Analysis
North East railway plans.
THE “economics of the madhouse”.
That’s how one charter insider has described trying to run trains with social distancing in place.
Paul Blowfield now speaks for the owner of Bulleid ‘Pacific’
35028 Clan Line, a locomotive normally to be found on charters around the country (frequently at the head of Belmond’s ‘British Pullman’). But in a lifetime on the railway Blowfield has been railtour promoter, timetable planner… he’s seen all sides.
He was talking here in May, shortly after what has hitherto been the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if anything, the situation has since become less clear, not more.
Blowfield’s is just one view - but charters have been hit hard by the Coronavirus. None have run since March, in a world that has to stand by its own commercial efforts.
Promoters have, of course, been eligible for ‘standard’ COVID-19 schemes such as furloughing.
But unlike franchised operators, or public transport such as buses or trams, there has been no additional government support or revenue guarantees. The sector has instead gone into hibernation.
Indeed, one promoter has now given up on 2020. Tyseley-based Vintage Trains has said it does not expect to run before April next year.
“HM Government is actively discouraging travel by train.
And it is now clear that social distancing will be maintained in some form for an extended period, and that its enforcement with regard to staffing, managing passenger movements and driving locomotives would present insurmountable problems,” Tyseley’s Denis Chick said when
VT’s decision to drop this season was announced in May.
“By carrying significantly fewer passengers it would also be impossible to run an economically viable service,” he added.
Not everyone has taken the same line as Clan Line’s communications man, or VT. Saphos Trains has been working towards re-starting in July, as has West Coast Railways with its hugely successful ‘Jacobite’ regular steam services between Fort William and Mallaig. And regular Clan Line customer Belmond is itself looking to pick up again, although not immediately:
“At the moment, we aren’t planning to run any of our trains until August”, Belmond’s PR Manager, Trains and Cruises, Hannah Layton told RAIL on June 23.
“When they return to operation, we will of course comply with any legal regulations that affect our business.”
That last point refers to a key topic - and specifically in response to new rules on face coverings for as the UK increasingly opens up into a ‘new normal’, charter companies are looking to ‘what next?’
Planning has been going on for months, based around the concept of being ‘COVID-secure’ for when the leisure and hospitality sector gets moving.
Guidance and procedures have been developed to maintain social distancing, and even physical alteration of stock has been carried out. That has been following the two-metre guidance that until June was unequivocally in place - the result is a roughly 40% decrease in capacity.
Jeremy Hosking’s Crewe-based grouping, which includes the operator Locomotive Services Ltd and the promoters Statesman
Rail and Saphos Trains, has fitted perspex screens between bays of seats. Together with the seat allocation that is already an essential feature of charter operations, it means parties of passengers can be physically separated.
“You either need to be proactive or accept that we won’t run for the foreseeable future,” Saphos/ Statesman Operations Manager Peter Watkinson explained when his outfits announced their move in May.
“Social distancing will be with us for a long while, but the Government has said it is looking to relax restrictions in the hospitality and leisure industry from July - and that’s us. We must be positive in all this, because the alternative is to lose all our valued customers, many of whom are not railway enthusiasts, to other leisure operators.”
In more recent weeks, however, planning has been increasingly hampered by an ever-changing cocktail of rules and guidance, emanating from different parts of government machinery.
Perhaps most significantly, on June 15 the Department for Transport launched its mandatory face-covering rules for England. These were introduced as secondary legislation through a Statutory Instrument made on
June 14 - so there was neither consultation nor debate in Parliament before they became law.
It seems likely that charters, with their allocated seating, weren’t even the real target of a measure designed to mitigate an increasing lack of guaranteed social distancing on public transport. But it instantly brought uncertainty to a sector which relies heavily on dining trains - and which as ‘non-essential’ has been off-limits, but increasingly expecting to once again open for business.
Does the legislation even apply to charters? The DfT has confirmed that it does (and indeed to heritage lines as well) - unlike cruise liners, which have been given a specific exemption.
The law does include as a “reasonable excuse” for not wearing a mask “if it is reasonably necessary” for a passenger “to eat or drink”.
However, as of June 24 (when this article was written), there was no official announcement on whether that would allow dining trains or not. The legislation is for 12 months, with a review after six.
What is clear is that charter people have been lobbying DfT (and more recently Transport Scotland, after the announcement that it would follow suit on face coverings from June 22) with optimism about a resolution.
“Clearly this is a hasty bit of legislation and I strongly feel that we should not be classified as
public transport,” David Buck, chairman of promoter Steam Dreams, said on June 17.
“I would very much hope and expect that an exemption will be granted.”
And on June 26, LSL (TOC) went further - making it clear it believes that in its case face coverings are not needed: “From July 4, leisure and hospitality venues are being allowed to open providing they can meet ‘COVID Secure’ guidelines. Until this point leisure travel has been prohibited and, although we are able to comply with current guidelines, we have not operated charter services.
“We are classified as a leisure and hospitality product and certainly not public transport. If we were unable to meet the COVID requirements then face coverings would indeed be required on our services, but this is not the case.
“All our seating plans meet or exceed the two-metre or onemetre-plus requirements from July 4. As a result, and due to the strict controls we have in place, LSL (TOC) will not require customers to wear face coverings when seated in our Statesman or Saphos trains. Of course, if customers do wish to do so, then they can.
“We would recommend wearing a face covering when visiting the lavatory or buffet (the buffet counter is fitted with a Perspex safety screen). And, of course, when boarding or alighting the train and passing through rail transit stations the wearing of a covering is required as per current national instructions.
“We will carry a small stock of face masks on our services so that should a passenger lose or break theirs we can help and ensure such an issue does not spoil their day.
All our passengers will additionally also receive a complimentary hand sanitiser pen when on board.”
The face coverings law is not the only case of shifting legislative sands. Just as this analysis was written, companies were beginning to digest Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement that England will move to ‘one-metreplus’ social distancing - rather than the previous two metres.
Steam Dreams’ David Buck, this time on June 24, saw the shift as
“very welcome”, but added: “We need to see the detailed guidance from the Government before I can say anything else.”
Yet regulatory questions are but one aspect of the current uncertainty. Right now, nobody knows when this will end.
Back in March, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which advises government, reported that Coronavirus numbers could feasibly be kept within the limits of the country’s critical care capacity by using alternating periods of stricter, then looser measures. These, though, would need to be in place “for at least most of a year” and “at least half of the year would be spent under the stricter social distancing measures”.
And in June, scientists were warning of a possible ‘second spike’, with the Health Service Journal reporting that the NHS in the South East was preparing for a “reasonable worst-case scenario” of a second wave up to 2.5 times the size of the first one.
None of this is easy for any business - other perhaps than those with the guarantee of government life support - and certainly not for one that is fairly niche and largely seasonal. The main charter activity runs from around Easter to October with a peak in the summer. Pre-Christmas is also an important time, but winter is otherwise largely fallow.
And even then, there are other unknowns. Charters, by their very nature, are discretionary. Yet what will be the economic fallout, after a period in which we now know activity fell 20% in just one month?
Will enough people still decide to buy tickets that can be £200, or even nearer £250 in dining?
And will enough think a day that potentially involves face coverings and the like is even worth doing… for fun?
Right now, again, nobody knows for sure.
But it isn’t all negative. Anecdotally, demand has held up - rather than cancelling, people are asking when they might be able to travel. There is a sense of some pent-up demand.
That may not help too much right at this moment, but it does at least offer hope for the longer term. Indeed, there’s little reason to expect the future for charters post-Coronavirus to be anything other than bright. If anything, as people spend more time at home, the demand for leisure experiences and travel may increase.
Ironically, even a quieter railway overall could be good for charters. Lacking firm timetabling rights, they have increasingly struggled to find ‘white space’ in the schedules as the network has become ever more congested.
What’s more, as ‘rail plc’ seeks to redefine itself post-COVID, the charter family can eye its place not only as a symbolically powerful segment but also as one that still works without subsidy. And after all, what could say ‘open for business’ and ‘feelgood factor’ better than Flying Scotsman on the Royal Border or Forth Bridge?
Charters will survive. Longerterm, they should even thrive. But the short term is unlikely to be easy.
■ Tony Streeter writes the ‘Down Main’ charters column in RAIL’s sister title Steam Railway, which regularly covers these topics.
“Planning has been increasingly hampered by an ever-changing cocktail of rules and guidance, emanating from different parts of government machinery.”