Sustainability

The total amount of coal used by heritage is not huge in comparative terms and the marginal price gain would be lost against the logistics involved.

The effect of increased retirement ages on volunteering will not be felt for many years as many occupational pensions will still pay out at 60, some schemes will have effectively split the benefits due to rule changes with a proportion at 60 and the rest at 66 or so and this may impact eventually, but of course in theory volunteers are going on longer as life spans increase.
The increasingly fragmented nature of work, self employment, several jobs etc, allows those that want to vary their time at work to allow more time for hobbies to do so, this could be a positive.

 

Of course we could convert the majority of locomotives to run on "used" cooking oil...... I can see it now, the Severn Valley "sponsored" by KFC, Bluebell by MacDonald's and so on. Seriously it could perhaps be an option. After all they used vegetable oil in the early days as a lubricant as well as tallow. IIRC Castrol oil has a percentage of vegetable oil in the mix too.

 

Many steam locos have been converted from coal to oil burning at one time or another, and many, especially in the USA, never ran on coal. So oil of some sort is an obvious alternative if coal supplies get too difficult. Some punters might be put off by the different small, but probably not too many of them. And the hard work aspect of firemen's jobs would largely disappear while the skills would still be needed. There's no need to go down that path yet, but it's there if and when needed.

 

Quite agree there MellishR. So whilst it may not been needed/viable at the moment. How about doing research and development now, using some of the smaller [perhaps industrial] locos to develop the alternate oil burning gear etc.

 

Going back to Fireline's original question, I think the link to the HRA report answers that, with growth in visitor and passenger numbers, turnover, and staff numbers.
I'm surprised at the number of volunteers being only 21659 though. I believe we have about 1200 working members on the SVR. I realise some people volunteer on more than one railway, but is it really the case that more than 1 in 18 volunteers volunteer on the SVR? That seems a very high proportion.
One thing that's always struck me about volunteer recruitment is that it seems to focus very much on getting young people in to the hobby. I'd suggest that targeting recruitment at middle aged people would be more beneficial overall. There's more of them, and they generally have more disposable time and income and are more likely to stick at something long term. They are also more likely to have skills and experiences which will come in useful.

 

Oil burning on locos not designed for that fuel can be fraught with pitfalls, the fuel is expensive and emissions can be horrendous. Remember it's not long since the Ffestinog back-converted their fleet to coal. Using recycled fuel makes matters worse, other than cost (we tried sump oil in the 70s) . I'd rather see more development done on biomass based solid fuels, which could be used on most locos without major engineering work. Currently they lack the necessary energy density and mechanical strength, but this is improving according to reports from the U.S.

 

Interesting question about volunteer numbers. My hunch is that a volunteer who works in two or more locations would be double-counted in the HRA stats, since - unless the individual heritage railways are disclosing the actual names of volunteers, and the HRA is then doing a data matching exercise, I can't easily see how you could avoid double counting; i.e. each railway just reports their own numbers without regard to what else they might do.

I wouldn't be totally surprised by the SVR having 1 in 18 of all volunteers: there is probably a "long tail" effect, i.e. a few big railways and a large number of small ones with fairly low numbers of volunteers (and relatively limited operations). As a corollory, from the figures for coal consumption given in the latest Steam Railway, I think the NYMR use about 1 ton in 8 of all the coal used by Heritage Railways. That probably reflects the dominant scale of their operation relative to the rest of the sector.

Tom

 

i think delivery could be piecemeal to multiple locations, I don't think you'd have to take a ship-load. Presumably the idea has been thought about before and rejected

 

There is no mechanism in the annual statistical return to identify individual volunteers nor to cross reference them to more than one railway. The HRA simply ask for the number of volunteer staff. Thus, a volunteer who works on say three different heritage railways will be counted three times. In reality, I suspect that the figures returned are a best guess at many railways for a variety of reasons.

 

I believe that for most of the larger heritage railways the volunteer figures should be accurate as they are derived from working member staff pass information. The issue of staff passes is usually controlled, and subject to having attended an induction of some description.

Andy

 

I can't see oil burning of whatever sort being viable for several reasons, not the least being cost. Coal prices would have to more than treble or coal become non-existent for it to even have a chance. Coal is not going to disappear from the scene even if it disappears from the power stations and homefire burning. UK coal burn is still about 1.5mt/annum excluding these and that is very unlikely to change. the equivalent figure is 40mt throughout Europe. Compared with that the UK 'heritage' burn is about 30,000 tons so it is still a drop in the ocean. What is going to be the stumbling block is the supply chain which will probably disappear. In theory, we could send a lorry to Russia/wherever, load it with 28 tons at the pithead and bring it back to the UK. That's expensive to do and degradation will be significant. A years supply landed at a UK port improves the transport cost but it is a small ship and an expensive investment for a company who might have to wait a year or more to get the money back. It wouldn't be for any business reason to do it; it would be simply doing us a favour.

 

Hmm, I can just see the Bluebell's 9F being named "Big Mac" and the Terriers collectively known as "McNuggets".

Perhaps all served with a side order of a least 3 "P"s?

I'll be quiet now

Steve B

 

I think that would probably be true for people undertaking a formal role at the railway, probably involving signing on each day etc.

However - when is a volunteer not a volunteer? One of the things I do at the Bluebell is edit the in-house staff newsletter (in fact, I'm failing to do that right now...) That involves co-ordinating words and pictures, and sometimes a bit of writing to link things together. However, the in-house visual design team, a.k.a. Mrs Jamessquared, then waves her magic wand over it to produce a nice looking document. I doubt she would see herself as a volunteer, and I cannot think that she would appear in any count of volunteer numbers, but in terms of time, it is not insignificant. I guess there are probably a number of people doing similar informal roles in various societies.

Tom

 

Anyone, presumably, whether paid staff or volunteer, needs to prove that they are/were on duty at any specific time. Signing in, or some other official arrangement, should be in place to record who is/was authorised to be on the railway. Any accident and subsequent claim would need certain proof before considering any claim. I suspect the RAIB also would require that.
Admittedly for some of those lines with a large volunteer workforce - often haphazard where attendance is concerned - keeping the required records must be quite a laborious task.

 

I suspect that signing in is a requirement on most, if not all, railways. What happens to those signing in sheets is I suggest, nothing, apart from filing away and gathering dust for however long the SMS requires they be kept.

 

Could a private open cast site cater 4 our coal supplies if the last of the coal fired power stations go in 2025 would the goverment aĺlow a private coal mining site 4 steam coal 4 ou heritage lines to be opened or is the case just when all the coal fired power stations go so do the last of the open cast mines.

 

The government is presently calling in all planning applications for opencast coal mines. The Welsh Assembly has put a ban on all new mining in Wales. However, Banks Mining are fighting the decision on their opencast site in Northumberland and at the end of last year won an appeal in the high court The vibes still aren't good, though.

 

Where are all those tons of coal being used? Is it for iron ore smelting? However much or little of that continues in Britain, presumably a lot of it will continue somewhere, to supply all the steel.

 

Cement industry consumes a fair bit too.

 

There's also electric arc smelting which some steelworks use as a cleaner way of smelting, also Port Talbot and Scunthorpe steelworks still use coke I think Rotherham Tata steel now uses electric arc smelting I'm not sure of anywhere else in the steel industry in the UK they still use coke for making breeze blocks or coke breeze I think in the brick industry coal dust is used for that also.