Putting locos under pressure
Welcome to NGW158 – this month you will find quite a few photos taken by your editor, basically because after more than a year when editing this magazine meant sitting in front of a computer screen all day every day, I’ve been grabbing every chance I can get to go out and enjoy the lines that are up and running again.
Expeditions in recent weeks kicked off with an enjoyable visit to the Bala Lake Railway, spurred on by a friend who was driving (and will likely be somewhat surprised to find himself on this month’s cover...). It may have been midweek and still early in the season, but the trains were pleasingly busy, the first one out of Llanuwchllyn helped by the presence of a coach party that certainly filled a carriage set restricted by Covid precautions!
I also got my first look at the Bala line’s heritage centre. Having been unavoidably elsewhere when it first opened in 2019, I had promised to go check it out early in the 2020 season – and we all know what happened next... It’s an interesting collection and another praiseworthy addition to a line that seems to be making a lot of news at present – turn to page 8...
Then it was on to the Fairbourne Railway for one of the first postCovid Galas on Spring Bank Holiday Saturday, and while the 121/4-inch gauge line was not able to do all it normally does at a Gala weekend, a good time was had by all. Regular readers will know I feel a little connected to this line these days – I mentioned in NGW156 how I’ve been spending some highly enjoyable time in the Fairbourne workshop recently and it was very satisfying to see the newly returnedto-service Darjeeling-style loco ‘Sherpa’ running at the Gala with bits I’d made on it.
Mind you I was only able to stay at the Gala for the morning, a family three-line whip requiring me to head south to Sussex in the afternoon for a welcome couple of days with our first grandson, only the third time we had seen him since he was born 15 months ago. It did mean enduring a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ weekend on the standardgauge Mid-Hants Railway – surreal and fascinating, but not something I will be rushing to repeat...
Highlight of the month, long looked forward to, was the Statfold Barn Railway’s Trangkil 50 Gala, the only problem being that the Gala neatly coincided with this issue’s press deadline. Such weekends tend to involve hectic writing of news stories, laying out of pages and long hours – it’s 9pm on Sunday night as I write this...
Making a major effort, I managed to write all the news stories before heading to Statfold, happy in the knowledge that all I would have to do on my return would be design the pages. And what happened? Statfold presented me with something like five more stories to write up... Not that I minded, what a positive sign such progress is.
Working to the limit
It’s great to see lines are busy as reported over the page, but many readers may not realise that demand puts extra pressures to our railways. While many people want to ride the trains, accommodating them is not so easy due to Covid social-distancing requirements – to carry similar traffic levels to normal lines have to run more trains or very long trains, stretching the capabilities of their locos to the limit.
We’ve seen evidence of the pressures – the Welshpool & Llanfair for example has endured some enthusiast criticism for being down to just one hired-in loco. This is a little unfair – in normal years overhaul of the line’s original loco ‘The Earl’ would have been completed by the Vale of Rheidol sometime in 2020, long before two other W&L locos went out of boiler ticket, whereas The Earl is now due back around the end of June. The whole world did not predict Covid so how could the W&L management be expected to?
Elsewhere the Fairbourne has been forced into an urgent appeal as one of its locos has been put out of action at very short notice and cannot afford to be – see page 10. The Covid fall-out is bringing lots of extra pressures that few of us could have foreseen, and no doubt there will be more to come.
Enjoy your NGW – back to normal and with some exciting stuff to bring you in coming months...
“It was very satisfying to see the newly returnedto-service Darjeelingstyle loco ‘Sherpa’ running at the Gala with bits I’d made on it...”