Swanage Railway General Discussion

41313 was quite an early departure (mid-1975, in the first 70 or so the leave) so I would take that story with a large pinch of salt, although admittedly most of the smaller LMS engines (along with the better examples of the smaller GWR and BR locos had also gone by then, showing that, contrary to your pronouncements, preservationists picked the locos better to heritage lines first, on the whole. The bigger, Class 4+ engines, mostly left in a second wave from the mid 70s to early 80s

I think its more likely by then that Dai Woodham had changed his policy on spares by then, realising that the locos were more valuable as whole entities rather than as a source of spares. But your theory suits your prejudice, so feel free to run with it, just don't expect the rest of us to accept it

 

I did say "the story goes" and they are my opinions rather than merely my prejudices.

PH

 

Some years ago I did a plot looking at that very issue, from which it was demonstrably clear that the small locos went earliest, followed by the medium locos, and the large locos went last. So far from confirming a predilection for “big chufferitis” amongst early preservationists, the evidence is precisely the opposite.

Tom

 

first two out were class 4 43924 nd U class 31618 class 5p/4F I think.

The liust of the first seventy included many large locos including aabout three Castles and a King so I don't think that theory holds water.

 

The link below shows to arrive and departure dates of locos from Barry. Looking at the list some of the larger locos departed early. For example some of the Bulleids left early 70s.

http://www.railuk.info/steam/barry_search.php

 

I see on UK Steam, 31806 is booked to pilot* 34046 from Yeovil Pen Mill to Weymouth and then Swanage on April 26, on the Great Britain. Does that mean it is already main line ticketed or, soon will be or, the info is wrong?

* Could be banking over Evershot,

 

Last I heard 31806 has all the necessary mainline equipment fitted, and it just awaiting main line tests before being certified.

So yes, quite conceivable that it has a mainline tour booked in April.

 

A very interesting link which when sorted by departure date shows many large tender engines departing long before many smaller tanks. This may however only tell part of the story as it is likely that the departure order bears no resemblance to the order in which locos were reserved.

Are there any readily available lists which would demonstrate emergent lines reserving suitable locos or in reality was it all much more hit and miss with groups forming to extract their favourite types with little thought to their long term use.

Initially locos like Bodmin (22nd to leave) emerged to go to Quainton and I suspect many others left for locations where groups felt able to work on them with the harsh realities of obtaining income for initial and future overhauls then making many locos fairly nomadic after the initial purchase.

 

Could the condition of the locos have been an issue. Clearly a Bullied Pacific withdrawn in the last months of Southern Steam would have been a better bet than something smaller withdrawn several years before

 

i believe without checking that few of the last Bulleid survivors made it to Barry

useful list here http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/barryno1.htm

 

Bodmin and 76017 initialy went to Quainton proabbly because the MHR wasn't ready to accept them. 31874 went direct to Alresford and was restored there.

 

This is supported by the last 3 of the 28 Bullied pacifics in the list arriving in March 67 having all being shown as withdrawn in September 66.

 

This is the chart I referred to earlier.

It shows the progress of locos being bought from Barry, as a proportion of the total available, split into small (class 2 and below); medium (class 3 - 5) and large (class 6 and above).

What it shows quite clearly is that the early preservation groups quite actively sought out smaller locomotives while they were available, and it was only later that the larger locomotives were saved.

So starting in 1968, it took 5 years to save half of all the small locos at Barry; about 9 or 10 years to save half the medium locos, and about 12 or 13 years to save half the big locos.

Which would seem to indicate to me that far from demonstrating a preference for big locos, the evidence shows that the 1970s and 1980s preservationists focused on buying the smaller locomotives, and only moved onto the bigger ones when most of the good smaller stuff had already gone. (Many groups were also collecting industrial locos at that times as well, but they also tend towards being smaller).

The key point, though, is to remember that this is based on what was available at the time. In real numbers (rather than relative percentages) more of the Barry survivors were medium and large, so more entered into preservation - that simply reflected which locos were still being operated by BR into the 1960s. But given what was available, the preference was to rescue the smaller locomotives first. Sadly, any railway that wanted the pick of the crop of small pre-grouping locos, for example, really needed to be collecting in the late 1940s / early 1950s at the latest - about ten years before even the earliest standard gauge preserved lines got up and running.




Tom

 

I think it did depend on cash the intended owners had and condition of the engines. Swanage went for 80078 and not one of the two former Southern Region 4MT's because 80151 had already moved on and 80150's firebox had issues. By the end people brought what was left...

Having said that, according to one person I talked to once, the intention originally been to by the Bulleid 34105 'Swanage' for obvious reasons but someone else got there first...

 

Apart from the money angle I suspect groups went for small locos as the lines that were around to possibly run them not were not very long. Even the Bluebell went for small locos early on (which of course now gives them a lot of magnificent locos that are unlikely to go through an overhaul again as they are too small for the 2017 version of the railway).

 

Pretty much echoes the early list of escapees as I recall reading about developments back then. There always seemed to be strenuous efforts to rescue those locos which were 'rarities' at Barry. The ranks of Bulleid Pacifics and BR Standards represented unrealistic levels of input for so many of the early restoration groups.

Lest we forget, an all-party group of MP's paid a high profile visit to Woodham's in order to establish whether what remained stood any chance of restoration a few years before the final clearout .... and I well recall discussions ahead of this visit, with many convinced that what remained was already 'past it'.

Another factor easily overlooked was that, ahead of the final run-down of steam, most scrappage was carried out in-house by BR (a Brighton loco being scrapped at Ashford was noteworthy until the mid fifties) and in many cases, it was BR staff who instructed private yards on how to go about scrapping locomotives, simply because the scale of the operation was unprecedented and quite beyond the capacity of workshops which were then either earmarked for refitting or closure.

Dai Woodham (who still had a business to run) also had a large contract to scrap redundant freight stock, which was a damned sight easier to dismember than any loco, hence took priority.... so it's just as well Beeching axed wagon-load freight too, or there'd have been a lot less steam survivors.

If only the CIÉ and UTA had employed an Irish Dai Woodham ...... all those extinct Irish classes .....

...... and why the hell are we talking about this on the Swanage thread anyway?

 

Yep. Far more appropriate for an episode of myth-busters.

 

Quite agree about the Swanage thread, but as usual its a response to PH's pontifications on "biggerchufferitis" Tom's plot clearly show that this was not the case in the early days of Barry, but there is a skew in the data, because some medium/big locos were early targets because they were sole or rare examples e.g 42968, 53808, 7325, 71000, 61264, 34016, 73129, 7202) and Tysely and Didcot were stocking up their GWR collections across the range of sizes. On the other hand, the SVR bought a lot of locos in the smaller size range.

Having said all that, perhaps we could have a new thread : "Bigchufferitis - myth or Fact?" because I don't think it will be a subject that will go away!

 

A thread solely for PH to to have a never-ending argument with most of the rest of NatPres? Sounds like exactly the sort of thing I want to avoid!

 

We've had several already of those already; can you guess the result?...