Kent & East Sussex Railway

I have multiple railways from which to chose. I like to photograph and ride behind as many different locos as possible and I’m not alone in that. A simple social media post on what is planned to be running helps me decide where to go and spend my money. I did gamble on the KESR last year and to my delight I got Hastings for haulage but I wouldn’t make multiple visits in the hope of getting a different loco. Oddly they have published a timetable and roster for the Dwarves of Steam so why not for regular timetabled services? And don’t give me that “customers may get aggressive if the rostered loco isn’t available” stuff as special events are not immune from last minute changes or don’t gala visitors get upset if a loco dfails at the last minute?

 

I suspect the toys / pram de-interface scenario is probably more likely when a gala doesn't go according to plan, rather than an ordinary day.

For my own purposes, I don't tend to mind much which loco is hauling a train, but I do at least like to know which are steam and which are diesel for railways that run "mixed" timetables. I also like to know rolling stock, again particularly on a railway where there is a choice of Mark 1s and non-Mark 1s. But I suspect that is a somewhat niche view.

As volunteers, we've started to get a much longer range view of intended locos than previously, using HOPS. My guess is that within the shed staff who do the planning, there was probably always that same long-term plan, because of the needs to match loco to train weight, and allow for washouts, minor maintenance etc. But now it is more apparent to all volunteers, rather than just a spreadsheet on someone's PC. The IT nerd in me can think of ways you could make that information available on a railway's public website, but the IT manager in me realises it would be a reasonably complex (= expensive) bit of programming for a very marginal benefit, particularly because even though on the internal side, many railways have standardised on HOPS to manage operational information, for the public side every website is different - so there is little economy of scale.

(I suspect it probably takes between 5 and 30 minutes to update an online roaster, and you would do it weekly - so automating it needs to take less than a few days to be worthwhile over a five year timespan).



Tom

 

I will pass your comments on to the staff who definitely have been confronted with aggressive customers after the advertised engine was not the one that ran the service. I am sure they will welcome your doubt with the same grace that I welcome standing in dog eggs. And no, we weren't talking about engines not appearing for galas, but in these cases, people getting upset on standard service days.

 

I’ve suffered from disgruntled folk while volunteering but I still don’t think that’s a reason for not providing the information. I note that there’s plenty of info about which locos are working which trains at the forthcoming gala. Why that but not regular running days?
As an aside, I asked the question on one of the KESR FB pages. I have yet to receive a reply.

 

Depends which KESR site you asked on. Most are unofficial, and run by one man with issues....

 

Says the man who is outraged by the suggestion that a loco roster would bring more business to the KESR…..

 

Of course if you were using an SAP system the y axis should read how much extra time do you have to add on

 

The loco department one.

 

Changing the subject, I'm wondering what these signal aspects mean. They are on the approaches to Wittersham Road from both directions.

 

Top signal refers to the platform road and lower one to the loop. Colonel Stephens didn’t have signalling at Wittersham Road but where he did, he didn’t run to the expense of brackets just mounted several signals on the same post!

 

There is a similar signal in the up direction at Kingscote, i.e. with two arms on one post. The reason there is I believe insufficient width to make a more conventional bracket signal within the confines of a cutting, so the two arms for the two platforms are one above the other rather than side by side. Of course, it is a preservation-era fitting, the original station wouldn't have had a signalled entry into both platforms.

Tom

 

At Tenterden, one post had signals for both directions of travel!

(Photo By Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16964400)

 

It is covered by standard signalling principles.
Topmost signal reads to leftmost route, and next down reads for next route reading from the left.
I believe the principle was more commonly seen on stacked shunting signals, but is perfectly valid for running signals as well.

 

Maintained by one or two volunteers, who only look at it when they have the chance. Ask on the main KESR one.

 

I am not outraged by the suggestion. Can you please point me to where I have said that I am? Or are you just trying to be offensive?

 

Thanks for all the answers, especially this one stating the rule for which signal applies to which route when they can't be offset as usual.

Edit: corrected typo "offest" to "offset".

 

But would they give me the answer in case I became aggressive should the loco fail before I got there? FYI I visited places over the weekend where I knew what I was going to see.

 

I suspect they would, if they themselves knew. Being volunteers, they're not always there, and won't always know. And good for you. So sorry that we don't provide a service that you clearly believe is essential, and should be mandatory.

 

Visited and travelled on seven lines since Friday morning upto this afternoon ..six of the seven indicated (accurately) which locos would be running ,without which they wouldn’t have been visited .
The seventh I was sort of passing and had never been before so all but one loco were required .