Bluebell Railway General Discussion

I wonder how much this new restriction will impact the Parade gala next week?

 

Thanks, yeah I realize the post Christmas service is limited. My goal is just to do something given we are over. We had debated staying through new years, but are leaving the 30th as the couple extra days hotel stretched the budget a hair too far for a quick and mostly lazy (he says despite the number of things booked for our short time when most things are closed for 2-3 of the 9 days we are there!)

Fingers crossed when the decision makers do announce festive season plans even the limited two train service is running as I can make that work so long as connections at East Grinstead are there.

Cheers,

Stephen

 

You can expect an announcement regarding this in the next few days.

 

This event has now been removed from the What's On / Special Events page on the Bluebell Railway website.
Hopefully this just means it will be rescheduled to a later date.

 

The irony being that it has just started absolutely hammering down here in Salisbury! (May not continue further east, of course …)

Tom

 

A shame but entirely understandable. I hope to be able to get down and visit when the weather is kinder to allow steam to run again.

On a related note, is it true that this would have been one of the last chances to see 65 in service? Or is she likely to be running later in the year?

 

The forecast for Monday onwards is rain, but it seems to be a case of too little, too late. Several consecutive heatwaves have completely dried out everything, and a call had to be made early. Disappointing, but the correct decision.

 

It’s currently rostered on services towards the end of August, but we’ll have to wait and see what the weather does. Hopefully it’ll be rostered on some services in the first half of next year too.

 

65 is still in traffic and there is no imminent withdrawal date that I am aware of. Clearly something could cause it to be withdrawn early, but the current plan is that it continues into 2027 AFAIK.

Tom

 

Heavy rain isn't much use, it just washes away the topsoil. What is needed is a week or two's worth of steady, moderate rain that will seep down into the subsoil.
I do think that the heritage railways should be designing and building oil firing equipment to go into their steam locomotives. The days of coal must surely be over.

 

Yes, I realise that. It was just quite funny that as I saw the notification about the cancelled gala, it started bucketing it down!

FWIW, it’s stopped now! Probably lasted 10 minutes, so not even an hour (but quite heavy).

Tom

 

I think the point is not that the decision is wrong (it's absolutely right), but that people are becoming aware of it at the same time as their local conditions are wet. In just the same way as we're planning a barbecue tonight, but it started raining as some of the prep started.

 

I'm in Crawley right now (half four) and it's dry. I don't think we've had more than a few minutes of rain since about the 10th of June

Sent from my CPH2621 using Tapatalk

 

Even a week of light rain showers (as per the BBC forecast) I suspect will make zero difference in the overall situation.

 

I presume by "An unofficial site" you are perhaps thinking of the BRPS (.co.uk) site, which archives the web site's news articles about the railway going back to 1997, also goes into more detail about rolling stock, track layouts, etc, than is possible on the main (.com)?
I had hoped that "Steam trains daily until 3 Sept (except Mondays) plus 31 Aug" was clear enough. I've just had to update that thanks to the lack of steam...

 

So quite the day today. Steam ban as well covered above. Three trips on 33108 when it should have been five behind two steam engines. Lots of unhappy passengers unfortunately but we did our best.

With regard to the next couple of weeks, it'll be diesel with 33108 and E6040 until mid-August at least. I'm not going to say too much as I don't know what's public yet, and I'm currently still frantically updating things which need doing behind the scenes. Hats off to those who've had to replan everything.

As I think is on the website, it's three round trips so timetable B practically all the time. The ex-BOP weekend should see slightly more interest but there are only two diesels available at present.

From tomorrow onwards the hope is to have some form of steam presence within the confines of SP station. Hopefully some info on this on the website shortly.

 

We appreciate everything that both the staff and the volunteers at the railway are doing during an extremely tough situation.