to access the bay anyway.
The reason I suspect the booking website talks about car parks is because it is the logical way for families to arrive. Even the bus with both the 40 and 50 being hourly, the same Wareham station issue applies and the 50 normally being part open top even in the depth of winter makes public transport an unattractive option to most families I suspect.
And finally how would you know how many would come by rail, and this runs for a large number of days so could seriously impact the SR finances if it does not cover its costs.

 

But it's a family event - the typical party is likely to be two adults and two children, probably quite young. Adding two extra mainline train tickets (plus possibly child tickets) to what is already an expensive visit is a hard sell (relative to a car which - even though they do have running costs - are basically already absorbed and therefore people will perceive them differently). Not to mention the faff of doing a journey with two young children that would have - if coming from beyond Wareham - at least two awkward connections each way adding to the journey time. It would be a non-starter for the vast majority of families.

Not to mention a non-starter from an operating point of view. If you are operating a high-profile, complex event with fixed timings, do you want to introduce a dependency on an element that you have no control over, i.e. the timekeeping of services on the mainline? The rational response is to keep anything extraneous to your core plan to a minimum.

Tom

 

Checked and back in 2018 the Santa train did not have a Norden car park shuttle train.

 

Being ultra cynical in all matters to do with the Sandbanks Ferry I suspect they would quite happily have a longer period of not running in the winter because I suspect the revenues are less than the operating costs. (I do not know how many of their staff are permanent and have to be paid come what may or how many are on zero hours type contracts).

It may also be quite handy to have a breakdown if it enables them yet again to peddle the line that the ferry is completely knackered, the new one will cost £xxM and therefore the fares have to go up yet again by more than the rate of inflation to pay for a new ferry.

 

The Santa shuttles were dropped for a number of reasons but principally staffing them (including Norden Station) and the complexity it added to the operation.

 

A very succinct description of the appeal (or lack thereof) of the Wareham service to families and indeed possibly to even just "couples" travelling together. Of course this does not just effect how passengers may travel to partake of the Santa Specials or Polar Express but also to the regular heritage steam operation.

 

Not everyone has a car, or want to take a car if a train is available.

After the season peak railtours are starting to appear. Leeds to Swanage by HST in September! Something different.
https://www.modernrailways.com/article/mr-and-xc-swanage-railtour

 

This lot must be Stanier or Churchward fans. They seem to have no interest in one of Mr. Bulleid's fine products

 

If so, perhaps you should tell them to put Wednesday 13th September in their bovine diaries as Bahamas is due to be paying a visit that day.

 

The latest video from 563 Chairman Nathan Au.

It's a great episode.

 

That's a load of bull(eid)!

 

Good news, till then
https://www.swanagerailway.co.uk/events/view/kids-for-a-quid
"Kids travel for a quid from Sat, 22 June to Sun, 3 September 2023
Includes Wareham Services"
Hopefully will encourage more visitors from the SWR mainline? and some families with children who may have not visited a steam railway before?.