Bluebell Railway General Discussion

Here’s my account from three days linesiding (Swearing at many brambles) during our Spring Gala this year if anyone is interested. A really enjoyable event and hopefully it turns a healthy profit. Was also my first video this year utilising my lineside PTS and I wish I had got it sooner!

 

That was the main challenge with timetabling it, as you can usually make up the water stop with a slightly shorter runround at East Grinstead. With the combination of the longer water stop and usual length runround, you effectively lose 10 minutes each time the Terriers go north, which in turn delays the next up service.

 

Mention was made somewhere about 80151 being turned at some stage. Unless I was dreaming.

Is there a time scale for that please, and will it continue to be operational before and afterwards? As for such an expense I wonder if it going be combined with maintenance of some sort.

Maybe it is going off somewhere and will return facing North.

Be nice to see it at the Spa Valley Railway but I imagine @Jonnie will have words to say about that with the current massive and very expensive https://spavalleyrailway.co.uk/fundraising/broom-lane-bridge-appeal/ Broom Lane Bridge renewal in process.

Bryan

 

Oh, where did you hear that? Not something I have heard is happening, and I can't think why we would want to do so in any case.

It could be turned relatively easily if it were to go on loan somewhere, but I am not aware that any loan agreements to other railways have been announced.

Tom

 

Tom, I thought I read it here on Nat Pres. I must have misread something, as I sometimes skim through here very quickly with my focus very much on extracting images from my digitised video camera tapes of my South African steam loco visits from long ago.

Bryan

 

I'd rather imagine with Diesel at over £1.80 a litre on the Sussex Coast this morning locos moving between railways will be a thing of the past.

 

I doubt it will go away completely. Apart from anything you will inevitably have some railways where hiring a loco is needed to cover a shortage or failure. There will still also be demand at Galas and the like for visiting engines, but you'll likely see some railways get more selective about which engines they look to hire based on what they think will offer a best return for hire and transport costs

 

I agree there will still be long time hires but going by the way that road haulage costs were going before the Iran war, and the economics of most heritage railways I don't see many gala events being viable with the increased fuel prices I'm afraid.

 

My bigger worry of rising fuel prices would be the effect it has on passengers.

A fag packet calculation: a 44 ton HGV gets supposedly about 7mpg, and a 10% increase in weight costs 5% more fuel.

So let’s assume a 100 ton load has cut that fuel efficiency to somewhere in the region of 4mpg. Borrowing a loco from the SVR is, say, a 400 mile round trip - that’s 100 gallons of fuel, or 450 litres. So if fuel goes from say £1.50 to £180, you’ve added £135 to the fuel cost of the move - that’s not exactly welcome, but it isn’t existential to whether the move is viable - even if you doubled that to allow for separate loco and tender moves.

As always though with such things, the message has to remain - use it or lose it. We need to support galas if we want them to keep happening.

I’m sure railways will try to look for efficiency in the lorry moves they do have to make, to minimise the mileage of empty vehicles they need to pay for (ie trying to co-ordinate incoming and outgoing moves).

Tom

 

Blimey - I hope it doesn’t get that expensive!

The reason I’ve been told for why 151 and several other engines face south is because they face Brighton, where they were built. I haven’t heard anything about it being turned to face north.

 

Presumably 80151 faces south because when it arrived 80064 already faced north. Now that 64 has left presumably it could be turned to match everything else, but it doesn't sound like something you'd do just for the sake of it.

 

Has anyone the times of the Wine and Cheese train tomorrow please? I’m assuming it’s using the Pullman set?

 

I'm not sure which one is the wine and cheese service, but there are two dining services tomorrow:

• Pullman stock, loco 2999. Depart SP @ 12:30, non-stop to EG @ 13.10 Return @ 13:30, non-stop, arrive Sheffield Park @ 14:10
• Wealden Rambler stock, loco 2999. Depart SP @ 18:30, arrive East Grinstead @ 19:15 Return @ 19:35, arrive SP @ 20:20

Tom

 

The Wine and Cheese train is the Pullman service. The evening train is Fish and Chips.

 

I hadn't heard that one. Interesting that Birch Grove and Fenchurch also face south, though one might then wonder why Stepney, Blackmore Vale and 1618 face north, nor why Captain Baxter faces south!

My personal preference is that I think south-facing locos are easier to fire, because of the way the water levels work in your favour over the major gradients. But the general preference seems to be to have them the other way round.

Tom

 

People have short memories. Back in June 2022 I was paying c187p/litre for petrol (I no longer had a diesel vehicle so didn't record diesel prices) but it didn't really stop things happening.