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Why are preserved railways so unpopular as layout subjects


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Goods traffic these days has to be bulk in form and frequent, otherwise it goes to road. Even rail connected locations can lose out to road (Poole Harbour). So for a heritage line it would need to have some origin or delivery point near enough to it to have a railhead for it. I expect most lines don't.

 

As for doing something like that in model form, then it's one of the ideas baked into my S&P project.

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1 hour ago, Colin_McLeod said:

As it's over 50 years since the last BR steam train, I suspect many steam locomotives have now seen more time in preservation than they had in Company service.

The owner of 45132 (D22, i.e. a diesel) told me a couple of months ago that he's owned it for longer than BR did (or it might have been how long it was in BR service). Most peaks would be similar. I imagine the vast majority of preserved main line steam engines have been preserved for longer than their revenue service lasted.

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4 hours ago, Ian J. said:

Goods traffic these days has to be bulk in form and frequent, otherwise it goes to road. Even rail connected locations can lose out to road (Poole Harbour). So for a heritage line it would need to have some origin or delivery point near enough to it to have a railhead for it. I expect most lines don't.

 

As for doing something like that in model form, then it's one of the ideas baked into my S&P project.

Hi Ian

I'll be interested to see the S&P. I like the history in your blog.

For anything more than block goods traffic I think you'd have to be looking at a preserved railway not quite in the present but still allowing a more varied mixture of stock than any bog standard working railway. Wagonload, or at least less than trainload, freight seemed to die out later in other countries than in GB - and not at all in some places. Don't American short lines still send freight three and four cars at a time and sometimes for several customers to their exchange sidings with the class 1 railroads?

 

I suspect it's the fact that trains, both goods and passenger, don't really do much, except go from A to B as a unit, as much as preference for steam that leads so many of us to model the pre-Beeching railways. According to LocoRevue the most modelled period amongst French modellers is Ep IV - effectively the period when steam had largely disappeared but goods trains still needed to be shunted, private sidings were increasing in number, passenger trains still had through carriages and sections, parcels and TPO traffic was widespread and the vast majority of trains were loco hauled. Whatever the pros and cons of this for the big railway it does give modellers scope for doing more with each train than just sending it on its way.

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5 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned this but some of the longer established heritage/preserved lines are now starting to approach a time when they'll have operated for longer in preservation  than they did as "working railways".  I reckon that's about eighteen years away for the Tallylyn  but will come before the start of its 2020 season for the Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway*.

 

What seems to have been rarer in Britain was for heritage passenger lines to also have been used for goods trains. In N. America that has been fairly common -though perhaps less so now- with short lines carrying freight in the week being used for steam passenger trains at weekends (sometimes operated by the same short line company rather than volunteers as a commercial activity)

 

The same thing happened in France with one particularly good example being the  Train a Vapeur Tourraine. This was a local preservation society, sadly now effectively defunct, that from 1974 to 2004 ran a steam passenger service at weekends. At its full extent the train ran between its headquarters in Richelieu to the SNCF's station in Chinon mostly on track controlled by the local authority rather than SNCF.  Until 1994 TVT also operated goods trains several times a week to and from Richelieu and for SNCF on a couple of adjoining branches. TVT had a couple of large diesel locos for goods and it was a curious but quite heartening sight to visit a heritage steam railway midweek and find an A1A-AA  busily shunting cereal wagons in the goods yard. Goods traffic fiinished in 1993 as SNCF became less interested in taking wagonload good, The steam service continued but was gradually cut back until it finally closed in 2004 - in order to turn the line into a cycleway. There seems to have been local politics involved in this and an attempt to move operations to Thouars failed so, evicted from Richelieu, TVT set about distributing its collection of locos and rolling stock to various deserving associations. I think there have been at least a couple  of other such mixed operations in France and possibly elesewhere and ISTR that at one time the preserved society that runs the Middleton Railway in Leeds handled a certain amount of commercial goods traffic.

 

Such a combination would seem quite attractive for modelling. A heritage passenger train isn't operated very differently from any other loco hauled train, the rules are the same, but is more likely to have say a restaurant or Pullman car in a four coach rake and will likely be hauled by a far more magnficent loco than such a short train would justify. Meanwhile, "demonstration" goods trains never seem very convincing to me, as however well they're portrayed you know they're not really moving goods; give them a real commercial job to do though and it's a different story.

 

 

*The sand carrying Leighton Buzzard Light Railway opened on 20th November 1919, but, apart from the section beyond the current terminus at Stonehenge works,, closed to sand traffic in  July 1971. There was an overlap over part of the line and The LBNGR (originally as the Iron Horse Railroad) ran its first trains in June 1968. So, sometime in January or February, it will have been using the line from Pages Park to Stonehenge for longer than its predecessor. 

Nearest thing to convincing freight operation has to be the GCR's windcutters, though AFAIK they only run empties.  I'd love a crack at being guard on one!

 

Back in 1985's GW 150 shennanigans the SVR's 2807 hauled a reasonably convincing demonstration freight train of preserved wagons from Ebbw Jc yard to Kidderminster, using a fitted head of BR 'tube' wagons as far as Severn Tunnel Jc.  It ran through Newport High St as a stunt with a Class 60 hauling brand new stock of various types running parallel at about 5mph, and both trains then stabled in the downside platform for exhibition.  I photographed it at East Usk making excellent progress on the up relief at 40mph, line speed.  It must have worked as Class 9 from Severn Tunnel Jc, at 25mph.  

 

I believe the Rhaetian in Switzerland still handles a fair bit of wagonload traffic, due to the nature of the terrain and lack of roads open in winter in the area it serves.  

 

As for service in preservation, it is now 51 years since the end of steam on standard gauge BR, so anything built after 1917 that is preserved has been longer in preservation than in revenue BR or Company service.  But it's not as simple as that as many locos in preservation have spent long periods out of service, at Barry and/or under rebuilding or awaiting the opportunity to rebuild them, and these periods, which will vary according to the individual loco, should be subtracted from their total service in preservation.  Mileages are much lower than in revenue service days as well, I suspect even for the later built BR standards, and even for the main line performers.  These parameters of measurement are of course not the same as the time a loco may have been owned by an individual or organisation.

 

A steam loco in revenue service would normally be kept continuously in steam for 7 days at a time, admittedly not at working pressure all the time, between boiler washouts, as long as the loco was in service, 24/7 and back to the grindstone after 48 hours for the washout, for several years between overhauls.  This is not the same on a preserved/heritage line where a loco might be kept in steam on this basis for a few weeks at the height of the summer timetable, but will spend extended periods 'cold' but still 'in service'.  

 

Boiler certificates on such lines are for 5 years but a 2 year extension can be given after a hydraulic test, after which time you can expect the loco to be out of service for an extended period of at least several months and sometimes for decades; work that took about 3 weeks in a fully manned and equipped railway workshop takes much longer than that carried out in poorly equipped shops or in the open by small numbers of dedicated volunteers, and the heritage railway does not have a supply of recently overhauled spare boilers to drop back into the frames.  And money has to be raised for the work as well, all of which can delay things.

Edited by The Johnster
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7 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

What seems to have been rarer in Britain was for heritage passenger lines to also have been used for goods trains. In N. America that has been fairly common -though perhaps less so now- with short lines carrying freight in the week being used for steam passenger trains at weekends (sometimes operated by the same short line company rather than volunteers as a commercial activity)

The thing is that in the UK, there has not been a direct equivalent to US Short Lines since maybe the days of the Light Railways. Apparently this lack of smaller railways feeding the main lines hampered plans for EWS's Enterprise wagonload services when it started up, owned of course by Wisconsin Central. In fact I'm surprised that since Privatisation the Short Line concept hasn't been tried in this Country - the whole focus of the railways (& the great majority of British model railways) remains fixated on passenger services, whereas in the USA, the focus is on freight, where given the distances involved, makes moving freight by rail economical, even if the loads start or end their journey by crawling the last 20, 30, 40 or more miles at 10mph along a Short Line. In the UK distances are just too short to make wagonload freight by rail profitable most of the time.

Some UK branch lines retained freight services long after passenger services were withdrawn, but all that traffic had long since gone to road haulage, and often the tracks themselves lifted, by the time Preservationists got going. Their focus - like the 'real' railways - was on passenger services rather than freight, since BR in those days wouldn't have been interested even if there had been freight traffic to regenerate anyway. Besides, not many Heritage lines even go anywhere near any industries that would generate rail traffic, do they? They're noted more for scenery than industrial estates!

Just my 2p-worth....

Edited by F-UnitMad
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3 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

The thing is that in the UK, there has not been a direct equivalent to US Short Lines since maybe the days of the Light Railways. Apparently this lack of smaller railways feeding the main lines hampered plans for EWS's Enterprise wagonload services when it started up, owned of course by Wisconsin Central.

The 'Enterprise' services were actually started by Transrail, one of the three railfreight companies set up after breaking up the BR Railfreight division, so before Wisconsin Central came into the picture.

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5 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Hi Ian

I'll be interested to see the S&P. I like the history in your blog.

...

 

Thanks :)

 

I need to fix the 'trip along the line' entry's text in a new entry, as I felt I needed to modify the way the line goes through the scenery a bit, from those early thoughts.

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17 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The 'Enterprise' services were actually started by Transrail, one of the three railfreight companies set up after breaking up the BR Railfreight division, so before Wisconsin Central came into the picture.

Well whenever it was started, the lack of a Short Line-ish network hampered EWS, as instead of dropping wagons at interchange points with a local engine, the main line engine had to stop & do the extra work,  AFAIK, anyway. I read it in a magazine somewhere.

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21 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

 Besides, not many Heritage lines even go anywhere near any industries that would generate rail traffic, do they? They're noted more for scenery than industrial estates!

There's the Ribble Railway at Preston docks, AFAIK there are still bitumen trains that use the line too.

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4 hours ago, Reorte said:

There's the Ribble Railway at Preston docks, AFAIK there are still bitumen trains that use the line too.

Originally the East Somerset Railway operated similarly, although they actually "butted up" rather than operated the bitumen services over the preserved line.  It was only once they ended that the ESR could operate into Cranmore station.  

Didn't the East Lancs start as the Bury Transport Museum, alongside the surviving freight line to Rawtenstall?  I also think there were still services to Butterley Engineering at Ripley when the Midland Railway Centre first opened.

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On 27/10/2019 at 12:58, Pacific231G said:

 

What seems to have been rarer in Britain was for heritage passenger lines to also have been used for goods trains. In N. America that has been fairly common -though perhaps less so now- with short lines carrying freight in the week being used for steam passenger trains at weekends (sometimes operated by the same short line company rather than volunteers as a commercial activity)

 

 

The Ffestiniog continued to carry slate traffic during its preservation era until (I think) about 1960, but the slate-carrying section was separate from the tourist operation. The slate was carried from the foot of the incline at Duffws to the exchange sidings at the LMR Blaenau station, the line being leased to the quarry but still, I think, in FfR ownership, so I suppose the preserved railway would still have been receiving an income from slate traffic.

 

 

Edited by Andy Kirkham
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IIRC this traffic continued between 1946 and 1955, when the line began to be used again between Portmadoc (as it was known then) and Boston Lodge, as well as up to 1960.  The Festiniog (as it was known then) never actually closed, it simply stopped running trains as it could not afford to overhaul a loco to pull them in 1946.  The Company was in dire straights but had this and some rental income, and maintained it’s existence without being wound up or going into receivership.  

 

It had absorbed the Croesor Tramroad and leased a section of this to the army, who were sold some slate wagons at a quite extortionate price to carry mobile targets ona firing range.  

 

The Company is still in existence and has been continuously since 1832 (the Middleton is older).  Since 1954, it has been operated and managed by a separate body, the Festiniog (now Ffestiniog) Railway Society. 

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Theres a few examples of where Fright has been carried on a preserved network. It mainly falls into two different categories.

 

One is an actually flow - whereby the freight starts on a preserved line and then goes onto the main national network. Its good to see preserved lines as their own 'network' as the do have a boundary with the national infrastructure. That way too you can set the scene and work out the right operations needed. The best ones for this tend to be lines where there are more rural locations and the two that work best are both up north. Weardale was a loading point for opencast coal for a number of years while Wensleydale has trains loaded with MOD traffic as and when needed. Other lines like the NYMR have seen trains for ballast and engineering work brought in when needed but this is not common. The closest to what your needing would be the Weardale operation, where the train moves from national network onto private/preserved and then continues to the loading point. Some photos of its operation are here:

https://www.blackhatrailwaypictures.co.uk/f268074797

The second, which is more popular on lines is the use of a demo-goods train. As a result it runs like a previous freight train would do on gala weekends or something like that. Most model railways tend to run a gala weekend, every weekend. Especially if its at an exhibition.
 

The railway that's best at that tends to be the Great Central as they can run many trains on the double track. Some other lines also run these, but you then focus on what it is you want to do and use some of the many examples of this to suit your preserved railway.

 

Hope that helps.

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