Swanage Railway General Discussion

Aren't they the fixed £5 donation card readers , rather than the more expensive readers which allow any amount?

 

Honestly do not know for sure but thought the person donating could choose from a small range of donation amounts.

 

From a web search
https://www.srstaff.co.uk/swanningaround/swanningjun2119.pdf page 12 with photo
"set your donation amount between £3 and £30 and then just tap your contactless card. Job Done!"
Yes you are right

 

Off topic but have you looked at Givt? NFC tag attaches to your existing donations plate;congregation can either put cash in the basket or use the free Givt app to give an amount of their choice via contactless. Not sure of the costs involved but it’s been a great innovation for us.

 

Tried, but Givt’s reliance on donors having an account means it doesn’t work for ad hoc donations.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Fair enough - I had forgotten that.
Back on topic...

 

The Swanage Railway Trust's 563 Locomotive Group has today announced that it has reached a new agreement with the National Railway Museum, owners of LSWR T9 No.120, to initially assess the condition of the locomotive, ahead of a commitment to return it to steam for further service on the Swanage Railway.

An initial appeal has been launched for £50,000 to enable the locomotive to be dismantled and assessed. Full details, including means of donating, are available at:-

Project 120 – 563 Locomotive Group

And yes, the use of the number 120 is quite deliberate...

 

And taking a very slow journey to Norden this evening, seen here at Bridge 21. Of course the sun appeared as I was walking back to the car.

 

"An initial appeal has been launched for £50,000 to enable the locomotive to be dismantled and assessed." £50,000, some sort of joke ? I though this sort of announcement only came out on the 1st of April?

 

Where's the joke? By the time transport to a contractor, labour costs for dismantling and review of the frames, boiler and tender, other specialist assessments and actually producing a report suitable for a public sector body in the case of the NRM are taken into account, together with a contingency for reassembly to museum quality display should the report be unfavourable, that doesn't come cheap.

This exact approach was also taken with the initial assessment of the T3 by the same group, and costs haven't exactly decreased since then.

 

Great news and lets hope we can get it in steam for 2029. And they do need to find out if they need a new cylinder block wasn't?

In other LSWR news. The T9 is in steam till 2033, enabling 4 year cross over...
Do we have an update with the M7? Last time I heard they were hoping for this year but not heard anything since.

Long term.
2 out of 3 LSWR locos in service, 2 or 3 SL locos in service out of their fleet. Would mean in 2029 Swanage can leave the U/N class contract which is costing them alot of money.

 

How would they do that?
They signed a 25 year contract in 2014 - https://www.swanagerailway.co.uk/ne...hree-classic-1920s-southern-steam-locomotives
They are bound by the contract until 2039 unless a) there is a free exit clause (seems unlikely) b) they wish to pay the owner a contract release fee (which might be as much as the yearly rental anyway)

 

Many pages back, I do not have time to check now I think it was stated there was a point (maybe around 2028 from memory) where there was a break clause. Of course as you say what the financial penalty for that break would be is a different matter.

I assume you mean the T3 until 2033. A target of 2029, 5 years, seems reasonable, but preservation is littered with a history of overhauls that take longer than planned. Once again you have jumped on a highly positive take on something years away from reality.

 

I see on Youtube the Southerner has a video of the loco loading onto a low loader truck to go to the Flour Mill (who seem to the the main experts in this type of loco)

 

Nothing on the webpage (still says "is scheduled to be complete by the end of March 2022"), no facebook page, or on recent "Swanning Around" updates, presume slow progress?
http://drummondlocos.co.uk/

 

Home and slowly recovering from a great 11 days in the UK. Starting to get to processing pictures and videos and posting longer form thoughts on the places we visited and the railways/trains we rode. First up as it was on our trip, a more detailed thought on our visit to Swanage a couple of weeks ago.

https://sjgardiner.wordpress.com/2024/04/20/uk-vacation-2024-01-revisiting-an-old-friend/

Cheers,

Stephen

 

Only just seen this BBC article, but it maybe Heritage Railways benefited from the date of Easter and poor weather. Always difficult to know what the "right weather" is for an HR line.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckv7xjv8dkvo

 

This article from 10 years ago suggetsed that the N Class would be back by 2015, with the second 'U' to follow. What happened? I know COVID and inflation, but those didn't really bite until 2020, 6 years after this article.

Also, John Bunch seems to be one of the most well-known locomotive owners in preservation, but is he quite a controversial figure?