RAND: ‘PLANDAMPF’ IS ‘ALARM CALL’

Mark Rand from the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line has used February’s ‘Plandampf’ to renew his argument for regular ‘Jacobite’-style services over the line. “We’re still in recovery mode, but the trains right now are packed,” he told me on June 1. He considers that result to be very much down to the publicity generated by the ‘Plandampf’ and the subsequent Flying Scotsman trip - albeit, he concedes, we were speaking during half-term. In the latest Settle-Carlisle Railway Journal, Mark accepts that ‘Plandampf’ “had the welcome attention of the mass media so the world knew about it” - but he still thinks regular steam could work. However, with the likes of ‘Fellsmans’, ‘Dalesmans’, ‘Waverleys’, ‘Cumbrian Mountain Expresses’ and so on from various promoters, does he not think the ‘Long Drag’ already has something approaching a frequent steam service? FoSCL’s man argues that “there are loads of people here who would use a daily ‘out and back’. “I think any of our booking clerks, certainly at Appleby and Settle, would say that every other passenger says ‘can we book a steam train?’ - and of course they can’t. “There’s such unfulfilled potential.” How then, about promotion by (say) FoSCL itself? “I know that we don’t have the financial or experience backup - others have. The answer might be to jump into bed with somebody.” That taps back into his thoughts from the Journal: “‘Plandampf’ has been a wake-up call to the S&C, its support bodies, the train operating company and the steam industry,” he concludes. “I do hope that somebody has heard the alarm clock ring out.” Also in the latest Journal is a titbit that thought has been given to renaming FoSCL as the ‘Friends of the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle’. Maybe though, given Transport Scotland’s latest study (see separate story), it should actually become the Friends of the (St Pancras)-Leeds-Settle-CarlisleHawick-Galashiels-Edinburgh… Only joshing!