“An attempt at whittling a unique niche”
Tyseley’s Stratford dream: panniers and stoppers. How will it come together?
SPIT, SPIT, SPIT. The regular sound of a pannier tank’s vacuum pump slows as its driver eases it past the long running-in board and to a stop. Doors bang, kids run to look at the engine… others drift towards the exit. A ‘pip’ and flurry of green from the guard and the squat ‘57XX’ eases into motion, leaving this wayside stop to its gardens and bird song. Later on it’ll be similar. Tomorrow the same.
If Michael Whitehouse has his way, that image may not just be a memory of GWR days, or idyllic imaginings, or even a heritage railway… but the main line of the future.
In fact, this could be Network Rail’s Henley-in-Arden (alight for the conservation area High Street) – or any number of the stations that still punctuate the line between Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon.
All of which, says the Vintage Trains chairman, have tales to tell.
If that doesn’t sound like your typical steam promoter or train operator – well, maybe not. What it perhaps instead shows is that compared to most, Vintage Trains is much more into building a local focus. That doesn’t mean it’s abandoned the idea of running trains further afield from its Tyseley (Birmingham) base – plans for a ‘Stephenson Locomotive Society’ trip to Swindon on May 15, for example, are already in the diary. But with the ‘Shakespeare Line’ outside the front door,
a catchment area running into the millions, and community rail groups adopting previously unloved stations… the former ‘Birmingham Railway Museum’ has decided that the ‘doorstep’ is worth developing.
Backing that up is research done by Tyseley which, its chairman says, shows that the “majority of the people who rode on our ‘Shakespeare Express’ do so because they wanted a ride on an express steam train. When we said ‘did you do it because you wanted to go to Stratford?’ they said no. They wanted a ride on an express steam train. So actually, with that route, we’ve got the best of three worlds. We’ve got a fast steam train just for the sake of it. We’ve got a destination to die for… Stratford. And we’ve now woken up we’ve got station destinations all the way down the line. There’s a story at every single station, from Birmingham City football, to manufacturing in Birmingham at Tyseley, to Tolkien’s ‘Shire’ at Hall Green, to Earlswood lakes and the canals, to Henley, on it goes…
“So we’re going to major on developing all that over the next years.”
An imminent aspect of this is a plan that in itself will mark a major departure: to expand the Birmingham-Stratford series from Sundays-only to weekdays too – running up to three days a week. The idea of a main line ‘stopper’ is also unusual
– it’s been talked about before, but rarely
achieved – but this one begins with already planned calls at Henley.
Covid-19 allowing, the first of the new trips using morning/afternoon/evening Friday/Saturday paths are expected to start this year – though as I write, the detail of that was still in limbo; unlike traditional ‘Shakespeares’ though, the new ones will run ‘top and tail’ from Birmingham Moor Street (not Snow Hill) and their 45mph paths mean that Tyseley’s famous but currently out-of-ticket 0-6-0PTs could, at some point, haul the trains (SR515).
Concentrating so much on the one route takes ‘repeat itinerary’ and ‘short haul’ to a level of importance perhaps not seen anywhere much but the Fort William-Mallaig ‘Jacobite’; it’s certainly in contrast to the traditional main line day out.
If it also sounds a bit like a ‘giant heritage railway’ – well, yes. In fact Michael makes the comparison himself – saying “…if people only come down to Henley station for half an hour to have an ice cream and then go off somewhere else, that’s great isn’t it? Maybe they’ll be tempted to take a ride next time.
“It’s the same if it’s the Severn Valley, the same with the Bluebell… We’re just recreating it on the main line.”
There you get an idea of some of the people this is aimed at appealing to – those who are after less of an endurance marathon… but a blast behind steam anyway.
Now in a sense, you could contend that all this isn’t actually so much of a departure – and it’s true that it’s based on many familiar building blocks. Tyseley has run panniers before, the ‘Shakespeare Express’ has existed for more than 20 years – and, as Michael says, there are parallels with private lines. But that would be to underplay what VT is aiming at. For if Stratford really were to take off, it would give Tyseley a unique, repeatable product. And one that by being self-contained and having volume could perhaps be at least partly insulated from the wider difficulties of main line running in future. It is, you could certainly argue, an attempt at whittling a unique niche.
A key question is, of course, how much demand would there be for such a thing? And – himself describing this as an “experiment” – the Tyseley boss accepts that “we don’t know what the take-up will be, and we can’t afford to, say, guarantee we’ll run every Friday, Saturday, Sunday now, so we’re just trying out a few days to see what happens.”
Yet in Michael’s thinking, as he says, all this is a potentially once-in-a-lifetime boost. Next year, the huge international festival that is the Commonwealth Games and which brings people from across the globe is due to be held in Birmingham. Estimates put visitor numbers at half a million or more.
That, Michael says “should give us a huge lift up, shouldn’t it?
“But running three days a week to Stratford in the summer would be excellent.”
The plan is facilitated by the fact that Tyseley now has its own in-house train operator, Vintage Trains Ltd. “Having a licence gives you a seat at the table.
“So we’re treated in the same way as any of the franchised companies or open access companies, or freight companies, as far as network change is concerned. Timetable planning; we’re able to book our own working timetable paths.”
Plus, he adds, “We have a better voice with Midlands Engine and Birmingham marketing and the West Midlands Rail Executive”.
Following Ray Churchill’s retirement, VTL currently has just one steam driver in Martyn Fake (though that was also true at the start with Ray, and Michael reports that Tyseley stalwart Alistair Meanley is going through the process). Extra resource is bought in from DB Cargo. However, Michael argues, “it’s actually more cost-effective and efficient, because if you buy in expertise by the hour you don’t have to have a standing army.”
WE’RE TREATED IN THE SAME WAY AS ANY OF THE FRANCHISED COMPANIES
MICHAEL WHITEHOUSE, CHAIRMAN, VT
Then of course there’s the perennial issue that stands behind any project: money. Potentially significantly ‘to the good’ here is the possibility of selling the old Stratford station site for development – for what is so far an undisclosed sum. Search past accounts and you’ll see there’s already been a listing for £150,000 for a ‘sale of land option’ – although VT says that subsequent developments may change the numbers.
Yet Stratford aside, Michael says that assuming trains run in 2021: “We’re in a better position now than we were at the beginning of the pandemic”. If the programme does go ahead, he adds: “Vintage Trains Ltd will turn into surplus by the end of the year, which will be slightly ahead of the business plan, actually.”
As for the Tyseley Locomotive Works overhaul business – separate but still part of the same umbrella – “it went back into profit in August… it’s projected to end the year at the same profit it would have done had the pandemic never occurred.
“Why? Because actually it’s very busy, it’s working to capacity. And of course we’ve been fortunate like all the other heritage railways in being given things like rates relief, rent relief, lottery grants for revenue support, which has helped carry the costs of some of the things while we’re not operating. And we’ve thought about all the people, activities, and been a bit more efficient. Sometimes when you don’t do something you don’t have to spend the money. So actually our financial position overall for the Vintage Trains Charitable Trust is good.
“We don’t have any borrowings, we haven’t gone to the bank to borrow any money. We’ve clearly registered for the [Covid-19] bounce-back loans, but we haven’t used them, yet. We might use them for cashflow from time to time, very cheap money, and we’ve got cash in the bank.
“So actually we’re very relaxed. And being very relaxed means you can look at your strategy and think are you doing the right thing? Do a few new things… try out a few new things, so we will.”
If one of those does indeed at some point become regular pannier tanks to Stratford… then even five decades in, the main line will once again have thrown up a new twist.