P2 Locomotive Company and related matters

The name Braveheart was bestowed on 75014, by it's then owners whilst it was employed on Jacobite workings and not by the NYMR.

Sawdust.

 

I duly stand corrected! I'd go back and edit, but then that'd leave your quote orphaned and hide my error. Oh well!

 

It is a bit of an odd choice, come to think of it, since even people who really like the royal family think the current Prince of Wales is a bit of a herbert.

 

Also don`t forget Rails of Sheffield

Knut

 

I dunno, he did his bit on Bronington and has been an invaluable asset to the architecture business - can't have the Norman Fosters of this world getting it all their own way! Bring on the constitutional crisis...

 

Not necessarily, but their is another reason why it's an odd choice: all of the 'production' P2s had identifiably Scottish names, and the proper title for the heir to the throne of Scotland is not Prince of Wales but either Duke of Rothesay or Lord of the Isles.

 

I always thought that was a fantastic name - very poetic - but alas another loco (62005) already has it. :-(

Noel

 

Lord of the Isles was originally a K4 wasn't it? Or a pair of GWR 4-2-2s, depending on who you ask... Duke of Rothesay would tie in nicely with Thane of Fife IMO.

 

I have been told that the choice of PoW as a name opened doors for the trust on an international level.

Sawdust.

 

I kind of agree, although the chocolate-box architectural disaster area that is Poundbury does somewhat undercut this stance.

 

Some spectacle windows and more https://www.p2steam.com/category/news/

Knut

 

I'm not entirely sure that I didn't pay for one of those...?

 

It's a bit artificial, but it's still a million miles better than any other 20th century new town... his & Quinlan Terry's intervention in the Richmond riverside has been a great success...

 

Rothsay was actually supposed to be a Patriot. 5551 actually, but it was never named.

 

His Romanian interventions give a good sense of how reactionary he is. He exploits the fact that rural Romania is often very poor and will take any investment it can, so he invests but the caveat is that he gets to fulfill his pre-industrialisation fantasies where the peasants are deferent to their masters. He loves Romania because he can get away with behaving in a way that he could not in the uk. But then it is either him wanting to live out his feudal fantasies or Austrian logging companies raping the forests, or Canadian gold mines wanting to leave behind toxic lakes.

 

It`s a lots of pieces on this engine, easy to get things mixed up

 

This thread probably isn't the place for it, but if you'd care to enlighten me (I am wholly ignorant of this)...

 

I shall try to do this briefly.

His involvement with Romania goes back to the 1980s. During this period the Communist leadership were exploiting a severe earthquake (1977) to justify the demolition of a lot of old buildings and churches in Bucharest, along with a wider programme of ‘systematisation’ of villages which would mean the destruction of much of the countryside. Charles because of his interests in architecture spoke out and was rightly lauded for stopping a lot of destruction. As a result he was welcomed to Romania after 1989, an unusual experience for him to be welcome. There are a number of old manor houses that since 1918 and more since 1948 that had fallen into disrepair. Charles became involved in their restoration and the surrounding villages. He loves it because there are ‘proper peasants’ - ie self-sufficient farmers who engage in a very limited way with the market. He likes the fact people still use horses, cut hay by hand and are ‘organic’. He often appears on tv extolling the virtues of rural Romania - ie wild carpathia.

So far so good, what is wrong you might say with all of this. My issue is this - rural Romania faces massive issues. When you have grinding poverty, lack of running water, (i’m sorry but an outdoor privy is not a good thing) housing that it straight out of Weald and down, lack of doctors and teachers in the countryside, peasants unable to sell what surplus they do produce because the supermarkets won’t buy from small sellers and infrastructure is poor so hard to get to market. Restoring a Manor House isn’t really helping.

I feel that his efforts are not helping the Romanian countryside, he restores a Manor House for himself but what does he do for the village? Lauds their ‘traditional skills’, he doesn’t have to cut hay by hand, he likes a village he works with to look like how he thinks a village should look. So yay, he develops a vineyard, but not for the locals but for him. So yes there is investment but it all goes to making sure things look the way he wants them to look rather than necessarily serving the interests of the locals. His fantasies basically are designed to keep people where they are and to not allow them to get anything that might improve their lives from the modern world.

What then annoys me is when he is a hailed as a champion of rural Romania... promoting a very reactionary vision is not a good thing, and here is the thing, if he tried to demand or make people living in the uk live that way there would be a lot more backlash. Just because he invests in Romania doesn’t mean this investment is a good thing. I do know people who say, well at least he is investing, and this is true but I think his investments could be done in a way that is more beneficial to the locals.


as a side note if you ever go to the museum of country life in castlebar in Ireland, there are some amazing interviews with some old farmers carried out in the 1980s and they are asked what was the biggest change in the C20 and they all respond not with independence for Ireland etc, but ‘tractors and electricity’). These are the sort of things that Charles would rather Romanian peasants do without (except the communist state did manage to connect every village to the mains).

So some links - http://zalan.transylvaniancastle.com/

https://www.pure-romania.com/landmarks/prince-charles-romania/

If you do prince Charles Romanian in google more stuff will come up.

 

Interesting as it is, what's it to do with a 2-8-2 being built in Darlington?

 

I guess the neat bit about naming her PoW as opposed to say 'Prince Charles' etc is that PoW is a perpetual title (least-ways until the revolution) and so should ensure royal patronage in the longer term?