7027 Thornbury Castle

Exactly you are bang on the money....

 

All of them and what especially makes me angry its being done under the auspices of the GWS who should know better....shame on them.....
Furthermore all this will only further promote would be donators to keep their cash in their pockets..... once bitten twice shy...

 

If we're focusing on the specific question of using 7027 to create 4709, I agree that you capture the two fundamental reasons why people might object to the project in itself.

Personally, my issue is much less to do with that, and much more to do with the manner in which GWS/4709 group have gone about their work, and the questions it then poses for GWS. If I were minded to give to GWS (unlikely given how my interests balance), that approach would make me very uneasy about how GWS is run, their transparency and their control. So much so that, if I were giving a significant enough donation, I would be asking for a copy of their last audited accounts with the auditor's report, and might well ask some quite directed questions about governance and management.

 

After tedious pages of wibble and nonsense l am still none the wiser about why the previous owner stopped the restoration and what happened next. Did they gift it to the GWS in a fit of anti GCR pique? Did the owner pass away? Did something else happen? I suppose we may never know so speculation will continue. Either way l am , like almost everyone, sad that Cinderella won't be coming to the ball. Unless there is concrete evidence to the contrary however l see no subterfuge in the GWS position . I am heartened in fact that something good will come of it . Standardisation of parts and mix and match is part of the GWRs DNA. Now at last 4709 will have some substantial Swindon metal , when it had seemed to be heading in the opposite direction! I dont suppose it will exceed my affection for 9351, the WSRs own mix and match masterpiece , but at least it now looks like a project that might succeed.
I try to look on the brightside !

 

*But, crucially, had stopped, with no fairy godmother in sight.
We don't know how much the GWS and/or the 4709 people have paid or where the money came from. There even seems some uncertainty over exactly how much of Thornbury Castle now belongs to them or whether any bits still belong to someone else. But anyway, as far as we know nothing is being scrapped, and at least the boiler will be getting an overhaul; whereas without that purchase all of it would have cluttered up the GCR for a little while longer and then, probably, in the absence of new funding, would have been scrapped. So it can be argued that the parts of Thornbury Castle have actually been rescued, even if the prospect of it ever going back together in one piece is very remote.

 

Sorry but yes I will, just as when I ride in a wooden bodied 4 wheel coach with its re purposed underframe and no horse hair stuffed upholstery, complete with family's of fleas.
I'll be riding in and enjoying the sensation of something that without the foresight and dedication of a small band of likeminded people would not exist in any shape or form.
knowing a few of the GCR shed volunteers and with out going in to to much detail there was little active restoration taking place most of the work done was to prevent any further deterioration of the components.
there was a plan being drawn up for the restoration work to be done dependent on funding and other commitments but the political situation within the management structure of the GC raised its toxic head and when it became known that it had been put up for sale all work stopped.
which brings me to my final point, if work had continued on this loco and the funds to do the work had been available, then people with more knowledge and experience than me in these matters, reckon that it would be a minimum 5 years and probable more like 7-10 years before it was finished and in steam. So a question, given just how few people are actively working on returning locos to steam, which loco under restoration or coming to the end of its ticket would you bump down the queue to complete Thornbury first?
Maybe we should have a new thread " I would rather Thornbury Castle was restored before XXXX because"

Colin

 

[QUOTE

...which brings me to my final point, if work had continued on this loco and the funds to do the work had been available, then people with more knowledge and experience than me in these matters, reckon that it would be a minimum 5 years and probable more like 7-10 years before it was finished and in steam. So a question, given just how few people are actively working on returning locos to steam, which loco under restoration or coming to the end of its ticket would you bump down the queue to complete Thornbury first?

[/QUOTE]

Perhaps a more pertinent question might therefore be "So, even after the purchase of Thornbury Castle, how long will it be before we see 4709 in steam?"

 

Perhaps a more pertinent question might therefore be "So, even after the purchase of Thornbury Castle, how long will it be before we see 4709 in steam?"[/QUOTE]
I'm assuming that this is a trick question
but if not
a lot sooner than if they had to fund and build a boiler from scratch and hopefully before I shuffle of this mortal coil so I can get to see and ride behind it

Colin

 

Thanks for contributing some more

Me too - although this episode leaves a bad taste nevertheless I hope the appearance and performance of the completed 4709 is convincing enough for most people; and that the GWS stewardship and conservation of the remaining bits of 7027 is exemplary.

 

I'm assuming that this is a trick question
but if not
a lot sooner than if they had to fund and build a boiler from scratch and hopefully before I shuffle of this mortal coil so I can get to see and ride behind it

Colin[/QUOTE]
How will 4709 steam any sooner if we don’t know who ‘they’ are and who are we donating to?
I genuinely don’t think we’ll be seeing 4709 steaming anytime soon on account of how this has been handled, for want of a better expression it’s been an absolutely wonderful example of how not to make friends and influence people.

At risk of sounding like a stuck record, ‘if your going to do something then do it right’

 

Hi Colin, welcome to the thread and the mad house that is Nat Pres at times.

With respect, I was following the updates on the active restoration on Facebook for some time and it was - definitely - more than just than just "preventing further deterioration of parts". We have photographic evidence giving the contrary too with some new components having been made. The G.C.R. volunteers are a dedicated bunch and very well skilled, their approach will have been to strip down, assess, and then plan the restoration (as they have done countless times before).

In terms of an overhaul to working order, 1-5 years and even 7-10 years is not the longest overhaul estimates we have seen in preservation. Some restorations have been ongoing for 20+ plus years. That's not a good enough reason, IMO, to declare Thornbury Castle a parts donor to new build projects.

This whole sorry saga has proved that heritage railways, railway preservation, etc, has a long way to go in terms of protecting, ringfencing, or recognising the historical artefacts/assets that we have. The right thing to do would have been to take out direct adverts advertising the sale of the locomotive with a proper process in place for interested parties to examine and declare an interest.

We have one article from Trackside which is being held up as "look, it was advertised" - even though the article doesn't (IMO) make it particularly clear it is definitely for sale, and that Trackside at that time is just one magazine, with a smaller readership than the others (that may yet grow of course), and across social media the intentions seemed clear last year: 7027 was being restored.

We have the HRA who could have been used as an intermediary of some form - we have other locomotive owners and groups who could have advised - frankly, a Castle is a great asset. It's a known commodity. It's a popular locomotive. We have several of them in preservation and in steam and the fact that Didcot held a Castle event in the same month as the announcement regarding 7027 strikes me as remarkably poorly timed. Even a few weeks wait to avoid the comparison?

I stand by my view that we need a new open process for offering up disposals from private collections and individuals. Everyone and their mother criticised the NRM at the time for their de-accessioning of items but frankly I think they've got their approach spot on, and that's why we can now see an N.S.R. tank locomotive with N.S.R. stock in future.

My biggest bug bear with all of this though is that I feel we are custodians for those who come after us, and we all have a responsibility to do our best to preserve, maintain or pass on railway history in the best manner. I don't know the ins and outs of the original discussions but the outcome is deeply unsatisfying and I am sure I cannot be alone in my feelings.

 

Sometimes your little put downs annoy the crap out of me, but that was a superbly worded statement, hat doffed.

 

I think, short of primary legislation, that's a non-starter - it cuts across the fundamental rights of individuals to do what they want with their own property doesn't it? Unless I've misunderstood and you don't mean a statutory process, but rather a voluntary one that people don't have to do but would be best-practice?

If you do mean statutory, then that's going to be a whole new bun-fight. Not least in drawing up the TORs and compiling either a list of affected assets, or at least very tightly written guidelines for someone to assess an asset against before offering it for sale.

At worst, it could create a liability on the owner for maintenance (rather in the sense of a listed building) that they were unable to dispose of, which would be desperately unattractive and could potentially collapse the market for the sale of the larger items with ongoing maintenance/restoration needs while placing an enormous and unexpected burden on owners/owning groups? Thinking about over the fence in the maritime world, the National Historic Ships Register attempts to define what one is and list the ones the UK's got, but even it stops short of involvement in buying, selling, or sadly scrapping such vessels.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm really interested in how it could be done with sufficient teeth to be meaningful, without causing unintended consequences elsewhere.

Probably a whole other thread!

 

Yes, that would have been the right thing to do, and it wasn't done. The GWS therefore then did the right thing in giving the preservation world six months to make an offer. Unfortunately there has then been further obscurity over whether any offers were made and, if so, why they were rejected. It seems impausible that the GWS would have insisted on a bidder having enough cash up front to complete the restoration rather than just to buy the bits in their present state, but that is one more aspect where transparency is lacking.

 

Oh voluntary most definitely.

It's a debate we sorely need I think.

 

I remain agnostic about the whole subject. My guess though is the opposite. The cost avoided of a new boiler sets the bar very high. Most of those regular donors committed to the 4709 project will continue to be, and any drop off in non-regulars won’t be so great as to offset the several hundred thousand saved by not commissioning a new boiler.

It seems to me likely it will steam sooner and for less money by using the boiler for TC, even if it loses some support in doing so.

 

I don't intend to do put downs - if you feel you've been the subject of one, you have my apologies. I can be blunt sometimes, I know that, I am trying to work on a new approach at the moment.

 

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say I think the GWS were sincere in their offer and that the six months was a good gesture. It's why I think fundamentally everyone needs to move on now, myself included, from 7027 and juts let them get on with it.

The lessons have been learned, the issue will be for the next item of rolling stock of historical value.

 

Agree. I have a slight worry that we're in 'hard cases make bad law' territory though, as ironically, while being the catalyst for this discussion, I don't think that a voluntary process would have affected what appears to have happened in the case of the sale *to* the GWS (unless we'd hope that groups/individuals voluntarily refrain from purchasing through the non-best-practice channels, which seems a big ask).