Saphos 2024

I clearly don’t think you’ve read most of what has been posted in here…..Lets try answer some of your questions…..

On the down run the issue of a prolonged delay at Westbury. Why? - Diesel, 47828, had suffered an Air Leak according to reports. A plan had to be implemented to get it off at Taunton whilst still having the other 47 on the rear for the Kingswear shunting. As such the train had to be route around to get it the right way. This takes time. The paths have to be changed, the control teams and signallers have to agree. This all builds up time.

Sending the already very late service via Bristol when there was already a diesel on the back to reverse and go via Castle Cary as booked. Why? - As above. Train needed to be a specific way round due to fault with 828.

The extended delay at Fairwater Yard after Mayflower wasdetached on the return. Why? - You’ve already answered your own question with regard to the window issue.

The time in Dartmouth was around 2 hours. That’s a fairly good effort considering everything that went against the trip. When you say a fraction of the time….They got 60% which is not bad….Compare that to some tours I’ve known turn round rapidly and give passengers well under half their time.

Interesting the tickets were “over £200”….Seems a low choice of ammount for a £395 per person ticket. Most people would have said “Paid nearly £400 each”.

The train was scheduled in to Woking after midnight anyway, and was 32 minutes late. I cannot imagine that’s too far off what those onboard expected. Non of them surely expected to arrive before midnight?! They must have known when booking it was going to be a long day based on the timings.

I think a lot of the above needs to be put in to perspective. The sheer number of things that conspired against the train is high. It’s unusually high….But again it returns to the point I posted yesterday….Trying to run heritage rolling stock on the modern railway is always a challenge before these things start to work against the job.

 

I think that there's only one person that needs to calm down here. On the outward run a fault was found at Westbury on the trailing class 47. As it could not proceed it was decided that the tour should continue to Taunton via Bristol allowing the defective loco at stay the rear. This all takes time but as you mention ''In fact they offered passengers in dining free alcohol after Westbury as compensation!!''. On the return the Saphos staff would have realised that there would be an extended wait at Westbury and allowed the passengers, including your family who would have been on the train for 8 hours, a walk along the platform to enjoy a break. Fair enough.

As a follower of railtour threads surely you must know by now that occasionally s**t happens. <BJ>

 

Obviously not a great day for the railtour sector yesterday with the CME 95L back at Euston through no fault of WCR.

Given the clientele Saphos are catering to, I wonder if their schedules are pushing the envelope. They go for the coach tour model of multiple pick up points but that pushes the start and finish times. If they had run Woking-Basing-Salisbury-Westbury with an 0800 start and a 2230 finish could they really not have filled the train? Obviously that assumes they can get the slots down the main line.

I looked at doing the Lakelander from Leeds the other week, pre 0700 start and 2330 finish. Even that was too much for me given access times, taxi fares etc.

 

Sorry but you were the one that was getting annoyed by this. Most of us were just interested in the operational reasons. But whatever the issue the reason for the diversion, which as explained by yourself was a fault on a 47, the catalyst, if not the total delay was down to Saphos, so not sure how you say you cannot fault them for the delays.

Of course your partner and sister could have had an equally long experience on the CME yesterday.

 

I do think a lot of this is what people look for in a day really. You say “do the maths” suggesting that you could do the same thing, a lot cheaper with national rail services, etc and I don’t doubt that but is that really comparing like with like….

For me (And this is my personal view) I really don’t book a trip for it’s destination. That’s by the by to me. I normally find a pub and relax there. I did Bewdley to York on an LSL job in 2021, and didn’t even make it out the station, the York Tap was good enough! I largely did that trip to tick off the mainline crossover at Kidderminster

The route is of little significance again to me. Most routes have their nice and not so nice bits, so this bares little difference. And hearing the loco is really a bonus. You can never guarantee where you’re sat and if you get lucky enough to hear it working, amazing.

I opt for a journey based on having a upmarket day, in first class/premier dining/whatever it’s named this week….I enjoy the good food, fine drinks on offer, and watch the scenery roll by. Sometimes the loco of choice sways me, other times I’m happy with anything.

I’ve booked the ERE from Kidderminster to Kingswear in August. Theres 16 of us from the SVR going. And really that’s a “jolly boys outing”. I don’t think one of us is fussed by loco, route or destination. We want a day out, dressed smartly, good food and some decent drink. So for me that’s what a railtour is about. For others it’s different.

How does this relate to Saphos….I think Saphos offer the type of day I describe above. Which is why I favour them. Although the lengths of day can be a little heavy sometimes, I personally think it weighs out nicely in the grand scheme.

I think WCR and VT aim more for the enthusiast (Well did before CDL in WCRs case). They aim more for the loco, the route, the destination in my opinion. Which tbh as an enthusiast is why I go out Photting WCR/VT stuff rather than ride on them, they are much better for that purpose for myself.

 

Yesterday’s tour had 11 passenger pick ups, from 05:56 at Woking as mentioned to 09:25 at Westbury. Someone getting on at say Fareham has an 07:30-22:30 day out, somewhat more reasonable. The balance I’m sure the operators try to make is just how many to offer in a day to fill the train, plus capturing as many parts of the country as possible given these tours start somewhere different each week.

 

I’m struggling here to work out exactly what some folk would have wanted LSL to do yesterday. The ERE normally is fairly good with time keeping but let’s be honest both LSL and WCR were faced with adversity yesterday and that sometimes cannot be helped. 47828 has been a stout and solid performer for LSL this year so failure wasn’t exactly predicatable, nobody could predict a window being smashed on the other diesel either.

They’ve turned their train round in good time, yes okay reducing destination time, but meaning a right time start. Surely that’s a good thing? Or do people want them to say right still have 3hrs 20 in Kingswear we will leave 1hr 20 late? Even further extending the length of day.

I’ll stand by my comment of 60% of time at destination being a pretty fair effort given the fact at one point they were 2 hours behind schedule.

Comparing both yesterdays trips there are fairly obvious advantages to the near right time start. LSL got away 5 late from Kingswear and were 32 down in to Woking. They gave their passengers 60% time at destination. WCR got away from Carlisle 42 down, and were 97 late back to Euston, but they did give their passengers 101% of their time in Carlisle (Yes they had longer than planned). So there are definite advantages to getting away RT and I can’t blame LSL for doing that.

 

I will stick this here as it is current, but could equally apply to any of the tour company threads.
Say you live in the south MK towards London and you want to do "one of the worlds scenic journeys" the S & C what are the options to a long day?
Drive up north and have a couple of nights hotel?
Do what @martin1656 was maybe suggesting and cough up another £80 or more each to take a service train up north to say a Crewe or Preston and either save very little in the timings especially against the 86 & at least one night in an hotel as well. Plus in that instance there would then be the randomness of which Avanti service actually operated on the day.
LSL group have picked up the mantle from SD of numerous pickups, it must work for them as I believe NR charge every station stop that is not a crewing reason.
So yesterday's tour was not direct for those from Woking and Guildford especially, and had quite a unique route via the south coast and Salisbury. But having said that RTC have done Woking originators, which I think were also Kingswear before their apparent "ban" and they left Woking only about an hour later and went "direct" and still returned not far from midnight.
Years ago I did a Daylight Railtours Green Train to Minehead from Guildford June 26 2004. It left Alton at 06:20 due back at 23:38 although was 6 late. So long trips to not go far are not new. In this case even June 26 may be a stretch to call it a "Daylight Tour"
Saphos of course arrived with a fanfare of day are too long our tours will be shorter. Maybe they have since decided to try and steal Pathfinders or NENTA's crown of railtour lengths. But as has been said, the network is busier, I would argue more inefficient, and certainly greatly more risk averse.
@RalphW is correct nobody makes you go on a tour (some wives may disagree), and yes sometime the estimated times are more than optimistic, and for that yes the tour companies are to blame.
So other than something like the Sunset Express they are going to be long days, but you know you will get back, even if it is by coach or taxi in the small hours. There is no guarantee of that with a day out on the national network where in times of delay staff often seem to "evaporate".
Railtours are a bit like a package holiday, you could probably do the destination cheaper yourself, but someone else has taken away the hassle

 

Very true, but would all the passenger who got on at Haslemere, Petersfield, Havant, Cosham, Fareham, Eastleigh & Romsey have travelled to meet the tour? I can’t imagine too many steam hauled (in part) trips start from those stations which is probably the appeal.

 

Very true. I think this is where LSL look at how many times does trips start from those stops multiple times a year, and pick the right places. Kidderminster this year there is literally 1 Saphos trip that starts there, 1 Statesman and that’s it. So they cleverly capture the market

 

"Interesting the tickets were “over £200”….Seems a low choice of ammount for a £395 per person ticket. Most people would have said “Paid nearly £400 each” My mistake, my partner and her sister paid £450 each for the privilege of spending less than 2 hours in Dartmouth. You could book a week in Spain for that kind of money!!

 

Why not book a week in Spain then?!

Also they’ve haven’t paid that amount just for the time in Dartmouth. That’s absurd.

They’ve paid for -
- A 3 course breakfast - Easily £30 a head worth in a restaurant
- A 4 course evening meal - Easily £60 per head
- Couple of glasses of Bubbly and half a bottle of decent wine - £30 a head again.
- A return trip to Kingswear from Woking - Which even the cheapest ticket on National Rail services is £81 a head.

So really that’s £200 worth of stuff before adding on the following.

- Coal - £450 a ton. Probably 6 or so tons for Mayflower yesterday.
- Water/Oil - Cost varies but won’t be a cheap one to run Mayflower at speed for the day.
- Diesel - Dread to think how many litres of that. Won’t be cheap again.
- Travel in a heritage carriage, hauled by a heritage loco - Not a cheap business to run. Recent calculations suggest it’s circa £60 to £70 a mile in oil/water/coal/wear and tear to run a train like this. According to RailMiles that’s 182 Miles each way (Woking to Kingswear, if you go direct via Honiton, which the tour didn’t). But even so 364 miles minimum of heritage travel, with a high running cost.

But for the £395 per ticket, plus I assume £50 per person for a table of two….£445 each….They really just spent that for 2 hours in Dartmouth…..I don’t think so!

 

Exactly! What they paid for was a very long day out including the food, the drinks, the ride and a few hours at the destination. They got everything they had paid for except some of the time at the destination. If they consider that to have been such poor value that they will never do it again, then what they originally expected was only slightly better value. Yes, having less time at the destination and so missing the boat trip* was a disappointment, but disappointments can happen on any trip. The week in Spain might turn out to include tedious hours hanging about in airports and a grotty hotel with unhelpful staff.

* If they booked the boat trip separately they took a chance on arriving in time. If they booked it as an add-on to their Saphos booking then I think Saphos should refund that part.

 

Especially if anyone was due to depart from Manchester yesterday. Now that would have been a real disaster. <BJ>

 

This makes the mistake of looking at this arithmetically, and like a lawyer. The trip was x hours long, of which y% was due to be at the destination, therefore a reduction of y by 50% is acceptable.

For the traveller under discussion, the value may be different. The purpose of the trip is to spend some time at Dartmouth, and the trip is merely a nice way of achieving that. Viewed through that lens, the impact appears very different.

That value is also not related to directly cost. The package apparently cost £425 (no, I wouldn't either...), and can be broken down into what might be expected to be paid for the individual components. But when they're all bundled into a single price, the promoter's risk is about the perception of that price against the value received for the package as a whole. Again, for someone who has joined the trip for a day out in Dartmouth, the value lies in the one bit that isn't directly being charged for. In just the same way, I'm travelling on holiday in a few weeks, booked as a package. Key features for us are stops in Lucerne on the way out and Montreux on the way home, where we have to change trains and have time to kill as a result. Delays on the journeys that impact those stops will hurt, despite being formed by space within what is actually booked on the package. Our reactions will be conditioned by that, not the fact of arriving at our destination at about the time expected.

It is irrelevant whether you or I would do that trip, or would do that trip but with very different motives. The response that's due is that of the traveller, and the impact upon them as a result of the events on the day.

 

I’m sorry but you cannot tell me that they’ve paid £445 each for the privilege of 3 hours in Dartmouth. That’s ludicrous. If all they desired was 3 hours in Dartmouth and a steam train to get them there then pay £165 for Standard Class.

£445 for everything they got is a great price. You should always break these things down mathematically to work out whether it’s daylight robbery or not, and let’s be honest it’s really not.

And I hate to say but …. Read the small print ….

It clearly states they have the right to ammend route, timings and destination if the need arises. So really you book in full knowledge of that. Well that’s unless you don’t read the small stuff because you think it won’t happen to you.