West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Could I also suggest that on certain days the little Barclay could do 'driver for a fiver'

Watching the Lady Nan on the ESR doing those trips gives me great hope for the future

 

The web cams on the WSW site show a wild and wet start to the Winter Steam Festival - good luck to all those who can attend. Sorry I live too far away to make it. Must say I like the 'clock face' departure and arrival times for the eight trains each way today. Has this been used here before? Is it difficult to arrange?

 

The 'clock face' times have been used for most galas for many years now. If anything, it is easy to arrange because it takes about an hour for one train in each direction to traverse the Williton - Blue Anchor section, the longest single-line section, on which all other times depend. The 2018 timetable, which is now available on the websites, is also 'clock face' for (possibly?) the first time.

 

Despite the weather the QB breakfast sold out very quickly. Operations need to sort out having the first class coach as well as this could have been nearly filled as well. All extra revenue and IMHO 53808 would have been well able to cope with load. As it was an extra ordinary coach was added anyway. I can report that the QB quality breakfast was even better than ever with the new sausage supplier. Well done all the QB crew.

 

Some posts do make me smile.

I was WSR Operating Superintendent for a year in the early 90’s before heading into the law. One of the problems to solve was persistent late starts on the 10:15 from Minehead. The solution was to HAVE an ‘off shed’ time. This met trenchant resistance from the loco department as an unwarranted interference with what, on one occasion, was described as ‘their independence’. But Mark Smith ruled and it became practice. This (rightly) sounds like nonsense today.

Robin

 

'It's different in Somerset....'

Steven

 

You mean you didn't have off shed times before <eek/>

Does the WSR adjust off shed times during the winter? Ours typically go 30 minutes earlier during the steam heat season to allow additional time for heating - generally 75 minutes before departure during the winter rather than 45 minutes during summer. Allowing about 15 minutes to take water and hook on once off shed, it means you normally have about an hour of steam heating before departure.

Tom

 

No, and we didn’t have ‘rules of the route’ either. The Commercial Department wrote impossible timetables and the poor operators had to get on with it.

Amazing the resistance there was to common sense. Getting railway operations right is a fascinating multi-dimensional problem. The professionalism of good Railway Operators is commonly not understood but it’s absence can be very clear from the results.

Robin

 

In my experience late starts on the first train of the day from BL is not uncommon even now coupled with losing time on the way.

 

Yes, agree with that. One of the things I have taken on this year is being running foreman on certain days, responsible for all loco yard operations (including getting locos off shed on time) and it is noticeable how your viewpoint changes once you get out of the bubble of your own loco preparation and start having to see how all the bits of the jigsaw fit together across multiple locos, requiring a lot of co-ordination from many people. It's also interesting in our case how, when the company chairman changed from a Solictor to a career railwayman three or four years ago, how much operations sharpened up (*).

(*) Which shouldn't be construed as a criticism of the previous incumbent, who held the right balance of skills for planning, financing and building an extension, but we needed a different skill set to turn that into an a robust and reliable operation once built.

Tom

 

That is an extremely good point, I have heard it said before that many projects need someone to start them, a new group to execute them and a third team to follow on and run them. I suggest also of course that its important for those 'in charge' to know when its time to hand over to the next 'shift'

 

There is something about railway operations that some folk ‘get’. It is a combination of intelligence, practical ability and multi-tasking. Hard to define but clear to see.

Those who don’t know it don’t understand it or the value of it. All heritage Railways beyond the ‘one train’ operations need a dose of it.

Robin

 

One can make similar points about most things, but yes a very pertinent observation

 

WSR of shed times and steam heating.

Every railway will inevitably have differing instructions to suit their particular circumstances and needs. On the WSR we have locomotives starting from two sheds 20 miles apart and the instructions differ between the two, for example coal is only taken at Minehead (MD) unless exceptional circumstances dictate.

Off shed times. These vary depending upon circumstance such as a shunting operation but they are usually 30 minutes prior to train departure. "Off shed" is defined as locomotive ready to go with sand, coal and water, crew ready, dressed, fed and emptied, and all awaiting the exit signal off shed. At MD the 30 minutes applies to both summer and winter unless the train is due to depart from the bay platform. BL the times can vary with time of year and where the coaching stock is stabled, locomotives for the Quantock Belle (QB) operation require extra time to ensure that the stock is shunted into the platform well before passengers arrive.

Steam heating. At both MD and BL the loco department have long steam heating extension hoses, BL has two. These allow the train to be heated whilst the locomotive is still on shed being prepared for service and can heat as soon as some boiler pressure is available. On the coldest days 3 hours of heat is normally applied before passengers arrive and 1 or 2 hours on normal chilly days. The MD hose will reach a coaching set in the main platform and the BL hoses will reach the QB set in the bay platform or a set left in the south end of platform 2. On some occasions we have used a spare locomotive to preheat Santa sets at BL with the loco being steamed very early in the morning having been left in the platform overnight, by using one of the hoses this locomotive is able to heat two coaching sets in adjacent platforms.

There will be times when it does not go to plan such as crew error or equipment failure but it has always been the policy to plan to get stock heated well in advance, this then allows not only the heaters to warm up but the internal furniture of the coach to also heat up and dry out. Unfortunately the warmer the coach the worse the condensation on single glazed windows.

Crews who have booked on at 3am at BL to heat two coaching sets with the temperature 7 degrees below zero on a clear still night will talk of enjoying a fine breakfast cooked on the shovel in the moonlight, and of how much steam it takes to heat 12 or 14 Mk1's from cold. For information a MK1 will require approximately 100 lbs of steam per hour to heat (12 gallons), two 7 coach sets heated for 3 hours will therefore use approximately 250 gallons of water.

Seasons greetings,
Andy.

 

@Aberdare thank you for that.

From what you have said the KWVR 'automatic' set up looks like an excellent idea.

I seem to remember that there were steam heat hoses by the buffer stops at Swansea in the early 80's, possibly an idea for BL & MD?

 

As a certain Mr. Dylan said “The times they are a changing.”

 

Agreed the QB breakfast seating was poorly handled at BL this morning. If you are going to hand out Reservation tickets, then at least it should say on the website that this is happening and, importantly, where prospective breakfasters can get them (I was at BL around 855 and saw no sign of them being issued) . When the train drew in, I and around 20/25 hopefuls were just told that all seats had been preallocated and were turned away. Not a good start, and that followed a rather poor session at the ticket office where I was bluntly told my WSRA membership card was "not valid today". Having checked by phone earlier in the week, I knew this was wrong and eventually I was sold a discounted ticket.

From then on things got a lot better, and it was good to see everything running punctually, and (with the exception,unsurprisingly, of the DMU) all trains seemed to be well-loaded. Hopefully tomorrow will be a similiar success.

 

It's rather ironic that due to a failure at the Severn Valley Railway, the DMU has had to be replaced this week by a steam loco and coaches.

There were lots of happy passengers yesterday morning as the train arrived at Bewdley. <BJ>

 

Sadly though the SVR DMU appears rather different to the WSR one....................

 

One of the most short sighted things was the removal of ETH from the Mk1s almost like, Its a Steam only railway..