Where Worlds Collide

Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog describes how he’d run a railway. I’m not sure about this bit:

So, tickets and stations. Al Gore said “Every vote must be counted.” I say “Every ticket must be checked.” At the start and end of every journey. It is not simply a matter of preventing fare evasion. Manned stations show that you care about your property and passengers. They also have a role to play in curbing crime and other forms of anti-social behaviour. If I cannot staff a station (even temporarily) then I will not stop at it. If it means asking passengers to get off at a nearby station and putting them in taxis, so be it. If there is a station that proves persistently difficult to staff then I will close it down.

I can’t imagine CrozierRail operating anything outside major conurbations like that. While staffing every station at all times is ideal, in my book an unstaffed station is better than no station. Dumping passengers at the previous stop and sending them in taxis is the sort of nonsense Virgin Trains is rightly castigated for. And I personally find “open stations” where you don’t have to queue at a ticket barrier a far more pleasant passenger environment.

Checking tickets is another matter, but it’s possible to do that on board the train. It’s something some operators seem to be able to do perfectly well, even if others, such as Thames Trains, can’t be bothered.

As for having a staff presence at lesser-used stations, perhaps CrozierRail (or for that matter any real train companies) should look at what happens in Switzerland. I’ve seen some little-used local stations where you buy tickets from the conductor on the train with well-maintained buildings complete with hanging baskets full of flowers! How do they manage this? By renting the station houses to retired railwaymen. The ultimate example of this was Blausee-Mitholz on the BLS between Frutigen and Kandersteg; the station is still immaculately-maintained even though no trains stop there!

Sad news for class 50 fans. After spending several years slowly rusting away in a Sheffield scrapyard, No 50001 “Dreadnought” has been cut up for scrap. Only twenty-two (at the last count) of the fifty locomotives built now survive, not bad for a class of locomotive officially retired ten years ago. Most of those are in working order, and several are main-line certified.

I took this picture of 50001 hauling an empty ballast train back in 1989, just after the rundown of the class had commenced.

My order of replacement wheelsets arrived this morning, and the recipient of the first set, class 37 no 37671 “Tre Pol and Pen” is now back in working order with brand-new wheels.

No fewer than four of the six original wheelsets proved to have cracked gears – if this failure rate proves typical I’ll need a lot more than that 24 replacement wheelsets I’ve got so far to repair the whole fleet.

Here’s a photo of the full-sized version of 37671, taken at Par, Cornwall back in 1989. The train is a little on the short side, just a single wagon – but the locomotive did return a couple of hours later with seven loaded ones!

David Salo surmises that Tolkein’s Rivendell is inspired by Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland.

The Lauterbrunnental, just like Rivendell, is a narrow strip of land bounded on two sides by nearly vertical cliffs. Over these cliffs several rills plummet in sheer waterfalls, notably Staubbach, all of which make an unceasing noise.

I have been to Lauterbrunnen a couple of times on holiday. Next time I’ll have to imagine elven palaces instead of Swiss chalets. I wonder if Tolkien would approve of the network of funiculars, tramways, rack railways and cable cars that allow tourists to visit the mountain villages of Mürren and Wengen high above the valley. I wonder if Tolkien would approve? Possibly not, although they are all powered by hydro-electric power rather than polluting steam engines.

Those two villages have no road access, so everything has to use the funiculars and mountain railways. I remember seeing a kitchen sink unit(!) being carried up the funicular and then on a little freight wagon coupled to the tramcar to get it to Mürren, and a freight train propelled by a diminutive and ancient four-wheeled electric locomotive slowly making its way up the 1-in-4 rack-and-pinion gradient to Wengen, the main cargo being crates of beer!