Swanage Railway General Discussion

Swanning Around is on the public area of the staff site. The event was also discussed in some detail in the December issue of Trackside (quoting Gavin Johns) and the calendar on the timetable page shows June 7, 8 & 9 as currently greyed out dates. Not sure anyone has said it is happening yet, but a pretty well known aspiration publically I would suggest.

 

Remember that day very well!.....I was the HX signalman, I remember the Driver phoning in from the up home signal to tell me that the T3 had stopped for a "Blow up" and to bring the down service (34070) through to HX which we did.
The service that day was timed with a calendar, all good fun!
The Videographer Mark Fry is a Mid Hants Signalman.

 

The 33+TC absolutely wins for historic local interest, but unless you are shifting two 4-TC sets worth of people, then the DMU will always win on economic grounds. I'm sure Swanage's management are considering their motive power and service level choices very carefully in the current climate.

Sent from my moto g(8) power lite using Tapatalk

 

Hmmm so what is neeeded is something economical and appropriate for the line. Anyone got a Hampshire unit going spare?!

 

IMHO the one missing item in the Swanage collection

BUT from what said on the Mid Hants thread they seem to have corrosion issues

 

If heritage railways chose their traction & rolling stock on purely economic grounds, they would be very boring places, and most would give up.

On which economic grounds are you comparing a 33&4TC with a 117/121 DMU?

 

That's correct, Gladiator. Swanning Around is a Swanage Railway Trust newsletter produced for the public arena. Any contents, including those in SITREP, are not restricted and are available for public consumption. Although it is produced by a volunteer, it isn't solely for volunteers. Shouldn't stop anyone on here from discussing it, whether they are right or wrong!

 

Was also mentioned publicly on the Southern locos site

Guess part of the reason getting the Bulleid event date out is so people can start making arrangements to visit, but if planning means the date might change, might upset those who have made arrangements?. So best to wait till the date is confirmed before a public announcement.
But could be discussed if the date is not confirmed.

 

Sadly IMHO "heritage" railways do tend to use equipment that is both boring and uneconomic..-

 

Plus the return of the 3TC set will make use of the 33 more! Which... for normal passenger services seem to have always been heavily underused.

Apart from the Mainline equipment for the 117/121 so they can run to Wareham........ Is there any real 'point' in having them once we get a 3/4TC set running???

Surly the Mainline equipment could go into the cab of the 33 and TC?? Then Obv you would need the coaches being mainlined approved with door locks but could even them be transferred from the DMU onto them? If so......

 

Yeah, should be able to do that on a Tuesday, between tea break and lunch. Won't cost more than a fiver....

 

From memory the editorial in the last issue of the Bluebell Magazine (which I do not currently have to hand) said that Archie would be visiting for the gala.
If it is supposed to be "secret" then a lot of folks did not get the memo

 

Well there are rather a lot of assumptions there and I would echo the comment from @Fireline.
Surely the first question is what does the normal day to day passenger prefer, maybe the ability to look out of the front or back of a DMU is seen as a plus, more than just those in the front or back seats get a view.
Does "Joe Public" see any difference between a TC and normal loco hauled set?
Would it be cheaper to operate the TC with a 33?
So if you are proposing a Wareham operation how would that work? As I understand it only 33111 can work in push pull mode and that is not mainline approved. You could not run round at Wareham even if the trackwork and signalling allowed, which I do not think it does, as the SWR service pattern is too frequent.
Would it even be just "drag and drop" with the mainline equipment from the DMU's
Coaching stock would need retention toilets plus an emptying facility or lock the toilets out?
Central door locking.
Those last two are all at the railways cost.

If it ever happened I would venture not soon, and certainly not when the railway is asking for funds just to survive.

 

The worst kept secret is out, the return of strictly bulleid has been announced.

 

Strictly Bulleid II confirmed for June 7th to 9th.

 

https://www.swanagerailway.co.uk/events/view/strictly-bulleid-ii

 

Supposed to be the end of the good weather today so I bothered to stir myself with Eddystone in the sunshine. At Herston on the 10:00, and approaching Townsend Bridge with the 15:20.
Also one from yesterday of the 15:20 approaching the summit at Afflington, when the sun did its usual trick of hiding.

 

So the loco vs D(M)MU economic comparison has several elements, and I apologise for the lengthy post, I hope folks don't find it confrontational and instead find it interesting...

Firstly you have the simple day-to-day fuel cost. I undertook some fuel trials on a 5 mile line and a type 3 diesel (of which a 33 is one) hauling a 4 coach train uses around the same amount of fuel as eight DMU engines - or four powercars - or an eight coach DMU formation. Remember a 33 has ten times the horsepower than a DMU engine. Now these stats change in the loco's favour if you get the 33 hauling more coaches, or you run on the mainline (faster and more miles), but that's not what we are comparing, we are talking 4 round trips on a pres line with lots of sitting around.

The result of this is that you could run the 121 Monday through Friday and run the 33 at the weekend and you are still putting more diesel in the 33. As for other consumables, brakeblocks are more expensive for 33's than they are for coaching stock or DMU's. There's also 16 more brakeblocks on a 33+3TC than there is on a 117 3-car. A 33+4TC weighs 210T against the 117+121 at 139T for the same number of passenger coaches, so the engine has to work harder to accelerate and the brakes have to work harder to stop the train. Other consumables such as filters or the amount of oil is significantly bigger on a 33 so at almost every maintenance point the 33 is costing that little bit more than a railcar. So DMU's are simply cheaper to run and maintain day-to-day.

But it's not all about day-to-day. Locos and stock are two separate entities, if you own your own stock then you have to shoulder the eventual overhaul costs and have to restore 3/4 mark 1 (or TC) coaches, along with the loco. I've just overhauled a DMU car from scrap condition for around £40k which is comparable to an unpowered coach, so £160k required for a full hauled set (and this is a conservative figure, given many railways estimate major Mk1 overhauls to be at £100k each now) and that is before you have started on the 33 overhaul. Last time I saw a DMU engine overhauled commercially it cost £10k - so that's £40k for the prime movers on a 117 set. It's bus technology so the bus world can be tapped into when overhauling. Compare this to some of the commercial engine overhauls being quoted in the appeals of stricken diesel loco groups, which are up in six figures. You also have the dreaded generators located in most diesel locos, which are a death sentence for the wallet if they fail badly. As a rule, the 60 year old gearboxes under DMU's seem to be surviving better than 60 year old main generators. So in summary it costs significantly more to overhaul a 33 and three coaches than it does a 117 3-car.

Now, say you don't own your own stock, and they are hired instead, with overhaul costs "dodged". The same result usually applies, as hire charges for Diesel locos tend to be higher than those of DMU's. So you can hire a whole train in the form of a DMU for £X or you can hire a 33 for something higher than £X and then have to hire a set of coaches or TC unit to go with it. Hire arrangements are of course bespoke to each railway.

Someone else in the thread mentioned running purely on economy would be boring, well the reason everyone is not just running DMU's is because the higher costs of steam and hauled coaches is proven to often be more than offset by the increased patronage, so it works (to the relief of 99% of this forum!). This logic is harder to apply to diesel loco + coaches as you tend to get much less patronage than steam but not more patronage than DMU. There's bound to be someone on here who now argues that hundreds more public turn out for a diesel loco instead of a DMU, but I'm sorry that's just not my experience when counting passenger numbers on my railway when crewing both these two forms of traction.

Before any diesel loco devotees attack, this isn't a post arguing that diesel locos should all be replaced by DMU's. Can a DMU rescue a failed train? Not really. Can a DMU do all the engineering work and haul other trains in a flexible way? No. Are DMU's more popular with enthusiasts and funders who help our heritage lines? No. There's lots of uses and positive reasons to have resident diesel locos, but I can't accept that a diesel loco hauling two coaches in ordinary passenger service is cheaper than a DMU. The railways changed over to them on rural passenger work for a reason!

 

Can’t it just be slotted in just after the HST sets have been purchased for the Bournemouth shuttle service?

Why is it I am very much reminded of conversations with my brother from my youth at the SVR who’d regularly comment about various projects that needed doing whilst I volunteered yet was strangely silent when pressed about if he was having so many good ideas why didn’t he give up his weekends and show us all how it should be done?

 

A sensible and reasonable post Are you sure your on the right forum?