Swanage Railway General Discussion

Thank you kindly. Happiness is Manston shaped!

Bryan

 

And a couple more of 34070 from Saturday

 

Swanage Railway February 2025.

 

Good pictures of Manston, hope the halfterm running and volunteer weekend went well.

The facebook link worked for me and was a video of the new carriage shed taken from a passing train, obviously no work being done on the shed panels when trains are moving, but prompted a discussion about safety and operation of the new shed.
Passengers will not see much of the carriages from passing trains, but the important thing is they will be protected from the weather, but no doubt the renovated heritage carriages will be travelling on the line, rather than always staying in the shed.
Also there are good photos of how well Eddystone is progressing it's update for mainline operation in the workshop

 

Work on the carriage shed is nearing completion.

All the roof panels have been put in place as seen at the weekend .

When on the bus tour on Saturday they mentioned a brand new water filter for the water tower so the water isn’t has hard which will reduce boiler maintenance. Does anyone know more about this and is this the same as the long standing plan for brand new water tower and river extraction ????

If not is that project dead?

 

The water tower is still listed as a project that needs funds
https://www.swanagerailwaytrust.org/giving
But the website has not been updated for a while.

Guess this weekend the satellite unit on the train was under test, and is a Oneweb unit (where the UK Government that provided the grant has a sharehold)?
Is there any fixed satellite receiver at Purbeck Park and station under test?

Presumably if all goes well other locations in the UK will get satellite links and the Oneweb investment might work out.
https://www.cityam.com/uk-taxpayer-faces-200m-loss-from-bailout-of-oneweb/
A government spokesperson said: “Share prices fluctuate in the short term but this was a long-term investment. The Government’s investment in OneWeb has already created around 400 UK jobs, and our stake in the merged entity will help bring jobs and improved connectivity for years to come.”

 

In the early stages of this project the opportunity of getting a reverse osmosis plant was investigated. However, it proved to be too good at filtering water as it was to come from a chemical plant I believe. Hopefully, a suitable one has now been located. The abstraction licence, I believe, applied to a local spring outlet but don't know what the current position is I'm afraid.

I have seen the new wi-fi set up on the roof at Purbeck Park so that car parking can be paid for without cash at last. I haven't been on Norden platform to see if anything is installed there.

I believe the grant for the 9015 satellite aerial and related equipment along the line is for a one year contract. What happens in 12 months time I have no idea.

 

Thanks, guess the satellite link could also be used for a more reliable realtimetrains telemetry link which will give better data for the passenger info boards and also running stats for 2025.
Another thing to add to the new CEOs to do list?

 

Does anyone know current price roughly for coal per tonne, has this declined since the peak and last year.

I know Swanage did okay last year with increased passenger numbers and reducing fix costs, if coal has declined little further that could all help... if only we could dig up say,,, 50,000 tonnes of coal very cheaply from our own country that would massively help keeping our heritage alive.

Always interesting to see the news regarding burning other material but its all gone quiet on that front, perhaps cause coals become little cheaper?

 

T3 reported to be in service this weekend. Can anyone confirm please? <BJ>

 

It has been on the shed the last couple of days, just heading off to the Coop I will see what is happening.

 

No fire appears to have been lit yet, a few people around it. So it will need someone from the railway to confirm if it is working.

 

I had an unsolicited e-mail offeringPolish coal at £330/tonne delivered, this week. That's for an artic load.

 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14yFUek3N9/

Sent from my SM-A137F using Tapatalk

 

Did they say whether they could guarantee supply at that price?

 

Vaping

 

No, but as they have several thousand tons on the floor I would expect that price to hold until it is all gone. The next load may well change in price but that has by the case for a long time.

 

But what coal? Brown ****, crumbly no heat, black rock...

 

@Tom02 simply asked about the cost of a tonne of coal and I provided an indication of that. If it was rubbish I wouldn’t have bothered.