A tale from France to make you think

I was browsing through the website of UNECTO French preservation association, kindly linked by laplace in another thread here, and found this from the Pacific Vapeur Club, which maintains and runs 231 G 558, the only French Pacific currently in mainline working order.

They have recently cancelled a mainline tour from their base at Sotteville-le-Rouen in Normandy to the railway museum at Longueville, east of Paris.

The reason was that the SNCF wanted 16,260 euros (£13,750) in line fees for the round trip of approx 300 miles, which meant that the society needed to set ticket prices at "minimum 70 euros" (£60) per person to cover this and their own running costs. The PVC regards this level of charging as "exhorbitant" and "totalement inacceptable".

It seems that French railfans aren't prepared to pay the sort of prices that are commonplace for long-distance tours here (RTC typically charge £75-80 standard for a "grand day out"). But that's not really my point.

London-York and back is over 400 miles, so rather more than the French tour. Both routes use busy lines in or around the capital. Without giving away detailed commercial information, could someone guess what the reaction of a tour operator might be if NR asked for a total of 14 grand to get to York and back. Assume the loco is stabled near King's Cross the night before so no great LE running needed.

Choose from these options:
1. high fives in the office at getting such a bargain
2. shrug of the shoulders as it's a fairly standard fee
3. phone NR to find out why the fee had gone up so much / try to negotiate
4. sit down with gritted teeth to delete the tour from the calendar, much as the French did.

What I'm pondering is why SNCF are asking for funny money - by French standards. Do they want to drive the already pitifully few mainline locos off the network? Or perhaps they just need the dosh to pay for all those 60-year-old pensioners and will have been surprised by PVC's reaction.
I also ponder, though, that NR wouldn't need to ban steam from the mainline if they got fed up of the lineside trespassers and other little hassles. They could simply put up their fees to "exorbitant and totally unacceptable" levels. Quite legally, with no comeback.

 

It's becoming quite common across europe, SNCB pushed up access fees so high in Belgium that Main Line steam has pretty much stopped, leading to the cancelation of almost all 150 years of Belgium Railways celebrations.. they apparently have reached a compromise but it was too late.
Poland charges around 2000 Euros for a similar distance trip, I believe, quite some fee for that country.

Network rails access charges are public information... in 2009 / 2010 it's a fee per coach / type and for different types of locomotives. (A steam locomotive has a flat rate equivalent to a class 47)... at 46.69p per mile, and coaches 5.42p per mile for Mark 1, 5.86p for Mark 2).

 

Thanks for that. But then by my calculation, a steam loco + Mk1 support coach + 10 Mk2s costs less than £500 for that round trip London to York? Even if you add on the considerable cost of train hire, provision of consumables and other services, UK tour operators seem to be getting a bargain compared to the Continent.
Surely I've miscalculated somewhere. If not, no wonder the French threw up their hands in disgust. And no wonder the UK mainline scene is so relatively lively.

As you describe it, Belgian Railways seem to have lost a year of positive publicity for the sake of what, to them, must be peanuts in ready cash. Typical. I'm glad that the GWR 175 specials on their premier line have brought First Group and NR such good media exposure so far. What gets rewarded gets repeated.

 

Just to let you know that the prices charged in Italy are similar, see the link

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/italy08.htm

Taken from there the costs are:
To fire up a steam loco they want 10,000 Euro + 11 Euro/km
To energize an electric loco or emu 13,000 Euro + 5 Euro/km
To start a diesel loco or dmu 11,000 Euro + 5euro/km

 

Are these prices really comparable? Here, an NR track access fee is presumably just that, use of the track only, the operator has to provide the train (with required safety inspections), crew and consumables themselves. The Italian prices are described as charter train prices, and according to the same site their preserved stock is still owned and run by FS, so might include everything. PVC's cancellation notice doesn't specify what SNCF were to provide for that fee, but filling their own carriages (capacity 448) at Eur70 each would cover it plus about the same again for their own costs.

The logical route from this map would appear to be Mantes, north (less busy) side of the river to Val d'Argenteuil, round the north Paris to Viliers sur Marne, and off the right side of the map at 16. This is fairly busy by French standards, but less so than many British routes that allow steam, and not very fast (mostly 2-3 passenger trains/hour with 2km of 6/hr at Mantes, most about 80km/h start to stop with a 120km/h one only every 2 hours, so a 100km/h special should be able to keep up); however I don't know how much freight traffic it has.

Elsewhere in France I found Eur25-54, with the highest price being for a similar distance, or Eur87 for about 50% further, so it may be a question of "way more than we were expecting, we'll need to have a rethink (eg. see if a less busy route would be cheaper)"; rather than "way more than what the French market will bear".

 

If the equivalent of £14k was for Track Access, Safety Case and Crew (and don't forget Station Access, which can easily be more than Track Access in the UK!), then I suspect it is not dis-similar to the UK - which is, in itself, interesting.

It is only about a year ago that Nigel Dobbin of RTC was quoted in Steam Railway as saying he could charter a mainline trip in Europe for £5,000 including everything. Yet when I visited the Festival as the DDM in Germany in May, a number of the planned specials didn't run and I had to wonder if this was due to the fares being about what the French were talking about.

It seems that European charges may have reached UK levels but the railtour market is different and probably less able to stand the cost.

In reality in the UK, as few promoters have their own loco and carriages, the bill for a tour would be considerably more than the French level, including stock and diesels for positioning, shunt release and "insurance" purposes.

Where the European increase may be unfair is UK Operators have a considerable potential financial risk from delay attribution costs, and I am not sure if similar systems are in place, as so highly developed (i.e. expensive to administer) and so expensive per minute in Europe as in the UK.

Steven