Total/Partial Steam Ban 2014

I believe so. I'm not aware of any reports accusing the Duchess of starting a fire. I stand to e corrected though.

 

Quite an accusation, but no fact.
If you have the facts bring it.
If you don't retract them.

Any one can say " I know but cannot say".. If you cannot say then don't.

Looking forwards to your next post, and your userid is on watch.

 

Ha ha, the ghost of Frank haunting the forum.

 

Looks like the 1st Waverley on Sunday is returning behind diesel if you look at the times on realtime trains, 5 mins allowed at Appleby, no Hellifield stop, 95mph running, the outbound from York looks like steam at the moment, there is heavy rain forecast for Saturday at the present time, hopefully the situation will improve - sadly do sent inspire confidence to travel behind steam at the moment, feel for the promoters of these trains who must be finding it difficult to fill the trains that run in July / August.

 

Am I alone in thinking there is a certain amount of, well, hot air would be charitable, in trying to equate size and frequency of lineside fires with the maintenance regime and / or crew standards of a particular operator.

Firstly, the size of a fire depends simply on how much fuel is present, not on how large the ignition source is (as will be immediately obvious if you have ever dropped a lighted match into a bucket of petrol!) So statements such as "Company X were responsible for all the major lineside fires" is simply reflecting the fact that they drove along routes with lots of unburnt dry material by the side of the track. A fire is a fire, but whether it is a big one or a small one doesn't depend on the volume of sparks being thrown about!

Secondly, even trying to compile statistics on the frequency of fires (rather than their magnitude) is difficult, since again it will depend on the routes that different operators frequent. An operator who frequently operates service sthrough acres of dry grassland is likely to start more fires than someone going through a sandy desert: that's nothing to do with crew competence and everything to do with the state of the countryside either side of the track.

I'm not suggesting that trying to stop lineside fires isn't important, and clearly good maintenance and crew competence have a role in that. But the actual factors that determine whether a stray spark starts a major fire or just fizzles out are sufficiently complicated, and sufficiently far-removed from what is within the power of an operator to control, that I simply don't believe that any meaningful analysis about performance of different operators can be gleaned from information that is in the public domain.

Tom

 

Odds on it will go out!

 

Entirely depends on the conditions. Try dropping a lighted match in a bucket of petrol in an enclosed room, and you won't get the match past the S of Swan Vesta.

 

Bit heavy-handed, no? How about, in the interests of balance, we swap things around and list the significant fires started by DBS-operated trains in recent summers?

It's also worth remembering that Network Rail LNE Zone's wary attitude to lineside fires seems to have originated with this particular incident - widely discussed on this very forum at the time. If that hadn't happened then we might have seen all three of Bittern's 90mph runs on their original dates.

 

That's the public perception - the reality is somewhat different.

 

Be blaming Billy Joel next

 

Fred,

Careful. Another member (who I have no connection or allegiance with, for the record) has recently been told,

Seriously though, I'd be very interested to know what the reality is/was in that particular case. I seem to recall DBS going all out to run the second Streak tour and it getting pulled at the last minute because Network Rail wouldn't lift the ban.

 

I have no idea of the reality - only that at the time my sources indicated that the real situation was not for public discussion and no further info was being made available.

 

Anyone else struggling to make logical sense of these two statements?

This whole thread does rather seem to be a bit of a verifiable fact-free zone...

Tom

 

Welcome to Natpres, Tom!

 

Ha, I think Tom, as one of the more cerebral members on here will be well aware that facts and Nat Pres are not comfortable bed fellows. The funny thing is though, if you took some of the most vocal on here and put them in a face to face situation where they had to make their case verbally, they'd almost certainly slip into a a temporary state of silence !

 

Also surely given the FBU strike there would have been a steam ban this week whatever the past history. There are several relatively cerebral threads about the events of last year around pages 27 onwards of What's Going On--- including coverage of Mr Yeti's curious tastes in steam/diesel combinations which appear to be remarkably consistent over time!