Bluebell Motive Power

Fully booked. Here's hoping 09 is rostered for a passenger run at a Branchline weekend, or Bluebell willing to accept a charter booking for it.

 

Better to repaint the engine in BR green for the occasion...

 

Well volunteered, that man...

Tom

 

I not sure I a good person for the job have you seen my models I tried to paint...

 

... though at least you'd be painting at 12" to the foot scale, not 4mm to the foot!

Anyway, just to tidy up one small point from earlier: the Prairie has had successful gauging runs and, as a result (and not unexpectedly) is banned from platforms 4/5 at HK, which should at least keep the HK bobbies on their toes!

Tom

 

Could be interesting if you ever borrowed two GWR outside cylinder locos then... I think you ought to hire a 28 (2-8-0) next: reckon that would be good to see :- ). Or would the lower cylinders give even more gauging problems?

 

We'd still be OK, because we have three useable platforms at HK - up trains could run through platform 2 and down through platform 3. What you'd lose would be the cross-platform interchange for passengers changing trains.

Tom

 

Well, I would be VERY p****d off if I went to the Bluebell and only found a 'Modern' diesel pulling the train.
The guys in the workshop do a fantastic job overhaulling the steam loco's.
But, I think too much time and money was spent on East Grinstead, time and money that should have been spent on maintaining the steam loco's.
Appart from a small diesel shunter, Bluebell should be steam only.

 

I don't suppose any of us are overjoyed at the prospect - though to be fair, if you turn up this weekend there will be steam on both service trains and I think four locos in steam. (Stepney is running a special on one day I think - can't remember which one).

As for East Grinstead, the reasons for doing it and the finances have been thrashed out on this forum and elsewhere ad infinitum. Suffice to say, had we not completed the project when we did, there was a very real risk that we would have had to cut the line back to Horsted Keynes and thereby abandon the extension to Kingscote - not a happy prospect. Whereas by completing the extension, we appear to have opened up the possibility of a step change in passenger numbers and revenue.

The real reason for not spending money on locos for the last five or six years was because the money simply wasn't there - just study the accounts! You can have all the policies you want, but without money, they are just pieces of paper (or electrons in a computer). At least now we have the very real opportunity to focus the increased revenue on the investments in the "old" railway that are needed.

From time to time, every preserved railway has a loco crisis. We had one in the early 1970s when umpteen locos were dismantled, but only the USA tank and 27 were in working order. Eventually we recovered then, other railways recovered from their crises, and I'm sure we'll recover from this one, helped in part by our now increased revenue.

Tom

 

The extension to East Grinstead has been a tremendous achievement, but it must have taken up a great deal of resource and management focus.

Lets hope for a period of consolidation now during which the management team and all others there can focus on one of the core purposes of the Bluebell as I see it, to run steam hauled trains with the best fleet of ex SR (Southern etc), locos anywhere.

No hope looking to me to volunteer for work on the loco fleet Tom. I was a "founder" member of the 34023 group and they soon worked out my engineering capabilities.

Toilet cleaner.

Although I did end up with a massive promotion which allowed me to scape a similar looking substance off the underneath of the loco!

 

True, and before that there was an extended period when Birch Grove and the two Ps (27 and 323) were all that were available - and a two train service was being run. All three really needed to be available as the signalling at Sheffield Park in those days didn't allow you to run round whilst a train was in section, so shunt release was the order of the day. For a while 323 was out of service as well, which stretched things to the limit and made keeping to the timetable difficult. Birch Grove and 27 were run into the ground and withdrawn, whilst newly arrived 592 proved to have a damaged axle journal, and an attempt to put the Dukedog into service was thwarted by a rotten tender - which lead to the Dukedog running with 592s tender for a while. The Bluebell recovered from that, and established proper workshop facilities and went from strength to strength.

What is not so well known is that the other "skin of your teeth" issue at the time was the coaching stock - most of it was rotten, and much unserviceable. The Mets have been properly restored now, but most of the other coaches in regular use in those early days are still under tarpaulins, and in many cases are in worse condition than the grounded bodies presently being restored. Again, the Bluebell survived, and has an operational fleet that is the envy of many other railways.

Tom mentions that money wasn't available, neither is workshop space, and every time a working loco is stopped for repairs it inevitably delays the overhauls of other locos. The Bluebell will recover, and the future looks brighter than the present!

Steve

 

And scraping the crap off the locos has to be done, whether you have engineering skill or not. I'm certain they could find plenty of "unskilled' work for you if you wanted to help, thus freeing more skilled people up for the work they are better at!
Daniel

 

Get back to work man! Imagine the posssible consequences if the toilets are not clean during the final insurance exam when the inspector needs to take a dump. You could be putting the entire project in jeopardy.

 

Again someone is missing the point, the Bluebell had to get to East Grinstead then or risk never doing it. Not only the landfill tax but also the issues regarding the planning at Kingscote and the goodwill of the council meant that the only window was early this year, and missing it may well have meant a situation where the railway was running SP to HK with a very long headshunt to the north.

Bad luck happens but it is better to keep trains running however possible rather than turning away a lot of people, many of whom would probably never return. Besides, a class 33 is more appropriate for the railway than many of the resident steam engines and a lot of people like them, so who are you to deny them?

 

I suspect most ordinary passengers would be even more "p****d off" to turn up and be told there was no train service because there were no diesels and the steam loco had failed its morning inspection.

Wednesday wasn't a good day for UK steam - Grosmont MPD also had 100% failure on its morning steam exams - there were already 3 diesels out (2 rostered and 1 covering due to us being down to 3 locos available, 3 diagrams and one of the steam locos on washout). There were no more diesels available, and so 2 key trains would have had to be cancelled but for a marvelous effort from the MPD to change a broken spring, the cause of failure on 45428, and the trains ran. Since they've had the wheel drop, Grosmont MPD are well up to F1 pitstop standards on spring changes! More excellent work saw the loco on washout (61264) back in traffic by early afternoon, but the diesels kept things going and it was one of the busiest days of the year.

I am sure there would be disappointment amongst the passengers that they had unexpected diesel traction, but I am equally sure that they would be even more disappointed had trains not run and the situation at the Bluebell will have been exactly the same.

It has been my understanding that the East Grinstead extension has been funded by appeals, grants and share issues - money that was specifically received to build the extension and hence not available for loco, Pway or any other type of work - unlike the extra fares income the extension is generating.

Steven

 

Maybe if you count the Bluebell as being only the section from the South end of Imberhorne Viaduct to East Grinstead. As far as I can see, they were all built after the Bluebell had closed and was going into the hands of the preservationists. Any diesel was a very rare breed on the Bluebell line until now.
Daniel

 

Exactly. And sure, there may have been money available by appeal for locos etc if the extension hadn't occured, but the line would only be an isolated 5 miles in the middle of rural sussex. Now its a serious 11 mile line with mainline links to London, less than an hour away. In a few years this crisis will be completely dealt with, and the railway will be back at the top of the premier preserved railways with an unrivaled collection of operational locos and rolling stock, running large numbers of passengers who can get to and from London easily using public transport.
Daniel

 

True but I was thinking more in terms of the SR heritage type line. A 33 would automatically be more appropriate than the 9F or Dukedog for example on that score. If you were to apply it to "pre-1960" stock then we shouldn't be running Bulleids south of Horsted (blanket ban by SR and BR) and also be dubious about everything that wasn't LBSCR in origin from pre-1923 (bar the H as they were regular sights at East Grinstead) and maybe the heavy freight types (Q and S15).

As to the loco crisis being only a temporary thing I thought it worth repeating a post I made on page 26...

So far as I can tell in the 3 weeks since then nothing has changed.

 

I'm having a hard time thinking of a major heritage railway which has not had some sort of motive power shortage in the past decade or so. The Llangollen, maybe?

 

After all the bad news over the past few days. Here's some good news. I hear the BB passengers figures are up by 36% since last year. 60000 passengers had been carried by the end of May. That's a lot of passengers for the first five months of the year.