Spa Valley Railway - Latest News

Not for the Bulleid event, I went for their Diesel Gala and have done since they started back in 2006/2007.

Whilst it was impressive to see, I'm very privileged to be able to have driven and fired 34053, 34072 and 34092 at Spa Valley and when you can do that seeing them in the flesh doesn't (at least for me) have the same wow factor.

Spa Valley had to come first and with limited volunteers, a day on 828 was rather enjoyable. I spend the Sunday driving 73140 because 828 wasn't available.

 

Out of interest, how many qualified steam drivers / firemen / diesel drivers / 2nd men do you have at TWW?

 

• 12 Steam Drivers
• 7 Firemen
• 2 Passed Cleaners
• 17 Diesel Drivers
• 4 2nd Men (all our Diesel Locos are able to work Driver only in the cab providing the DSD works and it is tested each day, the DEMU operates like this all the time)

Keep in mind that some of these are multi-discipline though so it isn't 12 people that are just Steam Drivers, I'm one of them and along with 2 others we also sign the diesel traction, similarly with the firing, 2 of the Fireman are Diesel Drivers.

 

Quite scary, the GM of Bodmin in a interview alluded to the same problems of qualified staff

 

I am often found driving most weekends and luckily my day job allows for decent periods of rest, I enjoy it though. Trying to attract people of the right skillset is becoming harder and harder though, we've several Cleaners that will make the grade of Passed Cleaner in the next year or so which is a breath of fresh air but currently I have no Firemen bar one who might be able to make it to Steam Driver soon.

Similarly Diesels, I hope in the next few years to gain a few more Drivers but handling an 08 shunter plodding along on a shunt is completely different to handling a Class 33 on the same task, which for a variety of reasons we have to do sometimes.

 

I've read in HRA meetings for a common rule book and a unified assessment system, if that ever comes into being. Apart from route knowledge, we could volunteer at heritage railways around the country. What great holidays.

 

There’s more than a rule book and a unified assessment system. There’s general and sectional appendices, traction knowledge and custom and practice for a start. The latter may not be formalised but it is all part of the knowledge’. Even with a unified assessment system my experience suggests that individual railways would still want to do their own.

 

Even were that to come to pass (which I doubt, and which I don't think is a good idea) it doesn't solve the volunteer numbers problem - you can't be in two places at once. So every day you give to Railway A is one less available for Railway B.

I don't think I am revealing any great secret to say that a number of those listed as Spa Valley loco crew are also Bluebell volunteers. Nothing wrong with that, but a Spa loco crew doing a day at the Bluebell is therefore not available that day to take a turn at Spa; and vice versa - if they are doing a day at Spa, they aren't available for a turn at the Bluebell. So given that any particular volunteer is likely to have only a fixed capacity they can give to volunteering, quoting numbers in each grade has to be understood as actually meaning fewer "VTEs". (*)

("Volunteer Time Equivalent" - a concept I have just made up to shadow the "Full Time Equivalents" used for baselining numbers of staff in organisations that have some part time).

Tom

 

I suppose it depends on the home railway. A number of my colleagues complain that they do not get enough or any turns in a month, so would look elsewhere.

 

That may be because they are all only available on the same day(s) of the week. I think many roster clerks find some days (? weekends) over subscribed and others (? weekdays) with unfilled vacancies.

Peter

 

It is not just UK heritage operations that suffer from qualified volunteer staff shortages. Last Saturday I travelled on the excellent historic Pichi Richi Railway in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. As a holiday weekend over there they were running on Saturday, Sunday and Monday but only had a steam driver available on the Saturday - he was back to his day job on the Sunday driving a transcontinental freight across the Nullarbor to Kalgoorlie, so wouldn't be home for several days. He had two trainees on the loco with him but the opportunities for training and assessing them are somewhat limited on a railway that is 250 away from its main center of population (Adelaide) and only operates on about 50 days a year. Of those operating days some are planned to be diesel anyway due to seasonal fire risk, so to lose two training opertunity days due to a lack of available volunteer drivers/trainers just adds to the problem. I don't envy their situation.

Peter

 

There's an opportunity looming on the horizon for someone to start up a rent an 'aslef' business.......

 

When I was doing footplate rostering on the NYMR Mondays and especially Fridays were always difficult to cover. For some reason I never really understood, in the last few years Sundays also became a problem. For most of the time we were having to find five crews each day but, with the bringing into use of the carriage stable that number went up to six because the extra shunts required took the day over 12 hours for one of the turns. Rostering was hard work because we had two depots and people living north of the railway wouldn't want to go to Pickering and it was the same with those living south not wanting to drive to Grosmont as these essentially added an hour to the already long day. Then we had crews who were Whitby passed and those that were only NYMR passed, as well as diesel only and steam only drivers, which could result in people being available who couldn't be rostered. Fortunately we only had the odd person who wouldn't go with someone else so there was little in the way of personality clashes, another headache for roster clerks which I don't think you can program into HOPS.

Looking at the number of operating days on the Spa Valley I don't envy Jonnie in trying to run the railway with only 12 drivers and 7 firemen. My target for the NYMR was 70 drivers and 70 firemen, albeit for a 7 day week service, but it was something never achieved.

 

It is actually just one person who's competent at our line as well as Bluebell on the drivers roster, but as he's also my best mate I know his many activities keep him very busy too!

 

It's quite common in the heritage railway movement for volunteers to be involved with more than one railway. Usually there is a main railway at which they volunteer more frequently. Many of those that do that see a day on their 'other' railway as a bit of a holiday. It's something I've done for sixty years although I changed my second railway after getting married and away weekends were effectively banned by senior management.

 

This post wasn't received in the way it was intended.

 

Jonnie, you could have had a £6 billion turnover, but you still made a £14k loss

 

I'm not sure whether this is aimed at me as a negative or a positive.

When you see constant publications in the world about X loss or Y appeal, I thought some might like to see that it isn't all bad news.

 

Jonnie, I am a fan. I copy and paste your figures to the financial and marketing directors of my railway. However, you posted a loss. A loss is a loss. As dear old Maggie used to say. Earn a pound, spend 99p, everyone is happy.......