Todo Blog
by Phil Cooper
In this blog I’m going to make a plea for cheaper travel on British railways. I’ve long thought that if the train companies did some research, they could drop their crazy fares but still make good profits because more people would use their services.
For instance, a single ticket from Dover to Folkestone would cost me £5.60. Travelling by car would take about 10 minutes and if I went by bus, as an OAP, I could travel free. It’s the sort of journey many people make -short expensive trips. But I wonder how many tickets they would sell if they were offered at, say, £2 each I reckon everybody would pile on.
Train travel is now seen as more beneficial to the world much more that car travel and, even worse, air travel.
I’m going to mention a company who are trying to do their bit for the Earth and that’s Lumo who have trains traveling to Edinburgh from Kings Cross and their mission is to take air passengers away from the sky down to Lumo. They offer seats at a low of £19. I’d love to know what their profit is, but I bet it’s good because their trains are packed. There is only one class available, but you can pre-book your food online-very important for me! So, if Lumo can do this why can’t LNER do it. You need a computer these days to work out cost of seats on LNER on the ECML and Avanti on the WCML. Discount cards can cut 30% of your fares but it’s still a lot of money. Travelling on LNER from Kings Cross to Edinburgh on LNER will cost you at least £70. It’s important, too, that the journey time for that trip is just over 4 hours. Years ago, back in the 70s that journey took at least 6 hours and the trains were disgustingly dirty and never on time. So, I reckon Lumo are on a winner here and travelling with them means you don’t have to get out to Gatwick or Heathrow, another time waster. And I hope Lumo’s success influences LNER and all train companies to review their ticketing system
If I want to travel home to Inverness on the Caledonian Sleeper, it would cost me £315 for a club room (with en-suite toilet and shower). A “Classic” would cost me £270! And I know from experience that that train is nearly always late. However, a seat would cost just £55 which isn’t too bad, but the journey takes about 12 long hours and the last few hours seems to take forever. My last trip with one of my mates on the way home for Xmas was actually quite good fun as we both had bottles of bottles of Glenmorangie which we were soon sharing with our fellow passengers including some American girls who soon began to appreciate the many joys of a good “dram”. I imagine the sleeper service is used mainly by tourists and businessmen. But I wonder if cutting the sleeper cabin costs by 50% would see enough fare-paying passengers for the service to make a bigger profit. I really think that our rail companies should try something revolutionary as cutting fares. If I had access to their statistics, I could do it for them. It’s just simple Maths that’s needed.
I’ll give you an example: A train has 6 passengers who have each paid £5 for their seat. Now let’s say that with the cost of a ticket reduced to £2 you would need to sell 15 tickets to make the same profit. But I believe you would sell a lot more tickets if the seat prices were lowered drastically. It gets even better when you look at longer trips so let’s look at Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley (by the way if you ever travel to Waverley take some time to view the stunning roof). In my mind there is only 1 city better than Edinburgh and that’s New York). The cheapest ticket is £53, and you have to book months in advance. Trainline offers a seat at £44.90 (If booked well in advance). The next tariff is £76 so let’s look at that one. We’ll say our imaginary rail company, we’ll call it Barraclough Rail after our leader here. So, Barraclough Rail have sold 10 tickets at £76 each. That’s a total of £760 income, then Lumo turn up and offer you a ticket for £48.90 they would have to sell 15.5 seats to get their £760 but coaches hold 52 passengers so if you sell them all you will receive £2542.80!
Now then, I’m being very brave here and demonstrating my (complete lack of skill) to you all. So be kind when you look at the next set of photos.
This first photo is of my board after I had laid track-since then I’ve made a few tweaks. Those of you will spot the middle track at the bottom of the photo is too close to the outer and inner ovals. But I sorted that by elevating the central track and that stopped my trains colliding. So that elevated track leads to a platform just behind what was to be the 4-road terminus on the centre of the board.
Then I had the bright idea of adding a piece of board to widen the layout. Conveniently it meant I couldn’t get to that exercise bike! This gave me room to add the TMD to the track on the left. A further extension gave me room to add more track adn a container base.
On the right you can see the station building. And then I added another board to lengthen the extension. On the right you can see elevated platform which is now Platform 5 of Harrison City station. The black thing is made up by2 pieces of foam cushion that comes with new trains. That idea didn’t work so I disposed of it and replaced it with Hornby platform and roofs. I also started to add some scenery (made Sculptmode).
This extension gave me room to add the track and container base. You may also see that somebody (Harrison) has added some prehistoric animals with (worryingly) a dead woman on the platform ramp. To support the platform, I used 2 Acrylic clear panels. They are supported by cut down Glue gun tubes.
As the snow melts the track design got quite complicated for the container port (yellow gantry can almost be seen at the bottom of the photo.) Thankfully I was able to use Anyrail6 to design the track on my laptop. Try to ignore the tank threatening the Class68 as it makes its way toward the container port. (Thanks Harrison). The other loco on its way out is Class 67 The Queen’s Messenger. The extra width allowed me to fit a reception building and checkpoint. A new signal box is to be fitted on the left near the front of the 68.
I love my JustPlug lights which are fixed inside the TMD. To the right of the shed you can see what will become a fuel facility. You can also see the prehistoric monster on the platform ramp which has already had one kill. (Thanks Harrison)
I hope you agree that I’ve been rather brave sharing these photos and ideas because now we have some more photos from Sean Selley-West which are much better than anything I’ve done. I received sack loads of mails begging for more Sean stuff. And I have received many requests for more of his photos and, also, from a Phil Marchington an offer of marriage (your lucky day Sean!). Here’s some more of Sean’s latest gallery which begins with him showing off that he’s also very talented building ships.
Isn’t that beautiful!
Sean’s contact details are:
sean_selleywest.54@hotmail. com
His own Facebook group is:
Railway Layouts and Trams
And of course you can often see his work on:
Model Railway Enthusiasts
Sean is very happy to help other enthusiasts and advise anybody who needs it. Don’t be shy. He understands that we’re not all as good as him. He has regularly helped me.
I have to say I love how Sean takes close-ups of scenes rather than a huge photo of a layout. So bearing in mind his influence I’ve tried to copy that style and here it is. Be kind. I’ve already seen some things that need to be changed.
This scene shows the snow is melting as an Emperor Stag (white antlers) leads his family to the safety of the high mountains while 2 Highland Rail locos rumble through the tunnel passing the Standing Stones of Clava near Culloden battlefield.
The Stones (Clava, not Rolling) are from the Bronze Age so date back to 3300 BC. Being helpful again that means they are well over 5000 years old. Maybe I do mean the Rolling variety! The Stones stand very close to the famous Culloden viaduct. In fact, many locals have started calling it “Clava Viaduct” and it’s always worth a photo.
I’ll save you some time. The answer is 39. The area is well worth a visit if you’re ever up there. It has a very strange, eerie atmosphere and you will not hear any birds singing near the battlefield.
I was born about 5 miles away from the battlefield. No birds sung there either!
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The views and opinions expressed within the content are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Trackside Signs or its affiliates.
