Swanage Railway General Discussion

I'm not connected with the the Swanage Railway, other than as a casual visitor on a couple of occasions this year so far. As it happens, I had planned another visit today but family issues ruled that out in the end. I do think it is a rather good short line, but I have grave doubts about Wareham running, and perhaps we are seeing some indications that Wareham running may be more trouble than it is worth.

 

We are hamstrung by WCR pathings to/from Wareham. The core timetable has to work around that.

 

Yes I think most of us realise that but does the Wareham service need to run through to Swanage? Wouldn’t starting/ finishing at Corfe help?

 

I do think Wareham services only going to Norden/Corfe would be better. That would mean you could run an hourly Wareham service (not every 2 hours now) so unless at the absolute peaks the class 117 would be enough with the 121 being spare.
Then that allows a 40/45 two train service between Norden and Swanage.
With people changing at either Norden or Corfe

 

I will say again this was mooted and Steve Jenkins prepared some draft working timetables on that basis. Sadly the powers that be decided that it had to run Swanage <> Wareham possibly because it is operating as the "second service" in 2023 whereas in 2017 it was the second service in the shoulder season (green timetable) and the third service in the peak season (yellow timetable which became purple on Wareham operating days).

 

I’ve no involvement with the Swanage but I do have with the NYMR and running to Whitby. Although it is not preferred we do set swaps at Grosmont for various operational reasons and they are not popular with the travelling public who have just got nicely settled in their seats with the kids and are then uprooted and have to battle for seats again. Even worse when there are traffic flows in both directions with a train load of passengers waiting to get on and another train load wanting to get off. The NYMR prefers to do it between platforms 3 & 4 because it is across platform rather than changing platforms. That facility doesn’t exist at Corfe or Norden. Not a good idea IMHO unless a majority of passengers are only travelling to these two places.

 

last Saturday enumerators were counting passenger numbers on every train that I was on so presumably these numbers will help the railway decide on future services

 

Operationally it would be much easier. However it has to be remembered there is also a political element to this. DCC provided £3M of funding for the Worgret resignalling work. What are they expecting in return for that investment? A service just to Corfe, or a full branch service.

 

All water under the bridge. The money is spent, and can’t be recovered. Somewhere there will be an officer report that gathers dust on a (metaphorical) electronic shelf that assesses the cost / benefit of reduced car journeys into Swanage, and that will be about it. The Council - both on the officer and member side - has far more pressing financial issues to address now. Whatever the aspirations were ten or more years ago, they will be well and truly dead and buried in the current reality. Hardly the only pre-Covid scheme in any of a multitude of organisations that looked good on paper that would have failed on contact with the post-Covid (*) world.

(*) Used as a shorthand for the entire raft of current simultaneous “changed world” challenges - Covid, Brexit, Ukraine, Cost of living crisis etc

Tom

 

Changing the subject , on a lighter note, but still related, if I posted that a Q class had worked the branch in the days of steam many of you would no doubt say 'well that's gricerdon at it again', but here is the proof,. 30546 working the 0715 Swanage to Bournemouth West on Saturday 18th April 1964.

 

I thought they had been reasonably common visitors?

There’s a photo of 30548 at Wareham here:

https://sremg.org.uk/location/wareham2.html

Tom

 

And there is another picture of 30548 entering Corfe (picture 59 wrongly captioned as 30458) of it entering Corfe on 6/4/53 in the Middleton Press book on the branch. I understood they were not common, but not exactly rare either.
I thought I had seen an image somewhere of one working a ball clay train.

 

Given that only 20 were built I would have thought that they would not be that common across the Southern system

 

I believe at least 30541 was allocated to Bournemouth at one stage. In APM Wright's book on the branch Stan Symes, the well known Bournemouth driver, is quoted as saying that first turn he did in charge of a train as a passed fireman was to take over a 10 coach train at Bournemouth from a Bulleid with 30541 and take the train through to Swanage.

 

Bournemouth was one of the sheds where they were based though …

The MLS website for 541 mentions that many photos exist of 541 specifically on the Swanage Branch.

Tom

 

In it's last days see someone has added "Bandwagon the Beatles" maybe as they had a scene in Hard Days Night where they played a song in a train's guard's area.
Fortunately 30541 survives at the Bluebell, which reminded me the band "After the fire" asked on FB if anyone had photos when they played on a train at the Bluebell, will ask on the Bluebell thread for them.

Hopefully there will be a way for another year of the Wareham DMU, and then a way of 31806 working to and from Wareham?

 

https://www.southern-locomotives.co.uk/News/news.html
Good updates on several locos including 80104

 

Indeed, it’s a shame 541 has never been able to visit Swanage in preservation.


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It’s not really though is it? DCC haven’t forgotten they have spent that money. They also have a clause in place that enables them to impose an outside operator to run the service, if the Swanage railway fail too, and the SR would be forced to grant access to its tracks for these services.

How likely is that to happen? Perhaps not very. However the SR needs to be mindful of the political implications, and can’t simply dismiss it as ‘£3M, thank you very much but that’s water under the bridge now.’