Swanage Railway General Discussion

I can't comprend how you need to spend £50k in order to 'assess' an engine for overhaul. A competent engineer and boilersmith should be able to give a report as to what needs doing after an examination.

 

That does not mean that SR "is not keen"....

 

This is an NRM loco, who knows what level of stripping down the Science Museum would expect before committing to spend taxpayers money on an overhaul.
I have no knowledge of the rates at the Flour Mill but I have not purchased such a thing as a report since 2012 when I retired , but it did not flag up with me as an excessive amount when I first read it.
Assuming £5k has already been spent on transport it is probably about 10 man weeks. Without knowing the details of strip down level I could not comment further.
But then my background was aviation procurement where there is no such thing as "cheap".

 

But surely a competent engineer and boilersmith will command a premium on their time? I've heard a £50k figure for assessing an engine for overhaul quoted elsewhere so it doesn't strike me as particularly excessive. Especially as this is of a locomotive type which is more elderly and not particularly common which may increase cost due to complexity and / or lack of familiarity

 

It’s unique, but there are many unique locos of comparable age and complexity!

I guess there is £10k of transport before you even start …

The key questions for me would be:

• How much stripping down does the NRM (and indeed Swanage) want to engage in to get the best estimate? The less you do, the more uncertain your estimate will be
• Does the NRM require some level of ring-fenced cash to guarantee that if the decision is not to proceed with an overhaul, the loco will nonetheless be reassembled and refurbished to a museum-presentable state? I’m sure we can all point to locos that were stripped with best intentions, then an overhaul didn’t happen (perhaps because an expensive issue was found) and then the loco deteriorated.

Two big unknowns for me would be the state of the firebox between the frames - which would require a boiler lift to assess; and the state of the cylinder castings and valve faces - which potentially involves dropping out the cylinders. If you get that far in stripping it, you have a fairly substantial bill to reassemble things if the decision is “no”. If you don’t do those two things, you have a material uncertainty in your estimate.

Tom

 

Surely no taxpayers money is involved. Any overhaul would be fully funded by the Swanage Railway and it’s supporters.

 

Are the NRM not putting any money in to it then?
What would that make the legal position if ownership is not changed. Could the NRM just move it elsewhere.

 

There will be a legal agreement put in place saying the SR can overhaul it, and have use of it for X number of years. So the NRM won’t be able to simply move it elsewhere, unless there is a serious breach of the terms of the agreement by the SR.

 

The NRM won’t be putting any money into the T9 overhaul it’s up to the 563 loco group.
The £50k assessment is broken down into a number of packages including reassesmbley should that be necessary, if it’s not, which we don’t think it will be, money from the initial £50k will go towards the actual overhaul work.
A proportion of it has already been raised and spent on transport and initial fittings strip at Swanage.
What the 563 loco group will not do is paint a picture that is rosey and cheap.
This is exactly the same (successful) and sensible approach to fundraising as was undertaken with 563 and look how that turned out.
So perhaps you might think it sounds a lot and it is, but it would be better to be honest about these things than quote a figure that is wildly optimistic and then comes back to bite us.
We have learned from that, when we started the 563 project, we shot from the hip early on and quoted £350k, it turned out to be nearly £700k. You have to be realistic, this is a niche industry with expensive trades.

Support from enthusiasts keen to see 120 will be absolutely vital. We know the leg work we need to do to keep the overhaul going, but to do that we must keep supporters, both new and existing confident that we can deliver again, as with 563. That way the life blood of cash will keep flowing and that is the key to any overhaul. You do that by being honest.

So I encourage all reading this to go to the group page and chuck a donation in or sign up to a regular payment or even just sign up to our mailing list.

 

And this from a railway that's asking for £450,000 to survive. Are the priorities correct?

 

Just because the railway is asking for money to survive, does not mean that a separate appeal cannot run alongside it.

Quite often people who give money to a locomotive appeal are not the same as those that give to a railway wide appeal and vice versa.

No money from the railway is being diverted into the T9 so they are completely separate.

 

I'd suggest two things:

1. A railway has to invest in its motive power to survive. Deferring that investment will lead to a motive power crisis in a few year's time. So a need for cash for the railway doesn't mean that investment in the future ability to operate a service must cease.
2. Different people will support appeals for different things. An appeal for the T9 may unlock donors not minded to give to the main appeal - and vice versa.

If you are going to run an appeal to invest in motive power, of the locos available to Swanage I'd suggest the T9 is easier to enthuse people about than the alternatives.

Tom

 

Good Luck with this new venture Josh - a new dawn for the T9. Which reminds me of......

Apologies if I have over cooked it with my limited photoshop skills but it seems an appropriate picture to share at this moment in time. Taken at the start of a November 2015 photo charter.

Peter

 

The distinction between the railway generally fundraising and the 563 locomotive group doing it for 120 is deliberate.
It’s an easy shot to say when the railway is fundraising for this, it shouldn’t be fundraising for that, but the reality is, all heritage railways do this and it’s not something that is unique to Swanage.

 

Perhaps we can have an update on the fundraising for the restoration of the 2 Moguls 31874 and 31625?

The reality is that significant sums of money have been spent hiring 2 out of service locos (which require expensive restorations) for the best part of 9+ years.

 

Indeed, perhaps not the best deal the SR ever made. After the unforeseen arrivals of 120 and then 563, the railway seems to have lost interest in the moguls. It would be good to get an update of what the plans actually are. Especially 31874 where a lot of work went into overhauling the chassis, but it has now sat for years waiting for a boiler.

 

Won’t they be part of the SRC?

 

As part of their recovery plans the railway is putting class 08 D3591 up for sale. This is the locomotive that was used to reconstruct most of the line in the 1980s and 1990s. Given its history, a group has been formed to try and raise money to purchase it and keep it at the railway.

 

The locos don’t belong to the SRC

 

The 563 Locomotive Group have nothing to do with the Moguls and are a subgroup of the SRT .
The Moguls are SRC managed and run so I suppose direct your questions regarding the moguls to them via the usual channels. The railway is running regular online and open forums for volunteers, staff and members so perhaps log on to that and direct your questions to the trustees and directors.