After the shock news of the terrible accident involving Snaefell 3 last week, we are pleased to report that the Snaefell Mountain Railway was able to re-open for business on Saturday 2nd April. This followed a closure lasting a few days following the incident to allow the necessary investigations to proceed undisturbed, after car 3 ran away from the summit terminus before derailing and rolling down a slope.
More surprising but pleasing news is that Ian Longworth, the Director of the Isle of Man’s railways, has stated that it is planned that car 3 will be rebuilt and returned to service. The parts of the tram have been gathered up and will be used to reconstruct the tram. Whether the ‘new’ car 3 will ultimately be viewed as a rebuild or replica remains to be seen, but at least it looks like the SMR will retain its full compliment of trams and can hopefully now look forward to another successful season and put this awful accident behind it.
Great, and surprising, news.
This is good news but it seems that the management of the Manx railways are very fond of replicas. Much more importantly have they ascertained what caused the accident, if only to prevent something similar occurring in the future.
Why how many are there? What is the alternative? Not have one? And if you had read any of the other reports you would know that it is still under investigation, or at least report not yet issued.
I’m not sure you can differentiate anyway. SMR 5 had a completely new 1971 body on its original under frame and some call it a 1971 replica. Car 1 reportedly had a complete body reframe in recent years yet is deemed an 1895 original! Same goes for car 7 v 22 on MER. By contrast Blackpool had a handful of trams mounted on new underframes, but with their original structure. Then there is Blackpool 733. Once a 1934 railcoach, in 1962 half of one saloon was removed and the rest incorporated in the loco. In its 2000s rebuild, the underframe was replaced with a new one, the half saloon was replaced with the 1935 one from 677 and the rest is all new. So how old is it? Original? Replica? Or just a tram we can all enjoy.
Kev,
Don’t get your panties in a twist, I was just making an observation about replica tram bodies, it wasn’t meant as criticism. I would like to know why the decision was taken to replace the bodies of Snaefell 1 and MER 7, both of which look rather artificial.
It’s very good news from Ian about the re-build and this is definitely the best option. A new tram would probably have to meet all sorts of crazy modern regulations, like having a triangle of white lights on the front etc, which would be totally out of keeping with the historic nature of the line and as a result would damage it’s image as a picturesque tourist attraction. However a re-build is not a new tram and I would be very surprised if a significant number of the original components of number 3 could not be re-used.
As I understand it, most of the damage was to the wooden bodywork, sustained as the car rolled over after derailing. From the photos the underframe and associated equipment seems to have survived quite well.
Regarding what happened, we will just have to wait for the findings of the report into the accident, which I hope will be made public as soon as possible to quash any silly rumors about these old cars being unsafe. It is worth noting that there have never been any fatalities as a result of any kind of accident on the Snaefell Mountain Railway. I’m not aware of any other public transport system of any kind that can claim this amazing record.
My personal educated guess at the cause of this accident would be human error. Surely any serious technical problems would have shown up long ago on a system using much of the same equipment for over a century.