FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1967
1967 - 1163.PDF
FLIGHT International supplement, 20 April 1967 Air-Cushion Vehicles SEASPEED'S SECOND ROUTE Rail/ACV Integration at Portsmouth TEN TIMES DAILY, a 35-seat British Rail SR.N6 plies back and forth between a motorised pontoon at Portsmouth Harbour station and the main British Rail Hovercraft terminal at Cowes. The same service is operated four times daily on Sundays; scheduled time over the 12 n.m. route is 20min, though on route-proving runs and the first few weeks of public operation an actual average of about 18min has been set. The single adult fare is 15s. The service was opened on March 23 and becomes the second service under the emblem of Seaspeed (BRH's operating name)—the first, of course, being that opened last July between Southampton and Cowes. The addition of the Portsmouth-Cowes link has been planned for some months, but the start was delayed by the lack of suitable terminal sites in Portsmouth. This has been overcome by the con- struction of a pontoon which is normally moored against the Harbour Station quay and against which the N6s run bow on, lower their ramps and embark or unload passengers. But it was not quite as simple as it sounds, for the actual berth occupied by the pontoon is frequently required by the conventional British Rail ferry ships plying across the Solent to Ryde. Accordingly, the pontoon is motorised and is thus able to propel itself away from the berth, stand off in the harbour while its place is occupied, and then slip back into place for the next ACV service. The cost of this let-out from the site problem was about £8,000; self-propulsion com- prises a 50 h.p. diesel engine driving a Schottel propeller unit dangling beneath the raft and rotating through 360° for control. On a busy summer Saturday, it is envisaged, the pontoon will have to make the move every hour. At first sight, therefore, the Ports- mouth end of the new route is the antithesis of what ACV operations should be, though it did enable BRH, in launching the service, to make the undisputed but completely valueless claim to be running the first ACV service anywhere to use conventional docking facilities. Much of the economic promise of hovercraft rests uPon their not requiring docks or Pontoons and, least of all, expensive motorised pontoons. Under the Particular circumstances obtaining at Portsmouth, it is perhaps understand- able that Seaspeed has involved itself 49 in such complication, but the company should certainly not be permitted to proclaim it as a virtue. The real virtues of operating the Portsmouth- Cowes link lie in the fact that it will allow the company to integrate its services closely with train services, which terminate and originate only a few yards from the pontoon. The route provides a classic study on the traffic generating properties of ACVs. For there was, until the service began, no direct cross-Solent service between the two towns; Portsmouth has traditionally been linked to Ryde and Cowes to Southampton by the conventional ferries. A journey from Portsmouth (which is more quickly reached from London than Southampton) to the north of the island has involved a road or rail journey from Ryde after the boat trip. Now the new route brings Cowes within a simple two-part, two-hour journey from London. Whether a sub- stantially new travelling pattern emerges from the inauguration of the new route will be closely watched by Seaspeed, which is so confident that it will that it is predicting the annual carriage of 100,000 passengers on each of the two routes the company now operates. If this confidence is justi- fied, and the figures achieved, one can expect the conventional ferry operators—British Rail itself, and the Isle of Wight Steamship Company—to feel the pinch. By April 10 Seaspeed had carried 67,600 passengers since its operations began on July 6 last year. Started essentially as a learning operation in preparation for N4 ser- vices next year, the Solent routes are certainly no short-term time filler to be wound up when other preoccupa- tions come along. Seaspeed general manager Charles Brindle emphasises that the company intends staying on these routes for good and, in this context, regards with interest Hover- marine's projected 125-ton HM.4 mixed-traffic sidewall hovercraft (see last month's Air-Cushion Vehicles, page 31). The small speed penalty implicit in this craft will mean little on such short routes as the Solent, while the economics will be greatly improved over those of the present small amphibians. But Seaspeed also regards BHC's BH-7 amphibian as another promising mixed-traffic craft for the Solent. The staff of Seaspeed has recently increased, after the company ran for months with what was claimed to be the smallest staff in the business, in preparation for the N4 build-up. It now employs 35. The company is running a heavy training programme, with the intention that every N4 captain shall have l,000hr experience of N6 driving before he even begins conversion training. "The staff are very, very confident indeed about the commercial future of hovercraft," says Mr Brindle, "and we are laying down a career pattern of the type to attract young men." How long this enthusiasm, so mani- fest at Cowes, will continue in the light of a detectable lack of en- thusiasm at BRB headquarters remains to be seen. The ACV company is studying the possibilities of starting operations in the early future in other British locations—notably the Humber Estuary, the Bristol Channel, perhaps the Irish Sea—while it is also thinking One of Seaspeed's two SR.N6 nosed into the motorised pontoon against the Portsmouth Harbour quay. The Portsmouth-Cowes route is expected to offer 100,000 passengers a year
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
