Swanage Railway Diesel Gala May 10 -12 2024

Not sure AAIB staff are so sensitive, but if they got mistaken for CAA not really an issue. At the moment if you are RAIB you may not want enthusiasts thinking you are ORR

 

Err, not quite right.
Its a public right of way.
Hence why the side gate is open along with the barrow crossing gates when no trains are running.
This is a reason why we cannot sell platform tickets to the hoards that take photos from the down platform London end, of the castle and trains arriving.

 

Interesting, there's nothing shown on the Dorset definitive map.

I'm not sure that makes any difference either, the articles I was reading earlier made it clear that it was the ownership that was important, not the access rights - their example being the major London Parks that are freely accessible to the public, but are actually privately owned.

 

Just on the gala itself... gosh what a lot the organisers had to deal with between failures, problems and the Corfe incident. I noticed a lot of complaints about communication and information as everything went awry, particularly on the Friday, and from my own experience (and my dad's as he was there for two days), yes, this could've been better - but it was also such a set of evolving and challenging situations I'm not sure there was chance to formulate much of a plan to communicate to other stations, everyone was just doing the best they could to keep things moving.
And yes, I did spend a lot more time stood still than I expected to when there on Friday and missed out on some of what would've been my personal highlights (the 20s and 37) but the great thing about Swanage is that with the line length, gradients and attitudes of the crews/organisers, even if your day turns into a case of just leaping on the first train that seems to be moving in any direction and crossing your fingers, it's going to be fun. I still had really entertaining times with 50026 and the Western in particular, and dad reported some good runs with the 33s too.

 

Our plan for such galas is normally to chose places on the first train we can get to and stay put waiting for locos to changes as we go through the day . When we have had enough we bale put to do some photing

 

I see Swanning Around this month has a detailed update on the 4TC unit. Quite a way to go.