Re: 520 or 621

[ranger@camtech.net.au (bob green)]

"Grahame Ferguson" <grahamef@users.mcmedia.com.au> wrote:

>
>Jo & Paul wrote in message <36d864e9@dnews.tpgi.com.au>...
>>There seems to be a little bit of a debate as to which steamranger
>>loco to put back in service first.
>>Some people would like 520 as they feel the general public relate
>>520 with steamranger and they like to travel behind big power ?
>>It seems that the others would perfer 621 as she is a lot of peoples
>>favorate and also is cheaper to run to victor and back ?
>>What i would like to ask is if you had a choice of loco to travel to
>>Victor and back which loco would you perfer ?
>>
>>                                                 Thank you for you comments
>> P.S First time i have sent a thread please be gentle.
>>
>>
>>         Paul Curry
>>
>>
>    Have you ever thought of converting 520 to standard gauge.  I was told,
>and you may check this , that 520 was built able to be gauge convertable.
>    Since no SAR steam power can leave the confines of Victor Harbour, and
>travel in its own state, why not consider this a long term goal.
>    Was there ever any long term plan 10 or 20 years ago to convert some
>broad gauge rolling stock to standard gauge, even the diesels and some
>carriages maybe?  Who would have thought in 1979 that you could not take a
>steam tour in 1999 to Tailem Bend, Pinnarro, Loxton, Bordertown, Port
>Pirie,or Peterborough?  Here in Victoria we will go down the same path as
>South Australia if we do not plan for the next 10 to 20 years.
>    As far as coming to see 520 or 621, my preference is 520, however the
>general public will travel on anything as long as its steam, so 621 may be
>the best economical solution.  Its only us railfans who are discriminating.
>    But if you want to get a larger public ridership, you have to be able to
>get into Adelaide, and you can only do that with standard gauge rolling
>stock. You could again use the old Dry creek Steam Ranger depot as a base(if
>it is still there).  Can you run a standard gauge diesel hauled train to Mt
>Barker for passengers to change to the steam train??
>    My real preference is that I would rather travel to Adelaide, than
>Mt Barker or Goolwa to catch a steam train, and I think that may be the
>preference of tourists who might travel by Air(or train!) to Adelaide,
>unless they otherwise may be holidaying in Victor Harbour.
>    I do regularly visit the Port Dock Rail Museum as it is easy to get to
>from the Adelaide CBD, (especially when you have a family of young children
>who hate sitting in a hot car for more than 30 minutes), but I have only
>been once to Victor Harbour.  The same goes for some of my fellow Victorian
>railfans when they come to South Australia.
>    I am afraid that my choice is that I would rather travel to Adelaide
>than Victor Harbour to catch a steam train, no matter what the class of
>loco.
>
>
>
>
Good to see some discussion on South Australian preserved railways in
this newsgroup.  Thanks Paul for raising the issue, which is of
interest to many SteamRanger volunteers and the general railway
community

Personally I would vote for 621 for much the same reason as David
Bromage. It surely must be the cheaper loco to run and has a load
penalty of  only about 20% over 520 - and how often are we likely to
see patronage demonstrated by some of the massive trains of double
headed ARHS tours to Victor that ran in the 1980s?

Sure the public call the single loco 520 "The SteamRanger" and this is
a marketing problem SteamRanger has been trying to address.   At one
time they used the terminology "The Victor Harbor Tourist Railway" but
I gather this was seen as being too tightly tied the Victor rather
than the whole region.  If 621 was reinstated and run with the
"SteamRanger" headboard the public would probably soon become less
wedded to travelling with 520.  In fact, the novelty of a "new" engine
might be a marketing "plus" 

Just as an aside, I understand that surveys conducted by and for
SteamRanger  have shown that having steam "up front" is not a top
priority for a lot of travellers.  For two years now SteamRanger has
run Cockle Trains with a diesel on off peak Sundays and the patronage
has been very encoraging.  From what I have seen of the sucess of
diesel hauled trips interstate, a similar attitude seems to apply.

And just to address a couple of Grahame's points, 

1.  The idea of a connecting standard gauge train from Keswick, was, I
understand, looked at seriously when the service was initially
truncated.  The cost of such a guaranteed train would have added $20
or more to the fare.  The likely patronage was not seen as high, based
to a great extent on Adelaide's continuing north-south sprawl and the
communities' love affair with the car.  A lot of people can drive to
Mt Barker more easily and quicker than getting to Keswick (eg the
massive suburbs south of Darlington)  Even from central Adelaide the
travel time to Mt Barker is under 30mins, and will be less when the
new tunnel opens.

2.   There is a Trans Adelaide bus connection  to Mt Barker, albeit
not very good, and just this year a bus connection has been arranged
to connect with the Cockle Train on the south coast. 

3.    Of course the itinerant railfan is one of the  passengers to be
considered, and from experience interstate and overseas, I can
certainly empathise with such "foregotten clients"  SteamRanger would
certainly like to be in Puffing Billy's situation with urban transit
at their front door, but  my observation is that very few PB
passengers actually come with the MET. Or is that not true?

4.    With today's break up of passenger carriers, who would have
rolling stock to provide the Mt Barker SG rail connection?  Can't see
GSR being interested,

5.  It seems to me that the operation of standard gauge trains by
SteamRanger is certainly not an option in the short term, either in
terms of manpower resources or finance.  And the manning of trains on
the mainline by volunteers is a whole new subject.  SteamRanger runs
periodically on the Mt B Junction to Mt Barker section, and I assume
gauge conversion is primarily one of resource priorities.

Thanks again Paul for starting this thread up.  I vote for 621.

What do others think, particularly anyone who feels he/she represents
the "general public"

Bob Green