Swanage Railway General Discussion

Unusual only in that it doesn't happen that frequently I would have thought - but, perhaps, I'm wrong in making that assumption.

 

The dual heated Mark 1 coaches on Swanage Railway have BR electric heaters. There is no voltage restriction.
The Swanage Railway did have one SR ETH coach; TSO 4055. But the ETH equipment was stripped out and steam heating fitted when it was converted to a Bar Car.

Class 67 ETH output is 850v.
The nominal ‘1000 volts’ BR ETH is only actually supplied by AC electric locos.
Diesel locos eg Class 47 are 850 - 950v depending on load.

 

Final departure of 2025 sees some frost still on the sleepers and the T3 looking impressive leaving Swanage.
I do not know if it was the same crew all day, but whoever was driving the 10:40 did really well to keep the train moving when I watched it from the house this morning. I thought it had actually come to a stand at one point such was the level of forward momentum. My slowest recorded time to Victoria Avenue Bridge out of platform 2 is 4 minutes 44 secs (strangely with 80104 on a sunny day with 5 coaches ), I suspect the T3 exceeded that this morning with its four coaches.
As an aside does anyone know what the situation is regarding season tickets at the warm up. I assume this is an "event" and not valid but with no discount unlike the Autumn Gala. I emailed the railway and received the answer "Normal discounts will apply." That I am afraid means nothing to me, and whilst I have no issue in paying the excellent value of £32.50 I might me somewhat miffed if a season ticket holder in the bay opposite waves his ticket at the TTI who says that's fine.

 

From the we cams it seems the winter warm up is an early 2026 success!

Lots of people, and a timetable that finaly allows a journey along the entire line without falling behind!

Set A looks brilliant with the historic cars. Overall 12 coaches i believe are being used

 

T3 No.563 working a River Frome train away from Corfe Castle on Saturday 3rd January with U Class 31806 on the rear to work the return trip to Swanage,

 

I was thinking the same today. Spent an hour and a half at Norden watching the trains this morning and things looked quite busy. Great to see this for the start of the year!

Sadly, the second part of your comment hadn't quite occurred as the first main service from Swanage - River Frome was about 15-20 minutes late arriving to Norden. They had recovered some, but not all, of the delay by the time the second service made it back to Norden from the River.

Edit: Turns out we were very right about how busy it felt. The railway has announced via it's Facebook page that they welcomed twice as many visitors this year to the Winter Warmup as they did last year: https://www.facebook.com/swanagerai...FJqAN7egc8KVUfPkLUZRzvVdMk4r24XGifASppsjcfQyl

 

Yep double the amount of tickets sold which is incredible!

They did have to steam up 4 steam however, do we know if coal prices have dropped year on year?


Im currently reading the winter 2025 magazine , the bar-car is being sold and leaving the railway in Jan.


The big news from the CEO
“2026, we have some exciting new developments, including progress towards the Blue Pool extension”

Does anyone know what this means?


Potentially a Blue pool station and extending services on a normal timetable , or gaining the siding space there (but looking at the railway today they aren’t short on siding space like they used to be).
Any ideas?

Thanks Thomas

 

My pie in the sky opinion has always been that getting access to the Furzebrook sidings site and building a new, rail connected works to replace Herston Works would be a great idea. More undercover storage, no more having to hire low loaders in to move locos from the Works to the RRI at Norden etc seems like a fantastic plan. Swanage has always lacked the restoration facilities we see at other railways and a new works facility at Furzebrook would solve that!

In more realistic terms though, I am guessing this is referring to a Halt at Blue Pool as discussed in this Corfe Castle Parish meeting document from mid 2025: https://www.corfecastleparishcounci...e-Railway-Stakeholder-Day-Report-18-07-25.pdf

The document notes that Blue Pool was chosen since it's a little further away from the Perenco boundary making it a more visually appealing location which makes sense, but does raise the question of how the service will work. Either they'll need to build a new run round loop, operate all services top & tail, or only use the DMUs (or 33+4TC when that is restored).

 

From my understanding, DMU service to a temporary platform adjacent on the upside of Pikes Bridge, which is the exit road from Blue Pool

 

Right this sounds positive -
I’m thinking originally they wanted a platform on the loop section which looks directly out to the oil sidings. Temporary station sounds good - cheaper and more flexible for future.


It Wouldn’t be hard to put in an extra point and allow a run around facility anyway if they wanted to extend the steam service .

A two-service timetable, could be an 45/50 mins frequency. (Allowing an extra 5/10 mins of running time ).

I would personally think that’s better rather than having the 2nd service only being Corfe-Blue Pool and means people have greater choice on an overall frequent timetable for the entire line .

Intresting year ahead

 

It will be at Blue Pool Crossing rather than Pikes Bridge.

 

Just to confirm where exactly is that ?

 

If you go onto Google Earth and follow the line north from Norden, you’ll see the line pass under Cats Eye Bridge (A351). It’s around a third of a mile north of here, just after the line straightens out heading towards Furzebrook.

 

Ah, that makes sense, flatter ground.

 

Yep not too hard a job. Earthworks to turn a single track formation into double track for 5 coach trains, drainage and associated works. Purchase of pointwork, rodding ground frames etc. Labour to install the above, certainly would get change from £ 5000,000. Be cheaper to just pay for taxi's.

 

Don’t be silly ,

You wouldn’t do that as Furzebrook has everything other than 1 point connection on the Wareham side which is only 0.25/0.5 miles beyond said location of platform. You don’t need anything other than ground frames if it’s just the Corfe/Nordon and beyond -Token

Simple:
1) Drop off passengers, go 0.25/0.5 miles further to runaround at furzebrook then come back and pick up passengers.

 

There are plans in place for if the trial is a success, but I think we should wait and see what the outcome of the trial is first before we get the crayons out. The new service hasn’t even been officially announced by the railway yet.

 

I won’t comment on the signalling cost, but to do the move you have just outlined safely, you have probably added 20 minutes to the allowance needed for a run round. (i.e. if a Norden run round currently takes 15 minutes, under this plan you need to allow 35 minutes).

Essentially you have to de-train the arriving passengers; prevent any new passengers waiting on the platform from boarding; confirm the train is empty, despatch it; then draw forward into the (remote) loop; then run round; then do the brake continuity test; then draw back into the platform, then board the new passengers. By contrast, without the additional move, all the de-training happens while the loco crew are already uncoupling and running round; and new passengers can be boarding while you couple up and do the brake test. Essentially, even ignoring the time taken to actually move, you have changed a process where lots of things happen in parallel to one in which they have to happen in sequence.

Shunting an empty train out of a platform that is nonetheless open for passengers is not a trivial operation - yes, you have a procedure such that it can be done safely, but it is time consuming, and that has an impact on timetabling. (Not to mention the actual distance travelled, which may not be far but is done at low speed. 1/2 mile done each way at 5-10mph will add ten minutes just in its own).

Tom

 

Could it not operate like the extension to the river?

Make Furzebrook a destination without a station,?
Stop at Blue Pool (2 mins), stop at the remote runaround (10 mins) and then back to Blue Pool (2mims stop) then on to Swanage. Runarounds can normally be done in 10 mins. Blue Pool to Remote run around 2-3 mins. Total time around 20 mins from arrival and departure at Blue Pool.

People have an option to remain if on they want, like they do when it goes to the river even though they don’t have a station there.

Not exactly a runaround but locos detached and reattached on the approach to Swanage with people on the train


Yes nothings been officially announced but can’t wait for a potential 2026 service !

 

Well that's now a different way of operating - your initial thought was to have a platform, with a remote run round loop. My contention is that doing so would have big impacts on the frequency you could run.

In operating, most things are possible. A station remote from a run round loop; a run-round in the middle of nowhere (with passengers staying on the train); loco changes remote from a station; top-and-tailing, propelling moves - all of those are possible, and all of them do, or have, existed at one place or another. But saying something is possible is not the same as saying it is desirable in regular operation. On the Swanage, the "value" of rare track means that top-and-tailing to River Frome bridge is probably worth the effort at a gala. Would you want to do it in normal service though? Of course not, it adds significant cost for comparatively little benefit for regular passengers. In that light - would a platform at Blue Pool with a run-round loop 1/2 mile further on work operationally? You could devise rules to make it work safely, but I'd suggest that if you intended it to be a part of core operations, it adds an undesirable amount of extra time (which in effect translates into additional operating cost if the additional time translates into needing to operate more trains to maintain an adequate service interval).

Tom