aNalysiNg ‘plaNdampf’
Could timetabled main line steam become a regular event?
‘Plandampf’ on the S&C did wonders for the railway generally, and the S&C in particular
Thousands of words have already been written about February’s ‘I LOVE S&C’ ‘Plandampf’ with Tornado, most of them emotive - and that’s entirely right because it really was a very emotional experience for many people. I was one of them, because the SettleCarlisle line has always been prominent in my career as a railway journalist, and has acted like a touchstone for the railway’s fortunes. When Editor David Wilcock and I were producing Steam World from his home in High Bentham in the early Eighties, the S&C was under threat of closure. Preston-based British Rail Civil Engineer Alan King had condemned the iconic Ribblehead Viaduct because of alleged terminal cracking in its stonework, and the battle to save the line was well under way. BR claimed the £2 million repair costs were unaffordable. So, David and I often ‘bunked off’ during the day (and then worked late into the night) to photograph the last days of the ‘Peak’-hauled Glasgow-Nottingham expresses and the stone trains from Ribblehead. Before heading back to the office, we’d have a quick lunch and a chat with landlord John in the ‘Station Inn’. Legendary steam footplateman-photographer J.R. ‘Jim’ Carter always claimed this windswept pub hosted “the finest p*ss stones in England” because of the magnificent view across Batty Moss, of Ribblehead Viaduct, seen through the windows above the urinals of the ‘Gents’! The line was being run down by BR with practised determination in a well-rehearsed ritual that absolutely everyone concluded would end in closure. But it didn’t work out like that. Along came BR manager Ron Cotton who, instead of running the line down as instructed, successfully rebooted its marketing. Alongside the most successful anticlosure protest ever known, the line was reprieved. We all thought, as we chased Lord Nelson to Ais Gill with the Steam Locomotive Operators’ Association Pullmans, that we were witnessing the last rites. If you had told me back then that I would be riding over a fully repaired Ribblehead Viaduct on February 15 2017, in the fireman’s seat of a seven-year-old new-build ‘A1’ class ‘Pacific’, which was working three days of steamhauled ordinary service trains over a main line of recreated strategic importance, I would have dismissed you as delusional, if not unhinged. And yet that is precisely what happened.
Robust
That the ‘Plandampf’ was a stunning success is beyond doubt. Was it perfect? Of course not. When you aren’t controlling seat occupancy by reservation and you have no idea how many people are going to turn up, then the risk of disappointing passengers is high if demand exceeds supply. This did actually happen with a few people - I know because Northern Managing Director Alex Hynes and I encountered some disappointed but still-cheerful folk on the Aire Valley electric train back to Leeds on the evening of February 15. We’d have been happier with no such incidents, but perish the thought that we should be so afraid of falling short of perfection that we are ‘too frit’ to try something bold.
It is to the credit of all involved that this ‘Plandampf’ went ahead. Northern’s Alex Hynes, Network Rail Route Managing Director Rob McIntosh and DB Cargo Account Manager for Charters, Special Trains & Resource Hires Richard Corser, all showed vision, determination and exceptional management in making this happen - because it was far from easy. Their teams - who all have demanding day jobs - went extra mile after extra mile and did an incredible job. The Northern Regional Director - East, Paul Barnfield, and A1 Steam Locomotive Trust Operations Director Graeme Bunker, also played a fundamental part in coming up with a successful, robust and safe train plan, given that Tornado would have to run tender-first southbound. The plan also drew heavily from the crucial specialist knowledge of German organisations who pioneered the ‘Plandampf’ concept on which the ‘I LOVE S&C’ venture was based. This ‘Plandampf’ was not just about ‘gricers’. I rode on four of the six S&C trains and most passengers were local folk on a day out for great scenery and a thrilling steam train ride. They got both. Not everyone in and around today’s railway approved. There was a deal of tutting and muttering about this being ‘no way for the modern railway to behave or promote itself’. There were even some daft (laughable, actually) comments about this venture being a ‘con’ by the ‘steam media’. This was both nonsense and rather insulting to the first-rate modern railway managers who embraced ‘Plandampf’. Make no mistake, ‘Plandampf’ on the S&C did wonders for the railway generally, and the S&C in particular, in both business and reputational terms. And let’s not forget, each of those qualities enhances the other, with the total benefit being much bigger than the sum of their parts. Normal passenger traffic over the Tuesday-Thursday periods in the few weeks before the ‘Plandampf’ had averaged around 250. More than 5,500 people travelled behind Tornado over the three days of steam: a twenty-fold increase. Many travelled by rail, so Northern’s business benefited, as did the revenues of neighbouring TOCs with many passengers travelling from further afield. I stayed in hotels at Appleby and Skipton, both of which were busy with passengers and journalists on two or three nights. On the Tuesday and Wednesday I enjoyed lunch in the very friendly Midland Hotel right next to the station at Appleby - in the company of about 60 others. Customers were three-deep at the bar for an hour or more. The landlord was beaming. “I don’t normally even open during afternoons at this time of year,” he told me as he tore off yet another food order for the kitchen. ‘Plandampfs’ in Germany are run to support and develop regional economies and there was no doubt this happened right along the S&C - there was a genuine trickle-down of value into regional and local economies. Many passengers who had a good time will doubtless return, amplifying the economic benefits yet further in a way which is real, but difficult to measure. And there were the ‘softer’ - but no less valuable - benefits. Northern MD Alex Hynes was delighted with the major boost in morale and staff engagement - you only had to spend a few minutes amid the crowds and queues at Skipton to see this first-hand. You might not be able to measure stuff like this, but just like momentum, you can feel it. British Transport Police officers were out in friendly force, seizing the opportunity to engage and meet the public by whose consent they uphold the law. It was a major pleasure to just soak it all up and be just one of so many people having such a great time, whether you were passenger, railwayman or woman or copper. As they say in my part of Lancashire: “It wor’ a reet good do!” More widely, ‘Plandampf’ brought three days of positive wall-to-wall PR which money just can’t buy. TV, newspapers, radio, magazines… reporters were out in force, all producing more good railway copy than I’ve seen since HM Queen Elizabeth opened the Borders Railway in September 2015.
Devolution
All those advantages were reason enough to pursue ‘Plandampf’. But there were two other really important aspects: the message for today’s railway in its most up-to-date sense and also what this venture implies about the future of steam on today’s microchip, and tomorrow’s digital railway. Today’s railway is frequently on the sharp end of the collective tongues of politicians and the media for failures of a structure which is perceived (frequently, but wrongly, in my view) to be fatally flawed through fragmentation.
It matters not who owns something, it’s how it’s run and managed that counts. If fragmentation was in itself the fatal problem it is often claimed to be, then no airport in the world could function. Not one. There are more companies working together to deliver your flight than there are delivering your train journey. Yet generally, airports work. This is because airports are managed locally, by on-site teams working closely together. The railway, now maturing after 20 years in its second privatised phase, is moving in the same direction. Network Rail calls it ‘devolution’ and the S&C ‘Plandampf’ offered a tantalising glimpse of how the wider railway could and should work: fully devolved decision-making which is exercised close to the coal-face by those who intimately know the area, are familiar with its people, and who have expertise in the services needed. From the first ‘Plandampf’ meeting it was obvious that Northern, Network Rail and DB Cargo were working openly and enthusiastically as an integrated team. All three organisations showed mutual respect and made decisions sensitive to each other’s needs and circumstances. They were flexible and collegiate, and they willingly compromised on their own agendas in the name of the common good and serving the passenger. The results were spectacular. They even incorporated a voluntary group - the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line - as a full partner in the venture. And they were happy to have Steam Railway and RAIL involved. We played our part: not a penny was spent on promotions. All reserved tickets were sold within two days of our breaking news of the ‘Plandampf’ through our various Twitter feeds, and we saw 24,000 social media hits in just 48 hours. It was a privilege being part of this team - and we’d do it again in a heartbeat. This is how current NR Chief Executive Mark Carne and Chairman Sir Peter Hendy CBE want the whole network to operate - and I’m explaining all this because I believe it is also crucial for the future of main line steam. From the very start of charters, when Thomas Cook ran a special train between Loughborough and Leicester in 1841, they only made any kind of economic sense because they made marginal use of men and equipment. In simple terms, the trains and staff were paid for by their everyday use, which meant that they could be used at low cost at weekends or other times when they were otherwise unoccupied. Privatisation in the 1990s pulled the keystone from this arch. A business which could only realistically exist when run at marginal cost was suddenly expected to stand on its own financial feet. And as anyone involved in main line steam knows only too well, you cannot make money running steam - hence the old joke: How do you make a small fortune running steam charters? Answer - start with a large fortune.
Squeezed
So, over the last 20 years, main line steam has survived on a wing and a prayer. The system put in place in the latter days of BR has been stretched to the limit and made to work by sheer force of will on the steam side and varying degrees of tolerance by the ‘big railway’ - which has often given the impression of wanting rid of it. Given some of the shenanigans we’ve seen, that isn’t surprising, but steam’s presence on the network is protected by legislation and
Unless there is fundamental change in the way steam operates, then its future could be very much in doubt
regulation, and however ‘anti’ some managers might be, no-one wants to be the one who attracts the headlines by exiling it from main lines. The price paid by steam has been increasingly punishing financial costs and, if we’re honest, what often looks like operational indifference from the industry. We’ve all heard the tales of charters being given no priority, being endlessly looped and delayed like some kind of afterthought. On the current trajectory, and with the digital railway now gathering momentum, as Editor of RAIL it isn’t difficult for me to imagine steam inexorably being squeezed from the network and, putting it bluntly, dying a lingering death. That would serve no-one - least of all today’s railway. Equally bluntly, this is not helped by the way some in the charter industry have, on the one hand, acted poorly, while causing operational and safety problems on the other. Disputes with NR about payments, or who causes lineside fires, for example, are bad enough in terms of both damaging the market and poisoning the well of goodwill among today’s operators and NR. But when you add incidents like the Wootton Bassett SPAD of March 7 2015, then it appeared that the long-term future of the charter business hung by a thread. In my view, unless there is fundamental change in the way steam operates, then its future could be very much in doubt. The naysayers had plenty of ammunition to take potshots at steam. However, that changed with the S&C ‘Plandampf’. I believe that the way in which this unique venture was run establishes a new template for steam operation, not only in managerial terms, but also in terms of goodwill and in proving a wider economic case which justifies the investment in ‘mates’ rates’ prices for operating steam.
Delight
The ‘Plandampf’ was not a charter which ran once for fun, to entertain enthusiasts. It was a three-day programme with economies of scale which was designed to delight customers, show the railway in a great light in the media and to prompt the trickle-down of real economic value into the region it served. It did all those things in style. No-one can deny that. A twenty-fold increase in passengers speaks for itself. What also struck me very powerfully was that there wasn’t a big furore on the first day which then tailed off. All three days were equally busy, so all the benefits were maximised. By using the S&C when it was closed as a through route, there was an opportunity for the railway to try out a ‘Plandampf’ in a low-risk way. A new template for running steam emerged. Costs were driven down, value and enjoyment were driven up - so the so-called ‘mates’ rates’ charged by those involved should be seen as an investment, not a subsidy. It will need clever and imaginative management by everyone to make the template work elsewhere, but we now know how to do it at low cost and without causing a problem for other rail users. Operators and NR alike have clearly signalled an interest in not only doing an S&C ‘Plandampf’ again - maybe even as an annual event (and how about steam on the southbound gypsum train by the way…?) - but they are also looking at reaping the benefits we saw on the S&C in other parts of the network. How about Scotland, where now-former Northern MD Alex Hynes is moving to run ScotRail? A pair of ‘Pacifics’ running in each direction around the Fife Circle, perhaps? How about creative financing of a loop at Tweedbank to enable easier ‘Plandampfs’ on the Borders Railway, from Waverley, in the heart of Edinburgh? Or to Scarborough - where there is a turntable - and where a constantly changing pool of customers can be found in York? Or how about somewhere completely different? East Anglia? Personally, I rather like the idea of West Wales. A word of warning. A quarter-century ago, I wrote an editorial in this magazine asking ‘When are steam specials no longer special? Answer - when they happen all the time.’ So let’s not get carried away, but let’s not miss the opportunity to reinvent steam’s place on the main line either. ‘Plandampf’ re-stated steam’s case in an undeniable manner. There could not be a more powerful example of former British Rail Board Chairman Sir Peter Parker’s famous view that ‘Steam warms the market for railways.’ Today’s railway needs to remember that and exploit it. NR devolution and sharp TOC management provides the means. Steam provides the product the public loves. Now, manage that interface successfully and absolutely everyone wins: customers, the railway and steam operators. There’s a clear formula as to how the steam locomotive of the oil lamp railway can continue to run on - and give benefit to - the increasingly digital railway: think big, encourage enthusiasm, enthrall the public. What’s not to like?!