Steam engines available for traffic in 2014

Never is a very long time. Who knows what the future holds for "rusting hulks?"

 

If you look on trip advisor a lot of people do give railways 4 or 5 stars.

The lower scoring reviews do give an insight into what the great British public seek.

I have to say one railways no refunds policy does seem a bit draconian in the way it is enforced. I doubt it does them any commercial favours.

 

At the risk of being sent to Gretna Green with you, maybe you have identified a "gas axe threshold". If an item is not worth a few hundred pounds of the owner or host railway's money to cosmetically paint, seal the roof and windows and make it look decent enough to make a positive contribution to the visitor experience, it probably isn't worth keeping at all. If an owner of, say, a fitting-free Barry wreck doesn't have that few hundred pounds in his pocket for some paint he isn't ever going to have the million to make it chuff. Many of them are behind with their siding rent or enjoying free parking. Just withdraw that pleasure from the eyesores. As for stores vans, if you can't spend £500 making it look right, what have you got in it that is so valuable? Bits for the project you can't afford to even start? Pffft! A bit of brutality never goes amiss... and might even create a pool of spare boilers to shorten the time spent by complete engines doing nothing. If you have no realistic prospect of restoring your 28xx or Merchant Navy, or whatever, rent the boiler to someone who can use it, and recycle the rest. Supply and Demand has a certain elegance...even in Happy Clappy Land.

 

If you're willing to stump up £500 to make a storage van look a little nicer I'm sure any railway will embrace you with open arms! £500 can pay for an entire new paint job on a carriage, something much more useful as it is what the public sees and uses most, and of course what people complain about if the carriages are all faded if they choose to spend the money instead restoring a stores van which is earning little or no revenue for the railway.

As to Gas axing anything life expired, I don't think anything can be truly life expired until it has become part of the earth again, there's always the "a rich gentleman approached the railway" scenario (one which gets used on my model railway rather a lot), for instance, the incredibly rusty LMS coach at which was until recently stored at Winchcombe was bought by a "gentleman keen on the LMS" and was removed from the railway, getting rid of the eyesore, but a piece of LMS history was still in existence. I'm not party too how much it was bought for, but I suspect it would be a fair amount more than scrap value (otherwise why didn't it get scrapped instead!).

So far I still haven't seen any proof that visitors actually care about rusting hulks in sidings, there have been vague references to facebook (which is like someone making a point by linking to the DM) but no actual evidence, whereas I have given evidence from an actual passenger servey where not once does it mention this perceived problem. And as I have mentioned many times before, I think as long as it's not ridiculous, it all adds to the general feel of a working railway yard, were yards of old ever full of sparking wagons and nothing lying around on the ground? I very much doubt it...

 

I would love to see a coach that needs repainting AND could be repainted for £500. You might do a coat of varnish for that.

 

Our deputy workshop manager totted the total paint for a carriage uo a few months ago, he reckoned between £400-£600 each, I'll find a link in a minute (again)...

 

Famously of course Horsted Keynes was, for many years, used for storing row upon row of out-of-traffic engines slowly decaying while they awaited their turn in the works

Yours mischievously

Tom

 

Indeed, shame on the bluebell for not restoring the station correctly!

I'm afraid I can't find the link at the moment, I suspect it may be as a comment, and I'm not trawling through all of last year's posts on the c+w blog, but it is there. On the other hand, I still await evidence from gfg and ph, I've given loads of links in this thread regarding buffet cars, this, and others, in return I've had vague references to Facebook...

 

I share your passion for evidence flyingscotsman123. And I do not dispute your figure of £600 for paint, but I look forward to hearing more about the other costs - ladders that are in date, wire harnesses to comply with Working at Height Regulations, the electric bill for the carriage shed, breathing masks and protective clothing, insurance, other consumables like paint brushes, filler, wet and dry paper, toilet rolls for the staff bog, transfers, water bills, keeping proper records...in business we call it "overheads" so no, you can't paint a coach for £500. If you could I would be sending all mine to you.

 

I didn't mention that, but those are things that don't just need to be done for painting, but the whole operation of restoring carriages. I suspect some of your hateful storage wagons would cost more than £500 to restore too if you include those costs...

 

I didn't say "restore" a stores van for £500, did I? I said make look presentable.

 

Indeed. Many of the costs mentioned by GFG will be fixed overheads whether you paint one carriage or ten. It's all a question of apportioning this costs. I presume activities other than just carriage painting and restoration go on in the building in question.

 

Overheads have to go somewhere. If you work on the basis of raw material costs only, a simple business like a Chip Shop could sell a bag of chips for 5p and offset all the other bills to the fish cakes. But that would just mean customers getting cheap chips, and only until the next quarter day when the bills come in. Then they'll have to go to the kebab shop down the road and pay a pound for them like everyone else, because the chip shop will be closed and boarded up. The original point was a suggestion that they can paint a carriage for £500 and obviously they can't any more than the rest of us can.

And yes, Pete Thornhill, ladders have to have periodic inspections every six months and records kept. Surprised, as you tell me this is your area of expertise, that you appear unaware. As for Working at Height you appear also to be unaware that a very serious (as in permanent life changing injury) reportable accident occured this year at a preservation site involving a steam engine and working at height. Any Director who doesn't react to that event and show mitigation of risk will be eligible for prosecution (£6000 fine plus costs even if no-one has fallen) as well as being morally bankrupt in the care of his staff or contractors. I am not going to be waving the "regulations" in HMRI's face as my defence next time they pop in, and I don't really want you doing it in my name either so I will say thanks for your offer but somehow we will just have to manage without you. And you will forgive me but I try not to use "Lol!!" when talking about safety.

 

Nothing like a childish little dig is there GFG.

 

The problem is working out who the "expert"is.

 

This is sort of detracting from the point, if you include all these overheads, you could no more paint a coach for £500 than doing up a storage van.

And anyway, we don't use an overhead wire for painting a carriage, but we do to fix wagon's roofs

 

This has been a fascinating thread, so let's not get "derailed" () by a spat over regulations and how they are applied. (Except, perhaps, to say that proper use of exemptions is a vital way of keeping costs under control, and if done based on proper assessment of the situation and suitable risk assessment, is a perfectly adequate defence if things go wrong).

I have been away for a week or so, and hence there is much I could comment on. However, the first point (there may be others!) is on Overheads.

Excluding overheads can be referred to as "marginal costing", and if you do everything on that basis, then you plan to make a loss equal to your overheads! However, at the same time, you can reject activities that will make a useful contribution to Overheads if everything is only examined on a "full cost" basis. The key question is whether the allocated overhead would be saved by not doing the activity to which it is allocated or whether the allocation is a purely mathematical exercise because "it must go somewhere" (technical accounting jargon!)

Marginal costing is essential for non-core activities and I would suggest tidying up stores vans is such an activity. You don't create a C & W Paint-shop purely in order to be able to tidy up the stores vehicles; it is there primarily to paint the running fleet. Having whatever equipment is needed is necessary for this task - it is unlikely any additional equipment is needed just for the store van job. Hence, overheads are irrelevant - the vast majority would exist whether you were painting the store van or not. The "cash cost" is just materials and labour - or is it?

There is another type of cost which is even more difficult to put a number on even to accountants - because it doesn't have a direct cash cost. "Opportunity Cost" is the fact that if a store van is using the paint shop for a fortnight, nothing else can. You can try and put a financial number on that, but the reality is that many people can understand the concept without the need to do so. The reality is that most people will conclude that using the paint shop to paint service vehicles which passengers travel in and get "up close" to is a better use of finite space (and manpower) than painting stores vans, and the lack of complaining on Trip Adviser and elsewhere from passengers about the "eyesores" may confirm that - although the effect of demics on relations with the neighbours and local authorities may cause a different view to be taken.

Finally, the Operating Department may also state there is an "opportunity cost" of using 60' of siding space to keep your stores in a rail vehicle in the first place and the owners of the stores may conclude an "off rail" solution is also more secure and convenient (especially when the operators shunt the stores vehicle to the far end of the site just before a full set of seats is needed out of it!). Having taken part in many debates on this subject (and the NYMR are part way through having a clear-out of vehicles), and associated issues, I am increasingly of the view that off-site, secure storage for "long term projects" will for all lines with limited space (and capital) be preferable, but is not, of course, likely to be anything like free! Hence, a more brutal assessment will, I am sure, be undertaken as to what is really needed and the rest should be offered to the rest of the movement. We have found there are a number of takers but also a number of items which nobody seems to want.

Steven