It’s not the same at all - if you buy a house with a mortgage, the house is used as security for a loan which funds your purchase, so that if you default on the loan repayments the mortgage lender has the right take possesion of the property and sell it to recover the outstanding loan amount. But, you (not the mortgage lender) owns the house right from the beginning, and are responsible for maintenance, insurance etc.
TOC train leases are normally operating leases, where the ROSCO owns the rolling stock and hires it to the TOC for set period of time (usually up to the end of the franchise period, which is much shorter than the lifetime of the train). When the lease period expires, it’s up to the ROSCO to find another customer for the trains - that’s where the commercial risk comes in (and it does go wrong - quite new class 458’s and 180’s are coming off-lease, and I suspect we’re about to have a surplus of 158’s to add to the other trains the ROSCO’s own but are having to store). In some cases the Government has guarenteed the leases for new trains beyond the franchise period so as to reduce the leasing costs.
You can’t seriously claim to be investing in anything when you don’t end up owning it (or a least share of it) - the money for hiring/leasing costs is just running costs which the TOC is paying from it’s farebox and subsidy income.
Porterbrook has been owned by Abbey National since 2000, the other tw
Talking of new rolling stock, anyone had a ride on the new TransPennine 185 DMUs ?
I had my first sight and ride on one last week - the engine/exhaust noise from outside is MUCH louder than any other modern DMU I can think of (someone I was with thought it sounded a bit like a Western - not entirely convinced myself but I could see what he meant).
I’m not complaining as a railfan[:)], but I’m a bit surprised they meet modern noise regs.
Given that there is a nationwide shortage of stock, I would not have thought the ROSCO’s would have any difficulty finding takers for these allegedy surplus 158’s - Wales & Borders for one.
At the moment I know a lot of people who commute from Shrewsbury to Wolverhampton who are having to put up with over crowding (due to rolling stock shortage) whilst perfectly serivceable ex-Virgin Mk’2s sit idle at Oxley. If the ROSCO’s did not charge silly prices those carriages could be used to alleviate rush hour over crowding. I dont understand why the ROSCO’s dont charge a more realistic price - as a friend used to say “50% of something is better than 100% of nothing”.
Leasing costs can be offset against corporation tax (currently 30%), therefore £500,000.00 pa. becomes £350,000.00 pa. I wonder where the balance goes? Having had experience of acquiring company transport, leasing with its related tax, labour and capital investment savings is a very good option. John B.
Tony - very noisy from the outside, incredibly quiet inside and a far better ride than the 158’s.
I’ve had a few rides but last Saturday evening had 185113 back from Scunthorpe to Doncaster, having been on a steelworks tour.
THAT is something I’d wholeheartedly recommend. We had the standard afternoon tour of the site, then a brakevan tour in the evening and saw more or less everything.
A friend had a GPS doobrey with him - across both tours we did 28 miles and did’nt really repeat ourselves. At various points on the brakevan tour we got as close to the blast furnaces as you can get, went through the middle of one of the bar mills and trundled down the NR exchange sidings. Tremendous.
I’m pleased you enjoyed your trip to Scunny Simon. Was it Normamby Park? Did some work there in mid 70’s put in the hydraulics for the rolling mills and wire mill. Steel making (heavy engineering of any kind) is a most satisfying job. They had some deisel hydraulic 0-8-0/0-6-0/0-4-0’s when I was there. I think they were Hunset and/or Clayton types. John B.
Normanby Park steelworks closed down and was demolished, I think, in the early 1980s. The huge Appleby -Frodingham steelworks does railtours of its works, often using steam haulage, with a Polish 0-6-0 tank locomotive.
The Polish machine is out of traffic at the moment.
We had a Peckett 0-4-0ST (1438 of 1916), a Yorkshire 0-6-0 diesel electric and ex BR “02” D2853 - carrying a 26D shed plate (Bank Hall.)
The tours are operated by the Appleby Frodingham Railway Preservation Society using their stock and traction although I understand that on special occasions Corus locos are used.
I’m not even sure where Normanby Park was. I presume that it was rail-served, but I probably first went to Cleethorpes with a “40” in about 1981 and can only remember Appleby-Frodingham.
Mind you, that’s a long time ago and I’d have been listening more than looking!
Talking of steel works, does anyone know if Workington is closing and if so when? I thought it was but when I went past it on the way to Ravenglass during my stay in Carlisle it was definitely active. Not only did we pass a train of rails between there and Carlisle, but we saw at least one 0-6-0 diesel shunter at work on the internal rail network.
Incidentally the name of the pub I mentioned beside the Carlisle - Newcastle line is “The Corby Bridge Inn”.
BTW, if the Mk2’s at Oxley are the ex-VWC Euston - Birmingham - Wolverhampton stock, I’d be surprised if they weren’t just awaiting collection for the scrap dealer - they’ve had 35 years of hard life already.
Normanby Park steelworks was about 3 miles north of Scunthorpe and was served by the North Lindsey Light Railway which left the mainline at Trent Junction, near the old Frodingham Motive Power Depot. This line originally went as far as the bank of the River Humber at Winteringham. It also served ironstone mines at Crosby, Dragonby and Winterton. These mines closed in the 1970s when British Steel started using high grade imported ore instead of the fairly low grade local ore. Right up to the end of local ore mining, Appleby-Frodingham Ore Ming Branch used their own locomotives and wagons on the NLLR between the mines and the works in Scunthorpe.
If they’re only fit for scrap how come the New Zealand railways have bought some, and refurbuished some with sliding doors at 1/3rd and 2/3rd along the body. Now if the ROSCO’s were not as risk averse as GNER, they could do something like that and rent them out.
I hope the Rosco’s do find a home for all the ex-TPE 158’s (I think some are going to SWT for Waterloo-Exeter services, and TPE might need to keep some for Northwest-Scotland services if that moves out of the CrossCountry franchise, for starters).
One thing mentioned in the Modern Railways piece was that FGW was changing the supplier of it’s 158’s because they’d got a better deal from another Rosco, which does illustrate that a commercial market operates.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing to stop a TOC buying trains itself, but (except for FGW’s HST stockpile, as far as I know) they’ve all decided to pay someone else to carry that commercial risk.
Toronto has 2 PCCs left but they are used only for charters now (along with the Peter Witt). Toronto did have the largest fleet of PCC cars and also the largest fleet of used PCC cars.
David, It all started with Blackpool VAMBACs being thought similar to the PCC. Change of subject; Flying Scotsman is in bits, a replacement RHS cylinder is being machined, the wheels are away for turning, various valves, pipes and fittings are being re-furbished and there is a new copper firebox under construction. The York-Scarborough giants of steam tours are likely to be in the capable hands of Sir Lamiel, Green Arrow and Lord Nelson.
I dont know but hopefully it may have boosted rail travel. After all, rail does not need such stringent security measures because trains dont drop out of the sky! Ever since 9/11 airport securiy procedures have been stepped. As this adds to the journey time it takes to get somewhere by air, this should tip the balance in favour of rail. Before 9/11 it was thought that 3 hours was the maximum journey time over which rail was competitive; if it is now 4 hours then that could mean Virgin’s new Pendolinos could attract extra business on the London - Glasgow route. Back in the 1980’s British Rail chairman Sir Peter Parker described this as the biggest passenger market which BR did not dominate.
At that time BR’s hopes were pinned on the tilting Advanced Passenger Train (APT) which came within an ace of success but was ditched at the last minute. Now Virgin have got their tilting Pendolines up and running and are now looking to run them at 135mph.
Meanwhile, the opening next year of both Phase of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, from London St. Pancras to Ebbsfleet and the LGV (“Ligne a Grand Vitess” - French for high speed line) Est from Paris to Cologne (Germany) will mean that you’ll be able to travel by train from London to Cologne in less time that in takes from London to Edinburgh (just over 4 hours).
Except the French LGV Est. will end closer to Karlsruhe (and hence Frankfurt) than Cologne. The other problem is British Immigration and Customs policy makes multistop service on the Continent difficult. Which is why Frankfurt - London is problematic, unless you make people go through British Customs at Lille Europe.Note London - Frankfurt isn’t a problem.
Remember that the normal laws of physics don’t apply in New Zealand! These guys dug up an 1885 Rogers 2-4-2 - that is dug up, it had been dumped in a river to protect the bank from erosion in the 1920s and had been submerged for more than 40 years. And it went back into service with the shell of the boiler it had when dumped! Since then it got a new welded boiler and a second one was dug up and has joined the first, and they even double headed at least once.
Even the New Zealanders said they were surprised at the extent of rust removal required. The set used on the “Capital Connection” from Wellington to Palmerston North has the original doors, converted to operate as plug doors like those on Irish Mk 3s, but the later cars have sliding doors.
I have heard they were considering buying more Mk 2s, because they are one of the few existing designs outside NZ that fit their clearances. The last new passenger stock was Ganz Mavag (Hungarian) electric two car sets built before the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are still running 1939 English Electric suburban sets in Wellington, that look a bit like 1938 Tube trains (they are bigger than the tube profile, of course).
There is just not enough money in New Zealand for many new passenger trains that need subsidies to run. Most private automobiles in New Zealand are second hand from Japan!