Rolling Stock For Sale

Shouldn't the NRM act as presever of last resort? Or perhaps it is time to float the idea of such a body to preserve unique and important (few examples of any vehicles surviving from the company being a type of importance) vehicles that are currently not likely to be restored. A big shed, somewhere cheap and lottery funding

 

As a taxpayer, absolutely not. Otherwise they'd have people falling over themselves to offer them perhaps hundreds of vintage vehicles which ultimately we would all have to pay for storing indefinitely for the rest of our lives. Taking this suggestion to its extreme, perhaps government money (i.e. the taxpayer) should pay for every historic building, road vehicle, ship, pier or whatever else falls on hard times as well?

No, much as I want these vehicles to be saved, and restored, it absolutely has to be because enough people want to bang their heads and wallets together to make it happen.

 

No, the NRM was set up to be a museum which should (and to a large extent does) hold a representative collection, not act as a mathom house for every orphaned vehicle that still sort of survives.

In terms of telling the story of a subject (architectural history is also subject to this), I get very suspicious of "this is the last of one of these", without being clear about why "this" is significant and generally historically interesting. I find it depressing that the GCR is displacing stock that is part of the core history of the GC, but I regard that as fundamentally about the GC. If someone can explain to me why the destruction of one of these vehicles is not only a loss (taken as given), but actually harms the ability to tell the story of how Britain's railways developed, then my view might soften.

 

Although it is now about twenty years old, this paper on carriage significance is worth reading, as it was drawn up with the explicit purpose of trying to define, for the benefit of funding bodies such as the lottery, which unrestored carriages were significant. Clearly then, and perhaps even more so now, we are in an era of limited resources from such bodies, so they cannot fund everything, and therefore need criteria to work out what is more deserving.

https://www.rhrp.org.uk/FrontEnd/papers/significance.htm

There is an associated table giving the scores obtained from a sample of around 38 carriages. You will see on that scoring, the "Barnums" failed on two of the three criteria for being worthy of funding: they did not meet the threshold score of 25, and didn't score a 10 in at least one category:

https://www.rhrp.org.uk/FrontEnd/papers/signifscoretable.htm

Clearly perceptions of importance can change over time, but at face value, what this is saying is that there are more deserving candidates for public funds. Which is not to say I'd wish to see them scrapped - far from it - but any attempt at rescue needs to come from within our own ranks as enthusiasts (and more particularly you feel, from aficionados of the GCR).

Tom

 

I hear what you say...I just think that we will regret scrapping things like this for the sake of a few quid

 

Absolutely. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to put my name on a scrapping order for something like this. Or the Barnums.

 

Suburban coaches are very thin on the ground in terms of representation so I feel this one is worthier than most of saving. I hope someone, somewhere, agrees with me!

 

While many of us would share your regret, I think “a few quid” is vastly underestimating the true costs of storing loads of decrepit carriages/carriage bodies.

 

I am sure you're right, I suppose I look at the National Tramway Museum's Clay Cross storage facility, or the large number of private preserved buses kept in hangers and think that surely the same could be done for carriages, but it is easy to say when I am ignorant of the challenges involved

 

The challenge I think is that the heritage railway movement has by and large focussed on building and operating railways. The choice has usually been to build an extension rather than put things under cover. Often the buildings that are put up for storage are used for the in service equipment, which in many ways especially with Mk1s needs that cover less than the out of service/awaiting repair/ restoration. It’s all been a question of priorities, but it must also be understood that the land required for a carriage shed is considerable if it is to be rail connected and many heritage railways are thin strips of land without the space, building a practical carriage shed would for many require land acquisition which is insanely expensive and seldom high on the priority list other than for an extension which has usually at least a fig leaf of justification through the (often sadly misplaced) expectation of increased traffic.

 

The bottom line is that someone has to pay.

The Isle of Wight has a number of carriage bodies stored under cover in an off-site location, so it can be done. But that is the context of a railway that has a superb track record of restoring previously derelict carriages, with workshop facilities and skills to do so; so the off site bodies are clearly in the situation of being stored waiting for a restoration that will come - even if some years in the future. In other words there is a strategy, even if that strategy may take decades to get round to some of them. But if you don't have access to a workshop - or the funds to send them to a commercial workshop - what is the plan? Storage isn't an end in itself, it is a mechanism for conserving vehicles until you have the means to overhaul them properly.

Tom

 

Hello,
It appears that all railway vehicles on the 'list' have been allocated. I have managed to get a copy of the application form for the vehicles disposal. I can upload if required.
I know of two locations and three vehicles allocated. Do not know regarding the rest where they have gone. I would like to know where the GWR wagons/crane went.

thanks

Nick

 

As an example the 2 Mersey Rail Electrics stored in a hanger near Burscough surrounded by Buses.

 

What is interesting about that table is that carriages are all scored as individuals. Not relevant to the two specifically under discussion, but that raises some interesting questions about the assessment of value when a group is involved - something that the scoring method explicitly doesn't consider.

 

This is something which I think is critical to understand. It is great if some decrepit rolling stock can be stored somewhere free of charge. But if you're having to pay for storage, that's eating up funds that could be spent on progressing the restoration. Funds which are apparently hard to come by if the argument that 'carriages are the Cinderella of railway preservation' is true. It makes for a situation with remarkable parallels to the plight of the SS United States in recent years.

So getting to the point I'm trying to make, any rolling stock restoration project has to be able to bring in enough funding to cover both storage and restoration (ideally, restoration at such a pace that supporters can see visible and ongoing progress, as opposed to 'this is where we were last year, and this year - snap'). How do you manage that? - a website and social media presence frankly feels just a bit wanting, perhaps you take a leaf out of what some house restorers do and document the whole thing on Youtube as well and try to get people interested and invested that way, assuming of course you can keep the pace up to justify a regular upload schedule.

 

Voul

Couldn't agree more. The Cinderrella, yet the thcoach which everyone ultimately rides to the ball in.

 

And as my wife often comments it isnt a nice ride to the ball........

There is a much wider issue around coaches in terms of the impact it has on the customers - there is one railway whose coaches even tend to put me off!

 

Except that it explicitly does exactly that!
"f. That they form part of an established series or part of an assemblage that is being collected by a recognised institution".

I used this methodology and scoring system to assess the Bluebell carriage fleet when we were writing the Heritage Lottery Fund (as it then was) application for funding for the Sheffield Park Carriage Shed.
Richard

 

Noted, but I struggled to apply that to the Barnums, for example.