Modern traction, stuff like Sprinters, Pacers, Voyagers. In future will people want to preserve them

That smart mouth of yours will get you into trouble. Count yourself lucky I live on the other side of the world....

 

Over time it will happen naturally in any case.

 

Actually, probably all of them - I know some on here are obsessed with steam locomotives, even to the exclusion of the rolling stock they hauled and the 'steam-era' stations and lineside they ran through, other than perhaps as 'props' to make the photographs look 'authentic' (and then often the stock is so incorrect for a true recreation that you have wonder......) Of course, individual motives for becoming volunteers may differ but you seem to be asking about the motives of the founders and what they were aiming for may well be different from what the organisations they funded are looking for now!

To the best of my knowledge, almost all lines were set up to preserved the line and many had (almost always unwise) aspirations to run a community service, with the KWVR, NNR and NYMR all having diesel railcars in their fleets from the off.

Steven

 

Those who gleefully suggest cutting up other peoples' 'pride and joy' should consider how they would feel if a favourite of theirs or something they had (perhaps in the past) spent many hours restoring was being left to rot (know the feeling!) or threatened with scrapping.

Scrapping all the newer stuff won't bring back the beloved things it replaced!

A preserved railway is exactly that, not just a collection of steam locos. It can and probably should 'tell a story' (certainly if it claims to be educational or wants external funding) and hence should show and use a selection of stock. Many of its visitors will be too young to be nostalgic about steam, but will have their own 'items of nostalgia' that 'takes them back'. Steam will always have a major attraction, but even non-enthusiasts will recall 'the trains of their youth', even if it will take a few years of juts 'modern plastic' for them to realise it!

Steven

 

Good points about preservation of the lines, many of the early heritage railway schemes were to keep a service which Beeching had axed.

 

Pretty sure when I first visited the NNR back in, probably 1980 it was mostly running a W&M railbus.

 

Think you could well be right there, look at how many ex GW loco's have dissapeared and donated parts etc in the last 5 years, certainly more than what's left of the EE type 4 D400 fleet.

 

And an 8F too.

 

Haven't most of the ex-GWR locos disappeared into 'flights of fancy'. i.e. to recreate locos that didn't survive?

The ex-Doncaster 8F is a real shame.

 

Is a railway wanted to run a regular commuter service, I see no reason in running it with a 158 etc...

Costs would be less, and I am sure it would not affect those using it, in many ways they could open up new markets to preservation lines..

Running onto NR metals would not be so much of any issue, paths and FTR's excepted.

 

Clearly nobody would scrap somebody else's very presentable pride & joy - but when the same object becomes derelict through lack of interest/resources etc decisions have to be taken as has been discussed frequently on here in the context of the "linear scrap yard". Elsewhere on this forum folk have been demonstrating the huge numbers of surviving locomotives of all flavours in the UK, a massive future commitment for future generations. Others, usually from their armchair, are advocating building still more to add to these totals. Is it likely that every one of these items can be safely and presentably kept indefinitely?

 

I'm not really sure that simply recalling the items of their visitor's youth is actually why heritage attractions flourish (or indeed, in some cases fail to flourish).

Consider one of the most successful "products" common across both heritage railways and to a degree non-railway heritage attractions: the "wartime weekend". To have some kind of memory of the Second World War, you pretty much have to be over 80. To have an actual memory of service during that conflict, you'd have to be about 90 or older. It's pretty obvious that the vast majority of visitors to such events are nowhere near those ages. Which suggests to me, whatever the reasons are for people visiting such things, it isn't about nostalgia for their own lived experience from their younger days. Were that to be true, one would assume that "wartime weekends" by now would be trading heavily on the Cold War. They aren't - such events remain rare, while World War Two events continue to flourish even as the number of people who experienced that conflict start to become vanishingly rare.

That suggests two things to me. The first - positive - is that there seems no inherent reason why a heritage railway movement trading heavily on steam traction should not continue to flourish for decades to come, even beyond the point when anyone can remember steam in a non-preserved setting.

However, the negative - for modern traction aficionados at least - is that there is no inherent reason why modern traction will become popular simply on the basis of people recreating childhood memories. In other words, nostalgia alone won't be enough to make preserving such things viable: there has to be some other reason why members of the public would actually wish to spend significant money to ride on, or behind, such vehicles. I'm not saying it's not possible, just don't assume that it will inevitably occur.

I do get the sense that people form a kind of "remembered zeitgeist" about different eras, and are then selective in their nostalgia. So for example, there is a "memory" that railways were glamorous in the 1930s, and that meant steam trains - so steam trains are popular (even if in practice, most railways are recreating the 1950s far better than the 1930s). Fast forward to the 1960s, and "glamour" meant the swinging sixties, fast cars, Beatlemania and minis. So a "nostalgia" event based on the 1960s may well prove popular, but it probably won't be centred round railways. Likewise, I strongly suspect that whatever nostalgia people of my age have for the 1970s - 1990s and wish to recreate, for the vast majority it won't involve DMUs with sliding doors. Put bluntly, if one weekend I have a hankering to relive the 1930s, I may well visit a preserved railway; but if I wish to relive the 1990s, I'm far more likely to want to go and watch a band than take a ride in a Pacer.

Tom

 

Not that many but including 4942,7927,4115,2861 I might have missed a couple but nowhere near your cl 50 survivor number.

 

You are spoilt, we dream of seeing something like a 158 round the coast up here (not sure if they would fit??)

Frankly if you want to see a 1970's-80's heritage railway in action can I recommend a trip to the Cumbrian Coast, we have class 37 hauled passenger trains, Pacers, crappy 153's and the height of luxury a 156 occasionally. Never fear those horrible modern 185's will be off soon so you can wallow in 80's glamour!

 

Only if your target clientele was limited to those under about 5'6" tall.

I am 6'3" and cannot fit my legs between the seats, they make Pacers feel spacious!

 

Crikey, not wanting to make this a point scoring exercise but look at this http://www.railuk.info/diesel/loco_search.php 50040 was the last of the lot to be cut up and that was in 2008, you've just listed 4 more GW loco's that have dissapeared than D400's in the last 5 years.

 

I have always loved this railcar, or the swedish class Y6 and Y7 -series as it`s classified. With it`s caracteristic orange colour you certainly catch sight of!

These class remain very popular in Sweden an delivered in both standard gauge and narrow gauge railcars and even the electric version Y8.
Some of the class were in the 80`s (I believe) sold to Denmark, Norway and Finland and used in service there.

regards
Knut

 

Hi Knut,

thanks for filling in the details of the railcar's class It is a very unusual unit, due to its low height it looks incredibly wide by comparison. The owner has now bought a trailer car to go behind it and I am looking forward to seeing it in service. The owner is a great guy to talk to, very personable

Amusingly, there are 'translations' of Peterborough and Yarwell Crossing in the destination boards.

 

All though to be reincarnated in one form or another.............

 

Thanks - I took the pic - but - I never realised!

Steve