RAILTOUR PASSENGERS FURIOUS OVER LEANDER NO-SHOW FARCE
(BUT RSSB IS TO BLAME)
Passengers who paid up to £200 for seats on the railway Touring Company’s ‘Buxton spa express’ on saturday september 17 have accused network rail of treating them like second‑class citizens after rostered LMs ‘Jubilee’ no. 45690 Leander was dropped from the working at just 20 minutes notice. West Coast Railway Company diesels Nos. 57313 and 47245 took over the Preston-Buxton main line charter, following the eleventh-hour discovery that the popular Stanier 4-6-0, though fully tested and approved for the trip following its 12-monthly exam at Carnforth, had not been re-registered on NR’s TOPS system, which lists rolling stock authorised to run on the main line. Without any record of Leander being approved, NR Control ruled that the ‘Jubilee’ - all fired up with 220lbs showing on its boiler pressure gauge and ready for its booked 6am departure from Carnforth to Preston with the coaching stock - was going nowhere. A salvo of emails and telephone calls to Steam Railway summed up the anger by passengers who felt cheated. One complaint called Network Rail “detached and indifferent”. However, it appeared that NR was not to blame for the TOPS glitch, but the Railway Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), which manages it. Booked passenger Mike Dickinson told us: “What a shambolic mess. We learned that although the paperwork was complete, a clerk at Network Rail had failed to log it onto the computer. These guys finish at 5pm on a Friday, so nothing could be done. Some 380 passengers, many paying up to £200 each, were robbed of a fantastic day out in glorious weather. ““The engine owners have lost thousands of pounds. “To add insult to injury, despite requests from RTC to omit the now unnecessary water stops on the return, we were still held in three separate loops for two-and-a-half hours. Network Rail couldn’t even manage that request.” This error is on top of the similar recent debacle with Flying Scotsman in Scotland, when NR claimed that ‘A3’ No. 60103 hadn’t been gauged for the Borders line. Mr Dickinson said: “NR demands checks on every aspect of steam operation from operators, but has none of its own. It should compensate everyone.” Said West Coast Railways director Pat Marshall: “Leander was fully passed fit to run. We sent all the paperwork by 8am on Friday September 16, but the details weren’t on TOPS until Monday. The Rolling Stock Library told us it was short-staffed.” Steam Railway asked the RSSB for an explanation, but it said it would not comment on a specific incident. No. 45690 engine owner Chris Beet told Steam Railway: “Our support crew has worked days and nights for three weeks to prepare Leander for this trip. We had just 20 minutes notice that we weren’t running. When we’d got over the shock, we simply ran Leander up and down the yard at Carnforth a few times during the morning, had a bacon sandwich, and went home.” RTC chief Nigel Dobbing is offering passengers a 25% discount if they book on the next ‘Buxton Spa’ in April 2017 but sighed: “We’re taking the hit again for something that absolutely wasn’t our fault. Who is going to compensate us?”