A couple of weeks ago, I found myself doing guard duties. I don’t do it enough to be honest, so it’s good to keep one’s hand in. What always strikes me is how things ‘just happen’: the food was prepared and stacked in the buffet, the locomotive was ready and waiting for the (always a bit on the last minute) guard and the booking office was prepped and ready for business.
But things don’t just happen. The catering crew had been at work for a couple of hours preparing the food from ingredients that were selected and ordered in the week. The locomotive crew had been up early (they never sleep), looking after a complex ‘bomb on wheels’ that needs constant, careful attention and the booking office is, in truth, a hive of commercial activity. They’ll laugh at that statement but the phone sometimes never stops ringing, social media needs monitoring and responding-to and those bookings on the website need managing by somebody.
Sometimes things just don’t go right. I realised that almost precisely a year before something went very badly wrong. 80080 derailed coming off the loop at Duffield.
I remember it very well indeed. I had just arrived at Sheffield Park station on the Bluebell Railway. I was there with my son’s partner’s family and were all set for a lovely day on what must be the Number One heritage railway in the country. My phone rang and I was told the news. That sure changed the mood of the day.
Getting back the next day, once again I saw things ‘just happening’. What do you do? You have 80 tons of locomotive around 4 inches below where it should be and a couple of feet too far to the left. Unlike your train set, there’s no giant hand that comes down from on-high to pick it up.
Fortunately, we had friends in all the right places. East Midlands Railway have a rerailing team and – God bless them – they treated this as an exercise.
I was staggered. By the time I arrived, a whole team had assembled and work was well underway. Beams had been placed beneath the bufferbeams and hydraulic jacks were beginning to life the beached locomotive.
Coincidentally, as I write this on 10th September, yesterday we ran another Faulty Towers dining train. I say coincidentally because the day we came home last year after the derailment, I was a paying customer on that very service. I was feeling pretty bruised with what was going on but went anyway (didn’t want to let the team or our friends down) and had a hilarious time.
But there’s another connection here. Consider the situation: steam locomotive has derailed at the far end of the line, there is no way we can operate there but we have a booking worth several thousand pounds, plus a team to put the entertainment on. Cancel? No. Adapt? Yes.
We substituted with a diesel locomotive and ran only to Shottle. Net effect? Zero. Nobody noticed, the focus was on the entertainment and nobody left disappointed.
The same happened earlier this year when the landslip, also at Duffield, meant that we could, once again, not make it all the way into the station. So, again, we adapted and either top and tailed to a point just north of the skip or, eventually, terminated at Shottle. This cost us (that’ll be subject to another blog) but we adapted.
So to last night. It was a scorcher and Wirksworth was also extremely busy with it being the start of the 2023 Wirksworth Festival. The car park was full and in additional to regular passengers, we had Fox & Edwards running a fish & chip service and, of course the Faulty Towers event. Twice: once in the afternoon and again in the evening. But everything ‘just happened’. No need to intervention, another extremely smooth operation and for the evening service some improvisation by this catering crew. If you want a measure of how hot it was, Robin Williams could explain:
So what happened? The team improvised with wet towels!
Now, this isn’t ideal and it’s clear that we need more fans (air conditioned Mk.1s anybody?) but they guys just got on with it. You are all stars.
So, what’s the point of all this?
It comes back to a point I have made before: a heritage railway is not a simple length of railway line: it is a community made of like-minded people. Within that community, everybody plays a part and in a well-organised community people don’t need telling twice.
This form of community doesn’t happen overnight and it’s not been the work of one individual, far from it. This has been thirty years in the making and many people have helped form what has become a can do culture that shines through at the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway.
Long may it continue.
From the 54th Floor 
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