Cancellations _ is this a record

Including tomorrow (Friday) 6 out of the 9 proposed runs have been cancelled, is this a record and what is the root cause?

 

I thought the same. Some are due to the high numbers of locos out of commission or they have been unable to guarantee a run. Quite an issue this season. The Mersey Tornado was caped due to low numbers, partly due to short notice on the marketing side and other tours setting off from the NW that day being well booked.

 

I think this year must be a record for locomotive failures and locomotive "issuettes".
Also what doesnt help is the time to recover... it seems there's a shortage of skills, funding or people to bring them back again... which exacerbates it.
Maybe thats a sign of the recession.

 

In previous years it was apparent some locomotives had more issues than others, but this year how many mainline locomotives havent either failed to make all it's booked work, or been removed from a train during the year due to a mechanical issue ? (only ones I can think of is 48151 (new overhauled in 2010), possibly 30777 ? 5043 ?) any others ?

 

Ironically, the very shortage of locos has helped those that have been available by them being able to pick up more work and hence income but I have maintained for over a decade that pure mainline running is not commercially viable to keep an engine in traffic long term. The problem the Class 7 and 8 locos have is that they are really too big for heritage line use, quite apart from the fact that some seem to consider they are above "lowering" themselves to undertake such activity regularly if at all.

It may be possible to limit usage on the mainline to enable quick and cheap "7/10 year" (quotation marks so Steve doesn't have to explain there is no such thing again!) as Tysley have shown once but I believe the real issue is that many boilers are coming to the end of their lives and need very major rebuild that will make even a medium sized loco's overhaul cost £ 1/2 million. If done as extensively as possible, this should mean the next "10 year" costs half that sum but the problem at the moment for the larger, mainline locos is that the "extensive" cost is probably in excess of £800,000 and they simply don't have that sort of money.

I don't see an easy solution as the price of tour tickets means that there is little room to increase these without pricing steam out of the market, so loco hire fees can only increase if some other costs reduce. Given the massive risk an Operator takes in running any train in terms of potential delay attribution, I think that this is unlikely but both Railtour Promotors and Operators increasing need a large number of tours to spread their costs over and hence the events of this year tend tyo suggest more mainline apporved locos each undertaking less work are required - but how can they be afforded?

Steven

 

Don't we have this thread every year?

Has anyone actually calculated the % cancellation by year by cause?

 

Quick back of the fag packet calculation and excluding Jacobite, but I reckon may be more than 10% majority due to loco unavailabilty or no reason given. Lots of tours switched locos at last minute too so it could have been worse.

 

Because it runs every day. Not really a tour more a regular service operated by steam. Weekly runs are tours in my view.

 

I would have thought that the ones to exclude were Jacobite, Scarborough Spa and Cambrian as they run more than 2 days per week.

I don't think anything else actually runs more than 1 day per week except perhaps Bank Holiday weeks.

You could even exclude all tours that were weekly or generally advertised as being operated from a pool of locos as opposed to one or more specified locos.

Steven

 

That's being rather selective.

 

Is this a case that with so many engines theoretically being available at the start of the year, they are to thinly spread, don't get used regularly, heat up then cool down in time to have to heat up again. Are parts actually starting to wear out?( it is bound to happen) Are the crews conversant with their steeds? Is the coal up to scratch, remembering that different parts of the country tended to have engines designed with their coal in mind.
Poor reliability means punters become reluctant to pay up for trips which may not be steam.

 

The point I was making was that excluding trips that did not have a specific loco advertised (as tends to be the case for the most regular operations removes those cases where the existance of a pool to operate the service meant that a train was able to run. I suspect there will be a number of instances where only the operators know if the train ran as planned, but for individual tours, it is much easier to identify when what was advertised was delivered.

Steven

 

The king (6024) has also had a trouble free year ;on main line and we have two more run's on main line before this winter overhall;and as i write this report she is running at the westsomerset railway gala;

all the best
jane