West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I presume that you mean Tuesday 8th July? The only 'half empty' trains today were the last round trip of the day. The 1040 departure was fully booked, the 1000 and 1430 departures were 90% or more booked. We had 6 coaches deliver parties of very content passengers to travel on those trains.

 

Why people pay inflated prices to ride behind Flying Scotsman ( AKA "Flying Moneypit") is beyond me . But, luckily for heritage railways , they do.

 

Preserved Railways must be thankful that Flying Scotsman attracts passengers.
On many occasions, business/accounting type people have become directors of Preserved Railways and found that they are a ridiculously bad business model. And only survive by the good grace of supporters.
Any hefty slug of profit over fixed costs, is very welcome.

 

In my view the ‘good grace’ business model is one of the greatest achievements of the Heritage Railway movement. Any director who does not see the importance of motivating people to volunteer so much of their time & money, for nothing but the satisfaction of keeping the railway alive, is not fit to run a (voluntary) whelk stall.

 

Normally yes but the railway is running to a special timetable. When Scotsman is in service she departs BL at 10:40. The next departure is not until 14:30.
When Scotsman departs BL at 15:00, the next departure is the evening diner at 18:45. <BJ>

 

Don't forget it has to come back from Minehead each time as well!

 

Yes, I appreciate that Ian but the discussion was about spotting lineside fires. When Scotsman departs from Minehead, the next service departs just half an hour behind it and could deal with or report any incidents. <BJ>

 

Yes, and there is also a security team at many of the vulnerable spots who can be on the watch for any lineside fires.

 

Is there a WSR loco roster publicly available anywhere?

 

it would seem not by the engineman's reaction at Dunster!

 

Things are bad when Doctor Death and his assistant, A Ladder is a more sensible option than climbing on a car roof.

 

Well there’s another 10 minutes of my life I’ll never get back!

 

What training did the Dunster security guard receive ? Where were the ones at either side of Seaward crossing ? Had the barriers come down when Joe Public were on the line, it would have been interesting.

IIRC, all of this was written up last time.

 

The Minehead signalman can pause the descent of the barriers if he can see someone not getting back behind them. I've noticed this happen on the webcam.

 

Absolutely Ian. The whole Minehead departure arrangements are set up to handle
such events,

But Snifter does need to sustain his WSR gripe train.

Michael Rowe

 

What utter yet predictable tosh. Do you have any comments regarding the security bloke bumbling around with his hands in his pockets while the footplate crew were clearly unhappy ?

Perhaps you see no issues and have forgotten what measures were put in place last time around and where they fell short. I would rather see the WSR not appear in the papers for all the wrong reasons, trusting to luck is a very poor strategy.

 

What I wrote about the Minehead level crossing barriers is not tosh - it is completely true.

I was not involved in any of the decisions regarding security, so I cannot comment on the training of that, or any other, security guard.

Please feel free to report the WSR to the ORR if you feel that security measures are inadequate. I'm sure you are itching to find a reason to bring the WSR down.

 

I was referring to Maunsell's ramblings, I'm sorry if that was not clear. There were plenty of lessons learned and recorded first time around and if expressing surprise that they were ignored is "bringing the WSR down" then that's a most surprising and disappointing reaction.

A more responsible approach would be to ask questions for the betterment of the operation, but if that's unpopular then I hope you never see see how unpopular an incident can be.

 

Due to operational issues all planned daytime services for Friday 11th July 2025 are cancelled.

We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and a decision will be made regarding Friday evening services during the morning.

All affected customers have been contacted.

We apologise for the inconvenience and will provide further updates as soon as they are available.

 

Why?