That video is from 2017. And given their recent reliance on diesels, and very large losses, I wouldn't necessarily regard NYMR saying their USP is running steam as particularly reliable.
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45mph Heritage Railways?
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Egg Centric
Established Member
I get that, but they weren't running A1 peppercorns on them either
- it's not 25mph that I'm fussed about per se, but stuff that's capable of so much more being so limited. I want some thrash, basically. Hence why industrial / narrow gauge where the locos are actually being pushed are superior (and also why I prefer the line to have gradients).
duffield
Established Member
The GCR should be permitted to run something fitted with central door locking, like a visiting HST, at higher speeds in passenger service if they want to - if rolling stock like that that is considered safe to run at higher speeds without passengers (which it is) it should be permitted with them.
Not saying it's necessarily worth them doing the paperwork, but I don't see why they would need any infrastructure or rolling stock modifications to do this as an occasional special service.
Not saying it's necessarily worth them doing the paperwork, but I don't see why they would need any infrastructure or rolling stock modifications to do this as an occasional special service.
If a railway wants to do something, it can apply for derogations to permit that. But the legislation is written in a way that means that what they'd be asking for would be to have large chunks of the safety regime waived specifically for them. CDL is not the only safety protection out there, nor is a door opening the only risk to those around the railway. At GCR, seeing as you've used that example, you have the foot crossings at Quorn and Rothley to consider, and you have the ability to stop from the higher speed at both ends of the line.
The reality is that to run a faster railway, the railway, the vehicles operating on it and the people operating need to be able to work at those higher speeds. Proving that to the satisfaction of the authorities - not to mention insurers - is far from trivial. The result is that they don't - and it's not the law that stops them.
duffield
Established Member
But in the case of the GCR, they already have permission to run non-passenger services at higher speed, so surely the issues you highlighted are solved already?
Egg Centric
Established Member
Yes it is. The fact that the law permits it if you go through a pile of hoops doesn't mean it isn't the law stopping it. If we were in some kind of hypothetical libertarian paradise then in the week or so before a strongman took over/we were eaten by wolves then I guarantee you'd see 45mph heritage trains
43096
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But part of the granting of permission was that they are non-passenger trains...
And other parts have to do with very tight restrictions on who can be around. If you've ever been at the GCR when there's a TPO run, you'll have noticed how early the foot crossing is closed, for example.
The law permits it - full stop. But it does say by saying that there's a subset of railways, defined by their speed limit, that don't have to comply with the full set of regulations.
In that paradise, I'm far from convinced that we'd see 45mph (or even 75mph) running - because the other things required to make it work wouldn't be worth doing.
duffield
Established Member
Yes, but my point is that the *infrastructure* already supports and is authorised for higher speeds, unlike most other heritage operations, so the hurdles in place for passenger running are not so great as in other cases.
Anyhow, this is just theoretical, I'm sure that the GCR have considered whether it would be worth attempting to get higher speeds authorised for passenger services and decided that any limited benefits are not worthwhile.
Egg Centric
Established Member
The majority of the things needed ultimately stem from regulations of some sort or another. While I am not advocating libertopia, not least because I think the wolves would eat me first, I can't see why in the enormous variety of preserved lines in this country they would all settle at low speed. In a different less risk averse and litigous society we'd have quicker preserved railways (and they'd be running on proper coal too!).
Why bother running faster though? What does the railway gain except for increased wear?
I don’t follow. If we remove the legislation around railway speed defining type, you then have two basic issues. One is that a railway needs to operate safely (“rules are written in blood”). The other is that the laws of physics mean that higher speeds come with more impact on vehicles, track, and structures. That means a cost.
Given the starting point, why is that investment likely to be worthwhile?
duffield
Established Member
There are no real benefits I can see for shorter lines, but there are some benefits to the handful of longer lines from being able to run a little faster. Three that occur to me are to be able to run a more regular timetable , to be able to make up time when running late, and to make the very longest journeys a bit less tedious for non-enthusiasts.
For example, if a round trip plus loco run-round at each end currently comes in at a few minutes over an hour, bringing it down to a few minutes under would allow a regular hourly service. And for late running, once the timetable has slipped a little it may have a tendency to just get worse and worse due to passing point constraints, so being able to make up a few minutes could prevent this. Finally, in the case of the very longest lines like the WSR, I believe it's often said that non-enthusiasts and particularly smaller children find the journey too long at around 90 minutes and would appreciate a reduction of maybe 10-15 minutes.
However, as it stands I can't see that the expense and difficulty of getting faster running approved is likely to be justified for these marginal benefits.
D6130
Established Member
....and increased coal/diesel and water consumption, therefore increased costs.
duffield
Established Member
Is this necessarily true? Is it not possible that some locos would be more efficient running at (say) 40mph rather than 25mph, in the same way that cars hit their maximum mpg around 50mph? I'd guess that for DMUs and diesel locos this might well be the case, would it apply to steam locos?
Egg Centric
Established Member
Passengers (if enthusiasts, maybe not so much normals) gain from the locomotives being worked hard. Chugging along with the regulator barely open is not using these machines properly. (Tangental - aiui 25mph means you would never use 3rd gear in a classic DMU, just 1st, 2nd, and 4th - is this true and can it be good for it?)
You're thinking of it as a business, rather than a shrine and hobby for rail enthusiasts. I think we've well established that it is unlikely to make financial sense, but I'd argue that using tender locos at all probably doesn't on a lot of them that do (as well as a lot of other things that they do).
How much are they prepared to pay for this?
Egg Centric
Established Member
A question I don't have a particular answer to, but many spend several hundred per person on railtours which is the only chance in this country of an express steam locomotive being worked properly. Of course, they are also run over much larger distances than heritage lines and many of the passengers don't even seem to be particularly interested in trains.
To be clear I am not making any kind of financial (or otherwise) argument for 45 (or higher) mph running although I'd like to see it. I'm simply agreeing with the OP the current state of affairs is a terrible shame. The financially rational thing to do is instead to follow my suggestion of preferring narrow gauge/industrial railways instead where the 25mph limit does not preclude working the locos hard.
Where preserved railways are set up as charities, they have explicit purposes that justify the tax concessions they benefit from. Those do not include "shrine and hobby for rail enthusiasts", but tend to be based on education of the public. As a trustee of a charity (non-rail), I have to be aware of the legal obligations that surround what I do, which means both the legal duty to serve the purposes of the charity and also how those charitable purposes also allow us to do things that don't return a profit.
But the trustee duty is to uphold the purposes of the charity. If you commit large expenditure to operating faster, and maintaining track, signalling and trains to support that, you need to know how that's going to be paid for - and balance that bit of extra authenticity against the ability to stay open and preserve anything at all.
As it happens, I prefer heritage railways to involve the right size engines, working authentically for the railway that they're on. Not necessarily providing "thrash", but giving me a feel for the true experience of the past. That most of those railways would have run at a bit more than 25mph is relatively unimportant.
Enthusiast-oriented railtours are struggling (and not just because of the intransigence of David Smith). LSL hardly run any now. The profit is in the wine & dine passengers.
It is certainly nice to have express passenger locos (steam and diesel) stretch their legs and it would be great if there were an easy way for the GCR to do so with passenger trains at gala events, rather than just the TPO. Not viable for normal service though.
Talking of industrial locomotives on steep gradients, has Foxfield given up on enthusiast events now?
DJ_K666
Member
The Bluebell has a 1 in 75 up Freshfield Bank and another steep gradient towards West Hoathly so you do get to hear locos working hard even at 25.
BerkshireRails
On Moderation
There will undoubtedly be some locos that will benefit from reduced fuel consumption per trip due to reduced journey time. For simplicity, lets say a diesel loco uses 1 unit of diesel when idling for an hour, 1.25 units at 25mph and 1.45 units at 45mph.
Let us use the West Somerset Railway as an example. In British Rail days, it took 48 minutes to go from Bishops Lydeard to Minehead versus 1 hour 25 minutes with the current West Somerset Railway 25mph limit. If the West Somerset Railway went back to 45mph and it took an hour to work the 19 3/4 miles between Minehead and Bishops Lydeard, they would use 1.45 units of diesel, versus currently they use 1.77 units of diesel to work at 25mph.
Accepting for the sake of argument how you've used your units (and it's a usage that's never worked for me when looking at the mpg on my car), what is the basis for your assumption of 1.25 and 1.45?
I'd also be interested in the question of total cost of ownership. Imagining for the moment that a fairy godmother has made all the infrastructure changes possible free of charge, and that legal/regulatory constraints are non-existent, where are you considering the impact on wear and tear and other consumables? Using the idea of a 10 year overhaul for a steam loco as a (dubious) benchmark, would you still get the same life out of the vehicle? And, if so, would you affect the amount of work required to maintain the vehicle? And, most important, what does that do to the costs of running it for the next 10 years, assuming the overhaul has to be paid back through running?
Sorry, but you've completely made that up so the remainder of your post has zero basis in reality.
Belperpete
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You are comparing apples and oranges, or to be specific 60 minutes of loco run time compared to 90 minutes of loco run time. The most likely consequence of doing the trip half an hour faster at 45mph is that the diesel would then spend half an hour idling. So taking its consumption up to 1.95 units, compared to the 1.77 units for the 25 mph trip.
In the real world, most power (and therefore fuel) is expended in acceleration. Once you have achieved the desired steady-state speed, maintaining it uses much less fuel.
778
Member
I think allowing 30mph for late running would be sensible.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I don't think most people care if it's late. It's an experience, not a time-pressured journey.
43096
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You haven’t been to a gala where once lateness starts it escalates with no way of recovery?
It's been established in other threads that most people go by car, but if relying on a train or bus connection I'd care if it's significantly late.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem likely to happen as 3 pages have stated. However, I would like for the Great Central Railway to bring back the Mail train runs at some point, as it's another attraction on the railway in its own right, and such an experience is hard to replicate, as there are no more mail trains.
Then again, the same could be argued for water troughs, and I doubt they would be reinstalled on that line any time soon .
What I would rather is to have more protection's for frequent mainline steam routes such as the West Highlands 'Jacobite' and Settle and Carlisle routes for steam, having window slots so that you can hear the locos, and ways to make the routes a bit more affordable, whether that be discount codes from the railcard site offer or a HRA card.
Then again, the same could be argued for water troughs, and I doubt they would be reinstalled on that line any time soon .
What I would rather is to have more protection's for frequent mainline steam routes such as the West Highlands 'Jacobite' and Settle and Carlisle routes for steam, having window slots so that you can hear the locos, and ways to make the routes a bit more affordable, whether that be discount codes from the railcard site offer or a HRA card.
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