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Heritage Railway Opinion - 28 October 2011

Not only are passenger numbers holding steady but in some cases are hitting new highs, as the cost of holidaying abroad hits home and the staycation effect kicks in.

In the ‘outside’ world, bankers are increasingly being seen as villains, whose actions largely contributed to the mess we are in. However, two leading figures in the financial sector must be applauded for their personal contribution to railway preservation.

The Bodmin & Wenford Railway is one of those lines that has set new records this season, and much of its growth is down to benefactor Alan Moore, a retired senior London banker.

Elsewhere, asset management company supremo Jeremy Hosking is again planning to input his personal wealth to maximum effect in the steam department.

Already Britain’s biggest private individual owner of a fleet of main line steam locomotive types since Dai Woodham, he is now bidding to buy Severn Valley Railway-based BR Standard 4MT 2-6-4T No. 80079, and return it to running order, not only for extensive use on that line but also on the national network again.

If not for his intervention, this superb performer – which I vividly recall from the hectic days in early 1999 when I launched Heritage Railway, and my wife and I followed its exploits on the Severn and Thornbury branches to obtain some of our first pictures on the way back from the West Somerset Railway spring gala – would remain stuffed and mounted for an indeterminate future.

It now seems unbelievable that it has been out of action for nine years. The owning group, recognising the fact that it is unlikely to be in a position to raise the necessary money for its overhaul, has recommended its sale to Jeremy, with the money raised going towards the restoration of another locomotive. It seems a win-win situation: two more operational engines on the Valley and another addition to Britain’s main line steam fleet.

However, it highlights the predicament faced by many groups who, in the days when their members were much younger, pulled out all the stops over many years to return locomotives to steam. In some cases decades on, they are now finding a repeat performance too big an ask, and with railway finances always tight, especially in view of today’s soaring overheads, there are becoming fewer cases where their locomotives have an operational future without outside help from the Heritage Lottery Fund or wealthy private individuals.

Jeremy was the other major bidder in the race to buy Flying Scotsman in 2004, and lost out narrowly to the National Railway Museum which paid £2.31 million for it. Had he bought it, Scotsman may well have been midway through its latest boiler ticket and running on the main line.

On one hand, NRM director Steve Davies must be applauded for going public, warts and all, about the state of the A3, and ordering an inquiry into why its overhaul will hit an astonishing £2.6 million before it steams again

On the other hand, in view of the fact that the museum has over many years made much about the ‘people’s engine’ with schoolboys giving their pocket money and elderly supporters their pension to see it bought for the nation and restored, we should expect nothing less.

Some years ago, we reported on the restoration under contract of Dr John Kennedy’s GWR 4-6-0 No. 4953 Pitchford Hall, from Barry scrapyard condition, with lost parts having to be replaced and so on. It was said to have cost nearly £1 million, making it the most expensive Hall in history, yet this sum is less than half of the current bill for No. 4472. Another comparison shows that it cost £3 million to build an LNER Pacific, Tornado, from scratch.

In view of the public ownership and support for Flying Scotsman, we the shareholders deserve answers.

Robin Jones
Editor