Jacobite 2024

Well that’s very nice of you. The simple matter is that hundreds of it’s trains run without incident year in year out. That is down to the staff running the services safely and professionally. So dispite you wanting to paint professional railwaymen and women as cowboys, it quite simply isn’t the truth.

 

Then why is it that this company was barred from the rails for a time, is using this lash-up arrangement, and has left passengers without heating in winter conditions? These are all matters that lend credibility to the "cowboy" reputation, fairly or unfairly.

Unfortunately, staff will cop the blame for the decisions of their employers, including where they disagree with those decisions. For my part, I am clear that my issue is with WCRC as an organisation, and the decisions it has made and is making. I make no suggestion of any kind against individual shop floor staff; indeed, I wish them well in the current circumstances which cannot help their confidence.

 

Why do enthusiasts want West coast to fail so badly? The mainline steam scene would be a lot poorer without them?

 

I don't want WCRC to fail - I welcome their success. But that, like that of any other operator, has to be according to the rules.

 

I view this as West coast shooting itself in the foot, everyone knows Scotland in April is hardly going to be anything but cold even on heritage lines they will be using heating, this can only backfire, cold disgruntled customers, are not likely to come back, West coast should have either ran it with an ETH diesel, or ensured they had a rake of Mk1'S CDL fitted in time for the season's start, but it seems the management are on a collision course with reality CDL is a requirement, like it or not, if you want to continue operating, and if your intention is to refuse to do whats required, then you can't really blame anyone but your self, the public in Scotland, will now be thinking, if theres no heating, im going to go elsewhere, familes won't put up with cold coaches, the only outcome i can see is loss of trade and should LSL be able to muscle in, with a few trips of its own, in CDL fitted coaches, with working heating, at a reasonable price, who will people go with ?

 

It's not about the individuals on the ground though. It's about the management. The cowboy nickname has been around for well over 20 years! With such a range of operations, I fully expect incidents to occur occasionally. It's the regularity that's the problem and that nothing seems to change. ORR had an incident reported by a whistleblower up at Fort William and went and investigated - a day's services were cancelled. They then went back a few weeks later and it appears nothing had changed as the service was cancelled for weeks!

No-one wants them to fail, but they're bringing it on themselves. Sending out a set of stock, day after day, with no heating and lighting in Scotland at this time of year? That's unbelievable. As LSL and Vintage generally only operate their own tours with their own locos, WCRC pretty much have a monopoly on all other mainline steam.

 

Sorry if you picked me up wrong,I wasn't trying to be nice!

 

The question should be does the management of West Coast want their business to fail why else they are continuing to shoot themselves in the foot, first, they on the face of it, are seeking confrontation with the regulator in the shape of ORR, in a fight they can't win, when they should have accepted, they need to comply, and got at least the Jacobite stock fitted, they then run a train with no heating, at a time when it's a necessity in Scotland, and if local conditions are known to be adverse, to steam haulage, they should have considered running with assistance to ensure delay is minimised, and was there at the time it was needed. its called common sense, But in a world where some people think they know best, stupid mistakes get made, my advice to the management at 10a would be stop interfering, let your professional railwaymen, and women, do what they do best,

 

Where?

 

But it's not WCR's fault DB/UKRT/Riviera have pretty much opted out. That is a great misfortune.

On the more general issue, I think you have to draw a distinction between management and ownership. I find it difficult to believe that all the shots are not being called by the owner. Maybe a TOC run by a private unlisted company is a bit of an anachronism.

 

Through judicial review. In court, by a judge.


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Which they are totally adhering to.

 

I don't think most do, its often who shouts loudest or most persistently who gain the most expose (the strange idea some have on SM that if one keeps saying the same thing over and over again it gives you some sort of high ground on the matter).

However there are some who seem to have a very tribal, and frankly rather peculiar unless one has engaged with both chaps, pro Jeremy (a bloody bug bear of mine, but that possibly for the winds me up thread!)/LSL anti WCR mindset for whatever reason, plus there are some vociferous voices on SM who seem to have a lot riding on being proven right re WCR so they can say when it happens that they were right all along (FWIW that seems to be an emerging trait on SM as my football club are dying on its derrière and there are loads of 'fans' who seem almost willing it to happen so they can say they were right all along) and finally there does seem (not here so much but elsewhere) to be a degree of snobbery about WCR not bring run by a railwayman but by a farmer (a term used to describe Mr Smith in very derisory terms elsewhere).

Who knows really, just needs doing one way or the other its getting tedious and boring from all sides.

 

Like I posted on an earlier post we were passengers going back a few years going on a CME the train started in London it was January so bloody cold so was looking forward to getting on a nice warm train at rugby but there was ice all over the windows and could not see out I used my debit card to scrape a patch on the window so I could see were we were going the ice fell on the window still on the coach and was still there at our destination most got out at Crewe and went home so not a 1st time WCRC failed with heating and as for sand not being on board is a puzzle as when we worked on mainline we always checked the sanders were working and that we had more on board if needed of course I don't want WCRC to fail just want them to do what is right for the passengers and that is to fit CDL for the safety of there passengers and to check the basic things like sanders are working and got more sand if needed and heating on a winter/ spring time trains in mk 1 coaches too smell the smoke though the window hear the locomotive working not going around in coffins were can't smell or hear the locomotive nothing more .

 

Plus there are lots of us who think the show is the thing and the operators are important but temporary curators of a great piece of kinetic art/engineering history/visual spectacle. Somehow steam on the main line has navigated the last five decades. Any behaviours which threaten that are not good news.

 

Indeed, but I cannot see how anything that WCR do (or don't do) could put that in jeopardy, ORR are not going to take LSL/VT (if they are acting entirely lawfully) off the network based on the actions of another entirely different commercial operator, it would be like, for instance, them taking all OAO off the system after the Lumo incident at Peterborough.

 

Whilst I would not disagree with some of the rolling stock issues, I saw and have had to placate passengers enough times over some of them, people do talk as if WCRC are the only company who ever send out stock with defaults, be it within the rail industry or any other transport mode.
I know from bitter personal work experience how many defects for example aircraft operate with. I know WCRC have a defect book in the guards office, and we had defect logs on our aircraft. It got to a point where the cabin crew stopped bothering to fill them in as they thought they never got looked at, and often crew would get on a tail number and find the same galley or seat snags there a month later unfixed.
I do not know what West Coast have, but we had something called ADD. (Allowable Deferred Defect). Many of these were what would be classed as minor, but to the passenger they were important, encompassing things like seat cushions, inflight entertainment or seat recline, and of course they also included things in the cockpit as well. Across our fleet there were a vast number and as products got more complicated and complex they took longer and were harder to fix so they often could only be rectified on a hangar input. This of course meant many flights operated with the same faults. I personally as a staff passenger was asked a number of times to move to a broken seat, or a couple of times on a business trip told I could have a seat on the flight home as long as I was happy it would be upright with no legrest for the whole flight. Of course if the flight was fully booked we would have probably "forgotten" to mention this on check in or boarding, and let the cabin crew sort it out in flight, i.e.like leaving it to a railtour steward.
Should WCRC have had a diesel on the back on Monday, maybe, but then maybe we should have not rosterd B767's on a Vancouver flight one summer that meant if the flight was full it often had to divert to Edmonton or Winnipeg to have the toilet tanks emptied as one by one the toilets became full in flight. I believe the "big railway" does that on a daily basis and as I understand it CDL has made this a railtour issue. I read pax on the Western Tour on Sunday were asked to use the station toilets at Paddington and Banbury as the stock had not been emptied from the previous days tour.
None of this excuses WCRC and their ability, or otherwise, to turn out generally serviceable stock, (although I have also travelled on some very tatty ill heated, or uncooled TOC but I do understand the difficulty. Yes they have lots of other stock they can rob parts from, a "christmas tree" as we called them, but it is not a bottomless pit and replacements may be hard to find these days as if there are suppliers I do not see many of them wanting to hold inventory in stock.
I am not sure when the BR heating period was, I know it went to June for sleepers but I had a feeling it was end of March for everything else, if so then just replacing a Mk1 heritage experience with a different one in a Mk2. Plus of course any "bad press" about Mk2's may help with the diminishing lines of argument for Mk1's