Swanage Railway General Discussion

I will just add to this that it hasn’t been confirmed anywhere that there won’t be any Blue Pool shuttles during the R2R event - it’s possible to run the T3 brake van runs and the shuttles alternately.

 

Good point, time will tell.

For the diseal gala the 4TC is being used as air brake stock.

Are all the local hauled mark1 on the railway vaccum only, I thought they used to have some dual but could be wrong?

 

I think there’s a couple dual braked coaches but not enough to form up a full set. Can’t remember which numbers they are though.

 

This conversation alerted me to the T3 brake van rides on the River Frome section, which has made me a lot more interested in Roads to Rail than I previously had been so that might now appear in my diary, will certainly keep an interested eye out for the timetable for that one.

I'm keen to get over on a Blue Pool day if/when that starts but to be honest the appeal of doing that is 10% the quirk of a DMU to a new station and 90% the fact that the DMU doing that means the main diesel turn on those days will be loco hauled so there'll be a 33 or 20066 out!

 

Deleted.

 

Seemingly, the Blue Pool trial halt has been delayed until 2027.
Apparently, an ecological survey discovered 'protected' smooth snakes in the area and so a specialist licence has to be applied for before going further. This is not a quick application and so it was decided to defer everything for around 12 months.

 

Echoes of 1997 when we had the same issues. Took nearly a year to get the license having cleared the area of reptiles. Buy the time we were laying track they were back and didn't seem bothered by us or the trains. Nature is quite resilient.