Project Wareham

Agreed. However I think SRC and DC (in fact all the partners in the Purbeck Rail Community Partnership) need to make clear what the future of the line is to be.

If it is to be a seasonal tourist connect at Wareham then say so unequivocally. If there is to be an SWR service to supplement the SRC heritage service on SRC days and a SWR only service on the other days then equally say so.

The residents of the Isle of Purbeck deserve clarity - especially as it is their taxes which will probably be paying for a Wareham service.

 

Unless you accept 11:02 as between 10:30 and 11:00 then in addition to an extra DMU service you either need an extra steam service or move the 10:00 to some really early start (longer volunteer day) or make it an ECS move. In that time frame you are looking at connecting with the train that arrives at 09:56 at Wareham, that is 08:00 at Woking, even Southampton is 08:59, are many non enthusiasts really going to want to make that long a day? How many on a daily basis will be doing that?
If people were getting to Purbeck earlier I guess the first train from Norden would not be 10:40, except in the school holidays.

 

That’s not particularly early, and I’d suggest many people would leave at that sort of time to make the most of a full day out in the purbeck area.

I drove to the beach in Bournemouth on a summer Saturday last year, and got one of the last parking spaces at 8am. That shows how early will leave for a day out,

 

Blimey, that's cheap. £9 would get you an hour's parking in the West End or Covent Garden in your non ULEZ polution wagon (or around 1 hour 40 if you are compliant).
Maybe if the council want to encourage the use of "public transport" they could put the parking up to realistic levels and subsidise the transport alternatives.

(I know I'm going to be shot at for comparing the parking costs in Swanage with central London, but both are tourist destinations).

 

Well I personally would accept an 11:02. But to answer your two questions - surely that is the purpose of the trial. To test various "offerings" and see what the consumer response is.

We can prophesise as much as we like but at least trials give some amount of data for analysis.

As I said in my earlier posts it is disappointing that there seems to be no variation in the trial compared to 2017.

I would argue at least in the 2023 summer holidays to offer something different and see how the market reacts.

 

In my opinion, SR are simply running this service to comply with their obligations set up a few years ago.
The world was a different place then.
If there is a railway left after these trials, I doubt that we will see a repeat next year.

 

I think even on Friday in school holidays (when the market takes up about a third of the main beach car park) you would not find the car parks full in Swanage before about 11:00

 

Indeed Swanage Railway are I believe part of a partnership in this which has been given large sums of grants to do the trials, I suspect it is more complicated to not run it than run it with potential financial penalties if it is not run. It was I believed to be a community benefit service run by DMU for which I would expect the return fare to be about £10 based on similar dmu journeys on the main network

 

I was a resident of Purbeck from 1976 until the early 2010s, and still have strong family connections.
I was actively involved in the railway from 1984(ish) until leaving for a different calling in life around 2010 (though I still keep an active and informed interest!).
I was also involved in early phases of Project Wareham, and have some of the non-confidential documentation from the proposals that led to the re-signalling and funding of the present project. The basis of the validated proposals was twofold: (i) relieving the local road network at peak season; and (ii) encouraging modal shift from road to rail.

Since at least the late 1990s there has been no plan that I am aware of to provide a full, year-round service. There have been several exercises to test out its viability - but none that I know of have come up with anything like a viable proposal. The only slight exception was a look at the feasibility of VXC stabling units overnight on SR and then working their first BMO-MAN trains back from Swanage with equivalent moves at the end of the day as part of Operation Princess. However, the fact that it did not happen is evidence of its viability (and would not have provided an all-day service anyway).

So far as I am aware, the basic justification for the funding of the trial services was on their impact on relieving the local road network at peak tourist times/seasons and encouraging modal shift from road to rail. That was the basis for the investment - and is logically the basis for assessment.

The fact that many unofficial voices have added their opinion that the railway should provide an all year, all day amenity service should not distract from the fact that at no point in my experience has anyone provided a positive business case for that to happen without a subsidy that would dwarf that received by the far more convenient and frequent bus service.

As far as I am aware there is clarity - even if others have muddied that by their own aspirations.
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A further point raised elsewhere is of the timing of services arriving into Swanage. Certainly, until 2010 the first train (arriving in Swanage at about 10 30am) was almost always more less heavily loaded that the second arrival from Norden (arriving at just after 11am). If anything recent summer visits indicate that this first train has become comparatively more lightly loaded that the second. It was almost always this, or the third arrival (between 11 30 and 12noon) that was the most heavily loaded down train from Norden. Unless the travel patterns have changed dramatically, then it would seem that the first Wareham arrival and last Wareham departure from Swanage are timed to coincide with what have historically been the relevant peak flow times.
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A final point. Integrating a two-train service that can only realistically be every 40 minutes (between Swanage and Norden) with an hourly clock-face service at Wareham means that it is almost impossible to do anything other than a 2-hourly interval service without completely re-writing one or other timetable. I am not sure SWR would be up for having a variably cycle with its ripples into the south-west suburbs of London, and it would be commercial suicide for SR to discard the viability of its existing offer on the hope that the financial rewards of the Wareham service would outweigh any financial impact of having what would end up being an hourly service from Norden to Swanage that required the same resources as the 40 minute offering...

 

Which shows a large number of people want to get there for 11am, and so there is potential demand for a train that leaves Wareham at 10am ish.

 

No, you might be drawing the wrong conclusion. You are assuming people base their journey on what time they wish to arrive at their destination, but for many leisure journeys, it might be more dominated by what time you can comfortably leave home. It might be that lots of people have a schedule that doesn't get them to Swanage before 11am.

For example, I live just over an hour (give or take) away from Norden by car. If we go out for a "day at the beach with steam train ride" (something we have done several times in the past) then it is quite a struggle to get out of the house before 9am: small kids who don't take to being herded anywhere in a hurry see to that. So realistically we would typically aim for a train from Norden somewhere in the region of 10:30 - 11am not because that is when we wanted to arrive at the beach, but because getting anything earlier would be turning a "relaxed family day out" into a military exercise.

If we lived closer, we would probably have ended up arriving earlier; if we lived further away, we'd probably arrive later (but realistically might not consider the trip very often as a regular day trip). If the train didn't exist and we chose to drive all the way to Swanage, realistically we'd be unlikely to be at Wareham before 10am and then at Swanage at some point depending on the vagaries of the traffic from there onwards.

In other words, the journey is dominated by the logistics of what time you start from home, not what time you wish to arrive at a destination.

There are some attractions that I would prioritise an early start so as to maximise the time available. We have visited the Black Country Living Museum (about 2.5 hours away in the other direction) with an early morning start so as to arrive by opening time at 10am. But the difference there is the paid admission fee (unlike the beach) and the thought that the visit would be a rare such visit so we'd want to maximise value from the admission fee. That wouldn't be a spur-of-the-moment decision. Whereas a visit to the beach is much more likely to be a "get up and decide first thing" sort of trip, at which point arrival time depends on how long it takes to leave the house, not what time you target arriving.

Tom

 

I’d concur with what Tom has said above. However, I’d add a further point to the discussion and that is traffic and parking. If it is a warm sunny day I know the roads are going to be busy and parking will be difficult so I’ll go as early as I can. If going by train those problems don’t arise so I’m in less of a rush and would obviously plan my day around the timetable. If the first train doesn’t get to Swanage before noon it’s not a big deal. Unless the beach is that crowded that I can’t stake my claim to a decent spot, that is.

 

Well, well. The anecdotal evidence hereabouts is that I’m the only visitor in the whole wide world who wants to enjoy a morning coffee in Swanage sometime between nine (ish) and ten (ish) before spending much of the day on the trains. Interesting!

 

You’ve answered your own question. You’re not going to Swanage to spend the day on the beach but to spend the day riding on the trains, in which case you probably are the only person.

 

But as @Jamessquared points out its a question of how you are placed.

If you are single/a couple with no kids who can get up early then all well and good but there are many who are not

 

With modern technology, perhaps using sensors and AI on CCTV, road and rail use can be monitored to get stats as a total or hourly use.
For roads it should also be possible to break down car or commercial use. On trains real-time trains can even now say which part of the train is the busiest.
Ideally the council or DfT should have a plan to monitor road use via Corfe or the Sandbanks ferry to get some meaning full stats without becoming a "big brother" surveillance operation.
It should also be possible to get train, coach and bus stats from ticket sales and seat and platform use.
With trains increased use of online tickets will give SWR stats and the chance for a follow-up email survey.
Hopefully SWR will also promote the Corfe and Swanage service from it's stations.
In a way just not a Wareham service, but an addition to the Waterloo Weymouth service.

Ideally should show a yearly reduction of car use with less congestion and increase of bus and train use.
However car parking fees are a main source of income to the council, but removing congestion as well as increased tourism should be a long term goal.

So the 2023 trial is unlikely to see an earlier DMU service from Wareham. But if it continues in 2024 with SR becoming a TOC with its own responsability for the service using more supervised volunteer crews, earlier and later services at lower costs may be possible?.

 

SWR online ticketing is showing Corfe Castle as a destination but not allowing booking, presumably something left on the system from the recent Saturday services. But not Swanage. Presumably the SWR and Trainline ticket systems will be updated before the service starts?

 

Lots of interesting assumptions to unpack here!
1. I can’t remember the last time I went to Swanage on my own. My current companions are grandchildren, all aged under 10 and up to three other adults.
2. Oh and I said “spend much of the day on the trains”. We also do the pier, boat rides, meal, beach, arcades etc.
3. Not all families are chaotic and unable to leave home early for a day trip.
Anyway, I’ll leave it at that to avoid this morphing into something like the legendary spat about the origins of the fish served by local chippies !

 

Plus if there are visitors from the Waterloo - Weymouth main line who just go to Corfe or Norden there is : walking hikes, bike hire, castle, model village, pubs, tea rooms/birds nest cafe, pottery and of course the railway and mining museums.
Last time SWR ran direct Saturday summer trains to Corfe in 218 they had special offers,
https://www.facebook.com/swanagerai...ds-the-seaside-starting-tom/1642597632455461/
as SWR still want to promote off peak leisure travel, wonder if they will have new offers during 2023?.

 

As someone with young children who always get up at the crack of dawn, and wake the whole house up in the process, I can assure you we tend to leave the house earlier than if we were childless.

I find all this discussion about leaving the house early really quite bizarre. Leaving the house at 8 or 9am to make the most of a day out isn’t exactly
unusual.