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Steam engines available for traffic in 2014

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by geekfindergeneral, Mar 23, 2014.

  1. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    Please see Post No 9 on this thread. There you will see that I think they take up too much mental and financial energy and only a few are either what is really needed or making reasonably rapid progress.

    PH
     
  2. ragl

    ragl Well-Known Member

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    Hmmm, some interesting points of view with regard to the working steam loco count in the UK. However, as we are counting and speculating with numbers, and applying the 10 year rule, how about this:

    Railway enthusiasts available, 2024

    Just go forward a few years and guess how many locos/railways are running with the present - mainly elderly - railway enthusiast demographic, which may well have moved on due to old age or possibly departed this mortal coil by then. "But what about all of the young ones coming through" I hear you say, nowhere near enough of them I'm afraid.

    I'm not being a pessimist, just looking at the reality of my own mortality and all of the others that have provided the spur for railway preservation since the sixties; we are all just a hangover from another world and we have refused to let what we loved die, but, sad to say, a lot of it will die with us. To assume that ALL of our grandchildren in 50 years time will care what we did and what was saved for "future generations" is naivety on a grand scale. Yes, major centres like York museum and some railways will survive, but, most of it will be gone and that rusting eyesore will be seen for what it will have become, an environmental hazard. Will I care? having pushed up countless daisies by then, definitely not!!

    So, what does all of the foregoing man? Well, from my perspective, I have one hell of a lot to pack in over the next 10 years and looking back 10 years and seeing what I've achieved and how fast it went means that, sadly, there are railways and locos in the UK that I know now that I will never see again. Knowing all of this, means that my immediate and future mission is to see and participate in as much railway related activity as resources - time and money - allow, until I'm physically unable to get to the lineside again, I'm sure that there are many of you in the same position as me. Enjoy what you can, while you can guys, counting the locos will not make them steam again.

    Cheers

    Alan
     
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  3. flying scotsman123

    flying scotsman123 Resident of Nat Pres

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    It's a good point Alan, there certainly aren't as many young people involved as older people. However, how many of those older people would have been doing the same thing when they were my age? obviously we don't know because at the time there would have been no such thing as it was all common place, so it's difficult to speculate. I know a fair few people who come along and volunteer at the GWSR not because they especially like steam railways, but just because it is something to spend their time doing, or even just as a social occasion.

    I see we have gone a little off topic, to steer it back on course, the GWSR will, I think, by the end of this year have more serviceable locos based there than ever before, with 2807, 4270, 35006 (hopefully) 5542, 7820, and the 8F.
     
  4. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    You're right about the social side. A fair few of our Wednesday gang aren't exactly rabid steam enthusiasts but they welcome the chance to put something back into society in return for what they've had out and to a man and woman they love the camaraderie.
     
  5. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I wonder if you are being unduly pessimistic.

    Broadly, there are two issues to worry about: will there be enough visitors interested enough to buy tickets; and will there be enough volunteers interested enough to run things.

    On the visitor front - I don't see any evidence that steam railways are becoming less popular. Maybe the demographic is changing, or the reasons people visit, but I see heritage railways as a well and truly embedded as the "kind of things" families visit. Certainly that's my impression from seeing the number of families with young children, in which even the adults are of an age far too young to remember mainline steam. Of course, railways can't relax and have to continue to understand their market and adapt to make sure they are meeting the demands of that market. But (entirely anecdotally) I don't see evidence that the only visitors to railways are aged 70+ old codgers and we're all living on borrowed time for visitor numbers.

    On the volunteer front - again, the people who are volunteering to help sustain memories of their youth are slowly going away, but there are young volunteers who - presumably! - are gutting some kind of worthwhile satisfaction from their hobby. There is a difficult age for volunteering, roughly between early twenties and early forties, when people are having to build families and careers and have less time, but then people seem to come back once their personal circumstances have settled, their children are a bit older etc. Again, railways have to work hard to understand what are the drivers of that demographic.

    So - life isn't easy. But I don't see the whole edifice collapsing when the last person to remember pre-1968 steam shuffles off this mortal coil...

    Tom
     
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  6. Big Al

    Big Al Nat Pres stalwart Staff Member Moderator

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    Agreed. I think you'll find that steam locos have an attraction to a group people who were not around in the 60s but view them as part of the whole retro culture in the same way that these peoples' homes might be full of artefacts from another time and may well have paid quite a lot for the privilege of owning them. For example, on the trip to Salisbury a week or so back, was an Essex couple (of course) who had clearly dressed for the day. He was a 'spit' for one of the Blues Brothers.
     
  7. geekfindergeneral

    geekfindergeneral Member

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    Alan, thank you for such a beautifully written, thoughtful and honest perspective.

    Best regards

    Neil
     
  8. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    Just to add some more numbers, and following JimC's classification, here are the numbers for SR and ex-SR locos. Obviously, as Jim noted, some of these are a bit of a grey area: for example, I'm claiming 34067 as "under repair" rather than "in service"; and 21c123 as "Out of service and not under active repair" even though funds are being raised and parts collected.

    Anyway, there are 86 preserved ex-SR (or BR(S) locos, going right back to Canterbury & Whistable "Invicta", classified as follows:

    In service - 28 (32%)
    Under restoration having run previously - 22 (26%)
    Under restoration (first time) - 6 (7%)
    Out of service and not under active repair - 15 (18%)
    Unrestored or dismantled for spares - 6 (7%)
    Conserved as complete non-operational locos - 9 (11%)

    Edit: interestingly, JimC gives 32% of GWR locos currently serviceable (45 from 139) and I get 32% of SR locos serviceable (28 from 86). If that number is typical across LMS, LNER and BR Standards, that probably implies about 150-odd serviceable ex-mainline locos, as well as ?? industrials.

    Tom
     
  9. geekfindergeneral

    geekfindergeneral Member

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    Thank you Tom and Jimc for doing the adding up that eluded me and taking the trouble to pander to my obsession with hard evidence. I really am very grateful. Assuming the industrials follow the same profile, there are in fact 300 plus kettles available for traffic this year. What an amazing number.
     
  10. simon

    simon Resident of Nat Pres

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    On one of the Yahoo groups a chap was claiming that he had a database of nearly 1,700 steam locomotives in the UK and said that there were only a few more than that in the US. Unfortunately he didn't give a link to the database.

    It would be interesting to see the data with dates of prior overhauls, length of time between expiry of certification and returning to steam etc and I wonder if the HRA actual do collate such info. Given that the HRA didn't seem to provide the parliamentary committee that looked into the benefits of heritage railways much detailed analysis perhaps they do not collect it. As someone said above, it wouldn't help return anymore to steam but it would inform debates like this. Although to a degree this is just a repeat of the elephant in the room debate we had before Xmas.
     
  11. Spamcan81

    Spamcan81 Nat Pres stalwart

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    Would these be Morphy Richards or Swan?
     
  12. geekfindergeneral

    geekfindergeneral Member

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    Could HRA be wrong by 670 kettles? I know some of them are not the sort of people you would wish to introduce to your servants, but they are the modern equivalent of the Railway Clearing House and their maths are surely not that bad. Even the informed guesstimates in this thread earlier were only 30% out. If the trade association is 600+ kettles out we are truly through the looking glass! Even at scrap prices that would be a £20 million "accounting error" and we would be in the Enron bucket. There is still an Elephant in the Room, and it is massive and threatening but as Gios pointed out, based on these numbers it seems to be below the railhead, not standing on it.
     
  13. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I think you get to those sorts of numbers if you also include narrow gauge right down to minature (i.e. 15", 10.25" etc). Actually, I'm surprised there are more in the US, I'd have thought Britain had the biggest fleet.

    Tom
     
  14. 21B

    21B Part of the furniture

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    Agreed. The US probably has a bigger "fleet" if you include the miniature locomotives. It is most unlikely though that their operating fleet of standard and narrow gauge locomotives steam locomotives is larger.

    I am really disappointed by the pessimism surrounding the future generation. I was born well after the end-of steam and I having been being told for over 25 years now that my interest in steam was such a minority position that my hobby would become unsustainable. It hasn't come to pass yet. On an average operating day at the MHR (which is the only railway I can really comment on) I would guess that less than 50% of staff working on the railway would have any memory of steam in regular mainline service. On the loco side it would very likely to be zero. On Saturday evening Ropley box was being worked by a signalman who was born as British Railways ceased to exist, and he is a far from isolated or singular example. We have a large number of Rangers, who by definition weren't born prior to start of this century, and whose parents will in some cases be themselves late 70s or even 80s children! Frankly the generation that can clearly recall steam, and enjoyed the privilege of being able to watch the glorious parade of action of the 1950s and 1960s contributes a good deal less to the heritage movement than you'd think, with the exception of leaving some very useful legacies where clearly they are the generation that does the most - for obvious reasons. I am certainly not decrying their contribution in any way, but we should not think that the 50s trainspotter generation is any longer the backbone of the "movement".
     
  15. flaman

    flaman Well-Known Member

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    If true, it's not all that surprising. The US is a very big place and, although there are long distances, by our standards, between major heritage railway sites, there are quite a few of them and some, such as the Illinois Railroad Museum, have large collections of engines. Moreover, they have something that we do not; a considerable number of plinthed locos, typically scattered around small towns all over the country. My knowledge is restricted to the mid-west and the Great Lakes area, but the same probably applies throughout the country. One thing is certain though, we beat them hands down when it comes to working engines!
     
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  16. simon

    simon Resident of Nat Pres

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    I assumed it was everything rail mounted and steam powered, but as I say he gave no further details.
     
  17. Robin

    Robin Well-Known Member Friend

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    One of the joys of this game is that no two databases or books ever seem come to exactly the same number of locomotives in existence (does anyone have a link to the list making up the 1032?). My own 'is it in the UK and if so have I seen it yet?" standard gauge steam list currently totals 1054 (of which 801 seen to date). The 1054 includes new builds as long as there is a frame, replicas, and fireless locos.

    On the topic of fireless locos, I think we can confidently say for the 2014 Census that of the 28 fireless locos there are none in service and none being overhauled (except cosmetically). However I believe at least one has worked in preservation.
     
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  18. Jamessquared

    Jamessquared Nat Pres stalwart

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    I suspect if you really wanted to do the analysis, you'd need some measure of size as well. As an example, a couple of years ago on the Bluebell, we "gained" our 1873 Fletcher-Jennings 0-4-0T Baxter, and "lost" BR standard 4MT 80151. Net result for the year zero in terms of pure numbers, but a significant loss in terms of capability to pull trains!

    Thankfully, for us at least, that equation looks like it will shortly take a strong turn for the better with the likely arrival of 73082 (class 5); 541 (class 4); B473 (class 2) and 34059 (class 7) for the likely loss in the nearish-future of 592 (class 2). Bigger isn't universally better of course: each railway must have a good idea of what the ideal size, or range of sizes, for their circumstances is, which explains why GWR 2-6-2Ts and BR 2-6-4Ts are so popular with operating departments, but even so, you do need to dig a little deeper to really understand the underlying health of the sector.

    What would be terrifically useful would be a kind of Gantt chart showing every loco on one axis, and time on the other axis, shaded to show the predicted future availability. I've seen exactly that kind of diagram on the Bluebell, and I am sure that other railways maintain similar diagrams for their own purposes, but collating it nationally would be a mammoth job!

    Tom
     
  19. gios

    gios Member

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    Possibly a good idea to try and summarize the total weight of the contributions made on this topic. Warning for those without a humour gene: Some of this is light hearted chaps and contains no new data.

    Three contributors have presented what appears to be reliable and interesting data for either a region or a class:cool: .
    It has been suggested that it might just be possible to extrapolate these data sets across the country, to give an estimate of the total number of locos in steam:cool: .
    No contributors have presented reliable data to show if the number of working locos is in decline or increasing:D .
    Some contributors take exception to the term kettles:( .
    P (the axe) H and GF (the money man)-F are in total agreement on everything:) .
    It has been suggested by one contributor that an Gannt chart could be useful. Unfortunately there is no existing data to compile such a chart.

    Conclusion.

    Other than the three contributors mentioned above, the rest of us are possibly a little confused and/or poorly informed:confused: . This fundamental lack of knowledge in our chosen area of expertise is not something to be ashamed of, we are in esteemed company. What has become evident is that no single person or body has the faintest idea how many locos are in steam, and whether the numbers are increasing or declining over time. It is considered however that the possible steaming number might be around 200 !
     
  20. buseng

    buseng Part of the furniture

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    This is a kettle, doesn't look like a steam locomotive to me.
    http://www.remodelista.com/files/st...g/sub/uimg/04-2012/700_yanagi-loco-silver.jpg
     
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