Motive Power

A growing and changing market? You said steam was in decline!
I'm not the one worked up, I think that might be you!
I've already said what use I believe they have and at the risk of repeating myself, they play a secondary role at best to steam and a standby/ shunting role is more the norm. They use resources provided on the back of steam that ,with the odd exception, they could not hope to enjoy otherwise.

 

I was referring to the heritage railway market in general, not steam in particular. Now calm down, dear, or you'll do yourself a mischief!

 

"I base my opinions on the relative decline in interest in steam v. diesel on 25 years personal experience of heritage railway operation and have no doubt that interest in steam is declining, both among the public and volunteers. "

Post no 30 "

Stop the personal stuff eh...does you no credit

 

But at the same time, there is an increasing interest in diesels so, overall, an increase in interest in heritage railways generally. It's a personal opinion, but I hope you won't object!

 

I don't object at all. You are welcome to your opinions, I just hope you don't mind me reminding you of opinions you denied having.

 

I've been watching this punchup discussion with interest.

Earlier it was posited that the lower running costs (principally fuel) made diesels a sound bet, even if they didn't attract so many passengers. However, that is in my view flawed, since it ignores the fixed costs of running a railway, notably the infrastructure. Keeping all your station buildings, viaducts, tunnels, cuttings and embankments in good order costs the same whether it is steam or diesel running on them; those fixed costs have to be spread between your passengers on their ticket price. Given that fact, you want as many passengers as possible - even if the fuel costs of hauling them are higher.

Given the choice, I'd rather be a ten mile heritage line pulling 150,000 passengers per year with an annual coal bill of £150,000, than the same line pulling 30,000 passengers with an annual diesel bill of £10,000 - even though the per-passenger fuel bill is less for the diesel-hauled line.

Also, on the point of people wanting to preserve what they remember from their youth, and therefore interest in steam diminishing as those who remember it first time round get thinner on the ground: I don't buy that argument. If were it true, all our junior volunteers (many below 20 years of age) would want to be preserving Pendolinos and Javelins; and manifestly they don't: they want to work on steam engines. Personally, my formative railway memories were of the blue/grey BR era; the very end of Westerns and the introduction of 125s at Reading; 4VEPs on the Waterloo - Reading line; blue diesels of various types. But I find that period a profoundly depressing one, and certainly not one that I have the remotest desire to try and preserve. I'm interested in steam, and especially pre-nationalisation steam, not because I remember it from my youth, but precisely because I don't remember it from my youth. If I am remotely typical of current volunteers, I would say steam preservation has a secure future of people wanting to get involved for the foreseeable future.

Tom

 

Much of this thread must have appeared like a punch-up, though I would rather describe it as a lively debate!

The point regarding infrastructure is valid, though I should point out that a loss is a loss, however it is arrived at. The other weakness in this argument is that it assumes that a, presumably all steam, line will attract 150,000 passengers, whilst the same line worked by diesels will only attract 30,000. Is there any proven basis for those figures? Anyway, it is a false premise, since the vast majority of lines which currently operate mainly steam services will continue to do so, with diesels working only a proportion of services, though in my opinion that proportion will increase over time. In those circumstances I see no reason why there should be, at worst, more than a marginal reduction in passenger numbers, whilst there would be a compensatory reduction in running costs.

The issue of whether the rising generation of railway volunteers will maintain an interest in steam depends largely on the situation of individual railways. I can quite see why the Bluebell (for that, I assume, is who we are talking about) can attract and maintain interest in steam locos- after all, they have one of the most interesting collections of steam locos in the UK. However, it's not the same everywhere and I have had the opposite experience, so we must differ there.

I was surrounded by an all-steam railway, in East Anglia, in my formative years, and found the 1960s a depressing period in railway terms (mind you, I also discovered other, non- railway, interests at that time!) But I rediscovered a very interesting, though different, railway in the '70s, so I have maintained a strong interest in both ever since. You see, things change!

One area where I totally agree with you is the preservation of Pendolinos and Javelins. There seems no point, but then, the same was said of 1st generation diesels in the 1960s!

 

Whilst Tom's comparative figures of 30000 & 150000 are probably not valid the NYMR has through a shortage of steam power and failures, had to substitute diesel for steam on too many occasions this year. Those at the sharp end of public comment (i.e. the booking office) will tell you that there is definite customer resistance to the use of diesels, only placated by them being told that they should get some steam haulage during their trip on the Railway, which is what usually happens unless they are extremely unlucky. Even where the timetable shows diesel haulage, many people are disappointed to discover this when they arrive. A conclusion there is that many don't read a timetable before setting out to visit the railway and treat it like any other attraction and simply turn up.
As for young volunteers wanting diesel, I don't find that to be the case. In the 1980's railways were seen as uncool and the young weren't usually interested. Those that were only really had diesels to watch on the big Railway so they associate themselves with them. I think that this attitude has now disappeared and it's OK to be involved with heritage. The youngsters are returning but with an interest in steam, rather than diesel. The hard bit is keeping them when faced with competition from those opposite sex folks.

 

From personal experience in the 1960s, I think you may be on a loser there!

 

My formative railway years mirror yours pretty well, we may have shared the west end of platform 5 many times
I believe that most railways cannot support themselves on diesel alone and that income would inevitably drop in proportion to any reduction in steam usage. Diesels are useful and have a place, but it is limited in most cases

 

One thing that has not been over discussed is Horses for Courses.
My railway is approx 1.5ish miles long & we do not have or need any big Steam or Diesel locos. The majority of our Diesel locos are ex Industrial, but we do have 2 o3s, an 05, 2 ex NS o-6-0s very similar to Cl;ass 11.
We still operate probably the only regular commercial freight traffic on a Preserved Railway, & have been doing so for the last 10 years, using Sentinel Diesel Locos originally bought new in 1968, to do basically the same job now, although the trains now weigh 700tons. 45 years of service & still going strong.
We realised in 2011 that we (surprisingly) had a shortage of mid week steam crews, & decided to hire in an ex BR Railbus, to cover midweek operations. This has proved invaluable, & has helped grow Schools party visits. It is well advertised that the Railbus is running mid week services, & has served us well.

We use a Diesel shunter to pull the steam loco out of the shed prior to lighting up, & also to shunt the coaches prior to start of daily operations, we run a Diesel Shunter weekend which has grown in popularity over the years, & we top & tail with a Diesel during Steam Heat Season

We do not need a large Ex BR Diesel as it would see such infrequent usage, & it could make the rest of our Diesel fleet either redundant, or Semi Redundant.

All of our covered acommodation is shared by Diesels, Steam Locos & Coaching stock, & has not been known to cause any problems

DW

 

My figures may have been indicative, but from memory, an average annual figure of £1 per passenger for coal is not very far from our experience. That is paid for from a full-price 3rd class all-day rover ticket of about £13.50. In other words, while the coal bill is expensive, it is by no means the major cost of running a heritage line. Certainly, if there was a magic bullet that could reduce that figure by 10% it would be worth having - but provided it truly was a magic bullet. No point saving 10p on your coal bill by losing £1 of fare revenue...

I also think the economics of "small" and "big" lines may be significant. Flaman gave an example from his line (which I assume is of the short / demonstration type) of one ton per day of coal to run a steam loco. But from experience, we use only that amount to run a P class on a full diagram of 66 miles in a day with two coaches! Clearly on a steam engine, quite a lot of coal is used lighting up: you use the same amount whether the day's running thereafter is 10 miles or 100 miles. Also, if your operation is, say, one day per week, then you use a disproportionate amount in warming fires or a slow lighting up procedure, relative to a line that runs daily and starts each day with a warm engine, possibly still with pressure on the clock. Also, a short line that runs many trips has lots of stopping and starting, which uses more coal and water than travelling an equivalent distance in smaller number of longer runs. All of those might skew the economics on a small line towards being much less favourable for steam, at least if seen purely in fuel costs. But I still think the fuel cost argument is marginal: what really matters is having enough passengers to keep the proportion of the fixed cost paid by each passenger down to reasonable levels.

Tom

 

Interesting number for cost of Coal per passenger Tom - I have just in effect dug out the data needed for that calculation on the Moors for Steve to use in a forthcoming MIC, and our cost is about £1.20 per passenger - so, slightly more, probably due to the longer run and steep gradients needing larger loco, offset by the shortest diagram being 43 miles and the majority being 72 miles, with 2 daily diagrams at 108 miles in the peak, so the costs of lighting up are spread over greater mileage and there is less starting and stopping (but a degree of sitting about waiting for the next booked train).

With Pickering/Grosmont all line of £18 and Pickering/Whitby All Line (both Day Rovers over the sections mentioned) £24, although the cost per passenger is higher than the Bluebell, the proportion of cost against ticket revenue is less. Of course, the real issue for any train operator is that if you run the same mileage but only carry 250,000 passengers, the coal bill doesn't fall by much if anything (as a non-locoman, I would welcome views on whether the ability of a fireman is likely to have a greater affect on coal consumption that the actual number of passengers on a train of the same length - I know it is about 25 to 30 passengers per tonne for heritage operations - little luggage {allegedly} - so 300 passengers will weight 10 tonnes more than an empty train, but how much does that affect the coal used if the coaching stock is the same?)

There was a point a few years ago when oil prices had increased but coal hadn't when the fuel cost per mile was not appreciably less for diesel, but with coal prices having tripled in less than a decade, that is no longer the case. Coal is now a major cost (Fuels, Oils and Lubricants is probably the second biggest number on detailed NYMR Costs Accounts) whereas when it 1/3 of the present cost, it was one of the smaller amounts. Hence, why we do use diesels to privde a more frequent service than could be justified in shoulder and off peak period with all steam.

Steven

 

Steven - if you are getting 25 - 30 passengers per ton, you need to have a serious look at how well your catering operation is performing I reckon on closer to 12 per ton - that gives an average weight of 13stone each.

More seriously, I'm sure there is a difference between firemen, but you would be hard pressed to scientifically measure it - too many other variables are involved, not least the fact that on any particular loco diagram, it is quite likely that the firing will be shared between fireman and third man. For us, of more consequence is the condition of the engine, particularly on the older slide valve engines. As they get closer to the end of their ticket, they seem to use more water (and therefore presumably more coal) as the valve faces wear.

I'm remembering the figures now, but I think our coal bill is probably slightly over £1 per passenger, but not as much as £1.20. That was from the last set of accounts, which were 2012, i.e. pre-East Grinstead. How much that figure has changed now the line is both longer and steeper remains to be seen in the next set of accounts!

Tom

 

I think the average adult is taken as around 70Kg in the pharmaceutical industry but on the NYMR, at least, a fair proportion of the passengers will be children. I'd say 18-22 passengers per ton is probably a fairer estimate.

 

When you start to look at statistics some interesting things start to appear. I can only really refer to the NYMR but I have counted shovelfuls of coal used by various firemen on the climb from Grosmont-Goathland and the difference can be quite marked. OK, it's very unscientific and depends on how much coal is put on in preparing the fire before starting, how big the shovelfuls are and how much fire is left at the end of the climb, not to mention water in the boiler. The most economical firemen without doubt are those that control the air to avoid making smoke. Black smoke is at least 20% of your coal bill going up the chimney, probably more. Those that pander to the photographer have a lot to answer!
There's also a difference in locos, but not as much as most people think. In theory, it requires a certain amount of energy to drag a 7 coach train up the hill and that energy isn't really a variable, only the efficiency of turning the calorific value of the coal into steam. Our locos are probably working in the 5-7% efficiency range from the worst to the best. What does count is the weight of the loco. With 7 coaches and a Black 5, at 125¼ tons, some 36% of the energy used is used up in moving the loco. Use a Std 4 tank at 86¾ tons and that falls to 29%, straight away giving a theoretical saving of 7% on the coal bill.
Having effectively argued in that last sentence that a smaller loco is more economical there is a danger that, as you reach the loco's grate limit, more and more coal is being ejected up the chimney, so a loco that will do the job without being thrashed may well be a better bet than one that is being so worked. A Black 5 & a Std tank are fairly equal in that respect, the big saving coming from the fact that the tank doesn't have a tender to drag around.
As Tom has said, loco condition can also have a major impact of steam usage and hence coal costs, especially when working at full boiler pressures, when leakage across valves and pistons is at its greatest.
I have long felt that it would be a good idea to fit strain gauge weighs to the coaling plant at Grosmont and measure the amount of coal put into each loco. It could lead to some interesting information. There's a true saying that, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Bean Counter, are you reading this?!!!

 

Some interesting facts and figures are emerging from this and other recent posts. I'm surprised to find that, operating a very different line, our annual coal cost per passenger is also about £1.20, in spite of Jamessquared's apparently much lower figures for coal consumption, using similar sized engines, on the Bluebell Railway. I think that this can be most easily explained by the fact that we operate steam mainly when we can expect more concentrated passenger numbers, i.e. Bank Hols, galas and Santas and therefore get heavier loadings. The diesels handle the quieter days. Factors which increase our coal consumption include the fact that we only operate at weekends and so use a lot of coal raising steam from cold, the fact that we use steam for Santas, using steam-heating and, of course, the profile of our line. Short it may be (1 mile) but easy it 'aint! There are stops and starts at each end, plus an intermediate station. Much of it consists of gradients, the steepest section being 1 in 30, on a 10 chain check-railed curve. That's quite a test for a 14" Barclay hauling 70 + tons and is very different from hauling a similar train on a longer, straighter and more level line.

Before someone jumps up and says "why don't you run more steam and get heavier loadings on more days?" well, we've tried that and it didn't work. We are a privately owned and managed line, supported by volunteers. This means that we don't have the luxury of racking up losses, expecting that supporters or whoever will bail us out if we dig ourselves into a financial hole. In that sense, we differ from many HRs and it's why we are very careful to operate within our means, and use the most economical form of motive power appropriate to the job, which, as it happens, is largely diesel.

 

The MHR had to run diesel traction in the summer months due to fire risk and the passenger numbers went down because there wasn't any steam traction being used. I think most visitors to a preserved railway want steam but their is a growing number of people that will travel behind diesel traction. From what I know about people that will travel behind diesel traction is they will only travel behind their preferred class of loco. The MHR are now running diesel loco rostered days at weekends with 50027 or class 205 unit which are pulling in the diesel fans. I hear it doing very well.

 

I suspect for us running a P class with two coaches is about as cost effective as it gets. At least in cost per seat - cost per passenger isn't quite the same thing! Which is why you can only average over a year, though clearly you don't want to be running too many Ardingly brake van shuttles using Sir Archibald Sinclair...

The other issue is not just fuel cost per passenger, but as Bean Counter notes, what proportion of your ticket price that represents. Even if you are getting around £1.20 coal per passenger, it is clearly significant whether your ticket cost is, say, £18 (as at the NYMR) or, say, £8. Which I suspect explains why in your situation, you only find steam viable on high days and holidays.

Incidentally, steam heating isn't anything special, though clearly it adds to the coal consumption for the period you use it. Theoretically, we aim to heat carriages for at least an hour before first departure during the "train heating season", which loosely is from October to May. If you use diesels, and if you are a full-year attraction, you still have to think about how to heat the carriages in the winter: either have a fleet of ETH carriages (which is additional expense), or a diesel with a steam heating boiler that uses additional fuel. Either way, you will be running the diesel connected to the carriages for an hour or so before your first train. No energy is free!

As I say, I think it is horses for courses. If you have found an economic model that works for your situation, then great - but that doesn't mean it will neatly transfer to a line with different length, infrastructure and with access to a different clientele with different expectations.

Tom

 

Well, an interesting exchange of experience and opinions. I think the final words have been spoken by Jamessquared "horses for courses". My own experience is that most passengers expect a steam locomotive on the front of the train and get quite grumpy if a diesel is substituted or indeed diagrammed.