Great Western Coffee Shop

Taking a steam train to get to work?  Surely not?

But the answer is "yes" - and narrow gauge, and in the British Isles too ...


http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/steam-up-for-tt-commuter-trains-1-6657594

We've had various kites flown about commuter services on heritage lines in the South West over the years (Kingswear, Minehead and Bodmin come to my mind), and a suggestion that a line with commuter trains early and late every day be supplemented by regular steam trains during the day (Portishead; NOT part of the main business case!).  Yet - thus far - it's not (quite ?) worked out.

I guess it's a different matter to run services whilst an event is on, and the commitment (often volunteer) and financial resources required to run services every working day. Even railways which seem the most obvious candidates, like the Mid Hants Railway haven't been able to justify it, although they came close to running an experiment a couple of years ago.

The Romney Hythe & Dymchurch have run a diesel service for school children for many years.

I've thought in the past that some NR-connected heritage railways could form a useful part of the network. The West Somerset is the obvious one, but I tend to think in terms of re-linking the Llangollen railway with Ruabon. My idea is that the local national rail TOC operates a DMU service on days the heritage railway are not operating. Then, in the busy tourist season the heritage railway runs their steam service, releasing the TOC's DMU for strengthing elsewhere (eg. Llangollen steam service allowing the Wales (& borders) TOC to lengthen Pembroke Dock trains in the summer).

I was one of those schoolkids, many moons ago. Littlestone-Hythe. Boy, winters were cold. No heating, drafty.....

I believe that the Festiniog had an advertised connection to/from Euston not too long ago.

Steam heritage services are essentially land cruises, i.e you travel on them for fun, paying premium prices. The costs are high and when a locomotive boiler certificate expires, perhaps a decade of work lies ahead.

Heritage commuter services need FT staff, not volunteers and rolling stock with competitive running costs and reliability. Preserved MU's, whether DMMU's or DEMU's have slam shut doors and may need extensive work to put them in daily use, as the Worth Valley has recently shown. I imagine that a 4TC + Class 33 would be similarly expensive.

The group I'm involved in had an option on the remaining Class 210 cars (2 DTSO and 2DMSO) but the power cars (equipped with half-Valentas!) couldn't be extracted from Eastleigh, so were cut.

I think that heritage line daily/commuter trains will only be widely possible when some "modern" DMU's come off-lease, such as the 150's. I think that one of the N Yorks lines has a single car railbus, that has proved itself.

We may have to be patient.


OTC

Oh that is a shame. Although there were only two sets, I was rather a fan of them.