City of Wells for sale - now purchased by the ELR

It's a 2-8-2T, isn't it? 7229, if memory serves. One of the few classes yet to run in the preservation era.

 

Yes, 7229.

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That it took 12 years and £500k+ for ELR to put its Crab through a 10 yearly perhaps illustrates the sort of future liability that will need to be planned for in adding 34092 to the company fleet, the lifetime costs will inescapably be of greater magnitude.
In effect a usage fee "payable" to itself needs to be apportioned by the Company in lieu of hire charges. Hopefully revenues rise to meet the overheads too.
Again this is all purely rational and logical but I accept the chance to own such a machine is very hard to resist in such cold terms. There is always an opportunity cost, however, and other purchasing options will undoubtedly occur in the medium term so care needs to be taken with such a vital strategic decision. That said, it seems recent organisational changes have put ELR on a better footing for sustainable success.

 

Wasn't there a suggestion recently that something was finally happening with 7229 as she had been partially put back together (or at least boiler back in frames) and moved inside, with 2873 the last remaining of my lottery win engines...

 

7229 has been gifted, I think, to the ELR and is to be a restoration project within the newly equipped Company workshop, ironically enabled by the departue of one of 7229s previous owning partners.

 

Yes

 

City of Wells is , if extended, a locomotive I would emphatically like to travel behind on the main line.
It had a new Giesel ejector made as calculated for Fighter Command and Giesel came over in
person to the Worth Valley Railway. I would go well out of my normal way to do so.

 

Can anyone tell us how well the ELR are doing with their appeal to buy 34092?

 

According to the appeal page, they've raised about 50 grand

 

ELR sources advise plenty more going on behind the scenes, agreed timescales for payment all in order and progressing well, but would naturally welcome further contributions from whatever sources via ELR website.

 

Did anyone ever see an outcome of this? I must have missed any sort of confirmation or press release.

 

Not quite there yet, but good progress: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ch...nPage.action?charityCampaignUrl=ahomeforwells

Keith

 

Paging Alf Roberts....

 

Nonsense

 

I slightly like Sheff's suggestion of Dartmoor but I suspect that the National Park would take a dim view of re-opening the Redlake line, even though there was once an outstandingly scenic 3' gauge railway winding 8 miles to one of the most remote parts of the moor - only I would prefer to see it operated by little Kerr Stuart tanks rather than monstrous Garrett's.

 

34092 deal was concluded in 2018 and now owned by the ELR.

 

But with a lot of the cash to pay for it still to be raised, according to that Virgin Money page, unless that is badly out of date.

 

Unless of course, the actual price for the loco was less than the £340k being asked for in the appeal....

I think a lot of railway/loco groups do this - ask for a lot more than required and then you'll get what you need and if you're lucky maybe a little bit more...


Keith