Project Wareham

Indeed. Couple of quick points. The Santa Shuttle was provided at a heavily discounted price to encourage this form of patronage especially as on peak dates car parking was a problem in Swanage - the hunt for parking had caused some passengers to arrive at the 11th hour for their Santa Special. I think the shuttle fare was £3 Return.
Secondly the massively discounted car parking in Swanage for December is a fairly recent innovation. Not quite sure what year it started.

 

Wonder if there will be anything special for the last train on Saturday, or if they expect the service to return in 2024, pending a business case review of numbers, available volunteers, WCR TOC contract, finances, etc?
Probably not helped by SWR strikes and running problems, one of which was a fridge on the mainline!

I notice 2 railtours using the line, 13th the Swanage Belle with Bahamas steam loco, and 26th the 125 HST diesel as Pine's Express, although the original just ran to Bournemouth rather than Swanage.

 

Technically its two tours on the 26th as there is also a mini tour to Bournemouth and back named "The Bournemouth Belle"

 

I do think it would be useful if the railway shared some of the metrics of the service: number of days planned to operate, number of days actually operated, number of services planned to operate, number of services actually operated, number of departures cancelled / failed to operate (and reason why), punctuality data, gross revenue, number of passengers carried etc.

I do not see how any of this data is commercially confidential to the point it could not be shared. I think it may help garner support for the railway especially if seeking financial support from Dorset Council, SRC demonstrated that they had indeed delivered what they had said they would deliver and how successful it had been. I understand they may not wish to share the cost data so perhaps that need not be made public.

Given the high level of "competition" for council funding for non statutory services, putting their case into the public domain surely can only help.

 

Well I have gathered in a spreadsheet all the operation data for my own interest (and to see what impact SWR's excellent service to & from Wareham has had on it, quite a lot) from RTT and the two webcams so that side is really not confidential.

 

From the latest Swanning Around
"Throughout this summer Fitter Andy Garrett has been regularly helped out by volunteers Vic Turp, Nigel Burton and Phil Best. Their combined effort, supported by the wider Swanage Railway team has ensured that with very few exceptions the DMU service to Wareham has performed exceptionally well.
Thank you all.
Indeed, the irony is that on some days, the only trains at Wareham station were the trains to Swanage!"

"We have had data collectors travelling on
most trains to provide management with
train usage patterns with which to
determine appropriate service offerings.
We hope to get the overall results of these
findings when they have been fully collated."

 

I went to Swanage yesterday using SWR to Wareham and then the DMU to Corfe Castle. There were lots of people on Wareham down platform waiting for the 11:19 departure. I counted about 60 people but there were more came in on the train and went back at 11:19. The Swanage Railway driver there were 120 people on the service the day before.

 

Hmmm.... Not sure why the picture posted twice? Anyway, SWR seemed to be keeping time yesterday morning.

 

Although the last train on that screen was 6 late when it arrived, as was the following down train. Luckily that is enough time to still connect with the Swanage service at 13:05.
Last week and so far this week the connections have been met, with exception of course of the RMT strike day last Saturday where no trains ran on SWR this far west.

 

"with very few exceptions the DMU service has performed exceptionally well". Not sure that the two different meanings of "exception / exceptionally" work well in the same sentence but the sentiment is clear.

I will be most surprised if the train usage patterns this trial year are significantly different from those in 2017. I still think this years timetable was a missed opportunity to trial a different service pattern and thus broaden the dataset.

 

So what sort of Wareham timetable would you have trialed? I would dearly love to hear how you would have done it differently given the pre-existing pathing and operational constraints that the whole operation faces.

Peter

 

I would have preferred a 5 or 6 times a day service between Wareham and Corfe Castle / Norden thus providing more choice of departures. In 2018 (may have been later) Steve Jenkins produced a draft timetable (both WTT and PTT) that took into account the then pathing and operational constraints.

When the passenger number data has been collected I do hope that this has been done in such a way to differentiate the passengers travelling on the Wareham <> Norden / Corfe Castle section from the passengers travelling on the Norden / Corfe Castle section. It is demand to / from Wareham that has to be assessed.

Would a 5 or 6 times a day service "requiring" passengers to change at Norden / Corfe Castle and a short wait for an onward connection be more attractive and generate more patronage than a 4 times a day through service? On the onward connection model half the journey would be "steam" would that be more appealing than "through diesel"?

 

That is all very well but could you time it to be within the crew hours of the staff supplied by the outside operator? I suspect that if you need a second driver and guard the service would become even more uneconomic than I suspect it already is. Your efforts to "generate more patronage" may be successful but possibly will not cover the additional costs involved.

Peter

 

Additionally, it was cheaper for customers to drive and park in Swanage, than pay and park at Norden then pay for the shuttle. People voted with their feet,

 

Yes I do appreciate that when the "tipping point" of two crews is taken into account the additional costs may well outweigh the additional revenue and make the service even more uneconomic than it is already.

However if SRT / SRC approach Dorset Council for funding the timetable may be one of the points they raise. I think one of the other points that Dorset Council may well raise is that for many years SRT / SRC have implied if the capital costs (track / signalling / rolling stock to mainline standard) were met by Dorset Council (and other third parties) then the direct operating costs would be met from revenue. A big saving of direct operating costs was that SRC was mainly staffed by volunteers. The figures of over 500 volunteers from all walks of life and between 30 and 40 paid staff for safety critical roles and business continuity reasons has been stated on a frequent basis. Much has been made of the fact that the footplate crew are volunteers. If not just in the short term but also the longer term the footplate crews on the Wareham service have to be paid staff that may well put a different complexion on it from a Dorset Council point of view. The greater the funding required the more it raises the bar in terms of what Dorset Council (and of course local taxpayers) will receive for the money and the question of whether it represents good value for money. Possibly counter-intuitively Dorset Council may be prepared to give more funding if it meant that the service pattern (timetable) had more appeal. This brings us back to the relativity of additional cost vs additional revenue.

 

https://www.branchline.uk/fixture.php
Now sold out, with a waiting list for cancellations, so perhaps demand for more "mini tours"?

 

From a comment piece by Emma Duncan in today's Times (sharing link to whole piece at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...2?shareToken=3a2d68b25ad003859e8b37856813276b):

It should be read in conjunction with this from Richard Morrison in the same edition:

 

Possibly, but bear in mind this is about the farewell of Cross Country to it's HSTs.

 

But rather than park the HST train at Swanage, the fact they have sold out an extra mini tour to Bournemouth is good and some HST enthusiasts will go to Swanage just to have a nostalgic ride in it.

If there is a need for extra funds to help run a Wareham to Swanage DMU service in 2024, there is still some funds left in the DfTs restoring your railway fund.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/restoring-your-railway-update

 

Given that many projects have fallen by the wayside already, why do we think Swanage would be successful in obtaining such funds?