100% Authenticity

Does it exist, anywhere?
Many compromises have to be made in this modern world to attract the fare paying public and meet tighter regulations. The larger stations have to have modern toilets, a café, gift shop, and car parking. Some are built on new sites, where the original was redeveloped. Some that seem to be authentic often aren't, eg Hayles Abbey Halt has a longer platform and was originally double track with 2 platforms. Corfe Castle has a footbridge and a short platform extension.
So, where are the 100% examples?

The categories:-
Stations Only small stations have any chance of authenticity probably. Chinnor? Stogumber?
Goods yards Any preserved in a period style?
Loco sheds Most are very cluttered now. Didcot can still put on realistic scenes.
Complete trains.
The N2 in LNER livery with the Gresley Quad Art set, seems to be 100%
Since the 80's, BR green Jubilees hauling BR maroon Mk 1's over the S&C has happened a few times. That seems to be 100% correct.
Scenarios.
35005 being overhauled at Eastleigh Works, is a 100% correct scenario but, I believe it is not in the loco erecting shop, which is used for modern traction but, in a smaller shop nearby so, 90% for that one. Close though.

 

Complete train - 419 (and 828 in November) with the SRPS's two operational Caledonian Railway coaches?

 

Foremarke Hall in BR green with 8 choc 'n' cream Mk1s and a Cornishman headboard on the front running along the original route Seems pretty authentic to me!
And of course a GWR autotrain is fairly authentic most places it is found.

 

But your Choc and Cream MK1's have the Glos Warks logo rather than the the BR Ferret and Dartboard! Take your point about a 14xx though.

 

Not forgetting the FB113A rail CWR on concrete sleepers.

 

Stick between Winchcombe and Toddington then!

 

Shouldn't it be double track too?

 

The Ffestiniog can manage some pretty authentic trains particularly if hauled by Palmerston.

 

And as for ballast!

 

Okehampton station in Devon is very authentic as is Petworth station in Sussex.

 

It's train formations that let things down for me - although I understand why. This can be especially so on the mainline - I grind my teeth when people put up a picture of a modern special and caption it '2018 or 1968....?' - then you see the front coach has roller shutter luggage van doors, or is a clearly different shade of maroon, there is a Met Camm Pullman painted in maroon or the coaches are faded different colours let alone shades (I am trying to coverall operators here!).

Many trains 'back in the day' seemed to have brake coaches at each end and plenty through the train, so a non-brake leading is the dead giveaway! Another one I remember was a loco in BR Black with 'cycling lion' and a similar '1951?' type caption - yet the train was, sure, Blood and Custard', but 3 Mark 1s - on a local, secondary line service - and the front one was a brake - but with the luggage van fitted with windows for wheelchair use!

All these 'inaccuracies' are essential - but let's not kid ourselves that we can achieve '100%' and indeed, as many of the trains on lines now preserved would be non-corridor and usually Big Four or Pre-Grouping stock, get anywhere that close!

(And as @Ploughman says - don't even look at half the track!)

Steven

 

How about an 02 hauling 4 LBSCR bogie coaches on their original route?

 

I keep telling Ploughman that they should be using ash ballast on the NYMR but he just ignores me. Same with the S&T chappies and planting telegraph poles.

 

Do we really want complete authenticity?

As I've said elsewhere, perhaps "preservationist" is the wrong term and we're more "retentionists" instead. The Heritage movement found ways to retain track beds, old equipment etc and re-purpose them to be economically useful again. A bewildering number of railways run timetables way more intensive than originally intended both with suitable and unsuitable stock. Otherwise we're looking at only using a half-dozen classes that were actually assigned to the many secondary routes heritage railways were and then proceeding to choke up the few lines that had a bit more variety on them.

As fascinating it might be to say, ride the Tallylyn just as it was in the summer of 1951, I can't think of anything worse than dumping the system in amber and changing tastes of the people needed to put their bums on the train seats to make these lines viable again means that we have to evolve with them.

 

Only 'sort of' ...... Palmerston is a lot more becabbed and saddle-tanky than when it was delivered from New Cross and let's not get started on enamelled manufacturer's plates or livery (!) On the TR, only Dolgoch is all that close to it's original form and even then, only if they take the cab off .....

..... and if you can mention the FR, then I can mention the RH&DR, fielding the world's only intact class of Big4 era 'pacifics', plus the UK's only class of 4-8-2 'mountain' locos.

By my reckoning, only the Douglas Horse Tram (but not the horses), MER, IMR, RH&D, SMR (actually, both SMR's!), VoR and VER can properly claim a high degree of authentic authenticity as even the IWSR's W8, W11 (which both served on the IoW pre-grouping) and W24 (which didn't), plus all the carriages currently in service at Haven Street are 'overners'.

The W&L can field a properly authentic freight train, even though locos 1&2 (822/823) were pretty thoroughly rebuilt by the GW.

 

Isn’t the question authentic to when and where. Palmerston is a local which is restored to be like it was at a certain point in time rather than how it was originally.

Palmerston at Harbour, Blaenau, TyG, TyB or the deviation is not very authentic to say Edwardian or 1920s Palmerston, but there are maybe a few locations you could squint your eyes.

When it comes to authenticity we tend to want the nice bits - we don’t want authentic working conditions from the 1880s, I’m happy to have continuous brakes etc, so it is always going to be an approximate vision of the past.

An authentic FR train to me is an green oil fired Linda, on 8 red coaches, in the rain, passing an green oil fired Earl of Merioneth on 12red coaches at Dduallt, but then a green Prince and Upnor Castle at RG. But my desire to recreate the late 1970s is perhaps not the vision of authenticity that pulls in the punters

 

Spot on. When all's said and done, the best we can hope for is the illusion of authenticity. As you nention, we all have our own image of a definitive era, which might or might not be representative of a line in it's working heyday. On the Ffesterbahn, only those days when a gravity slate train happens to be operating truly give an impression of what the line must have looked (and sounded) like back in the day. After all, there was a lot more slate than passenger traffic .....

T'other major issue is that passenger trains, of course, tend to be a tad longer these days. How many old FR photos show trains of more than a couple of bogies and 3 or 4 four-wheelers? Many TR shots are of one carriage, plus brake van .... ditto Corris, W&L etc. etc.

 

Of course 100% authenticity is unachievable. There are too many factors outside our control. No railway is going to demand that visitors wear tweed suits and full-length skirts, or ban mobile phones. And compromises will always need to be made for reasons of safety, cost etc.

But while 100% authenticity may be an unachievable goal, it's a goal some railways seem to pursue with far more determination than others. Compromises may be necessary, but at what point do we choose to make the compromise? At the first financial, technical or operational challenge, or as a last resort? (This isn't a matter of right or wrong, good or bad; it's more a question of how we choose to do what we do).

Personally, I'm drawn to those projects which pursue authenticity most doggedly, whether that's victorian carriage restoration at Horsted Keynes, broad-gauge signalling at Didcot, the signal box at Corfe Castle, or the refusal of the team at Broadway to put up a building from the Wimpey Homes school of architecture.

Other people's priorities may be different. It's just a hobby.

 

A slight hiccup I'm afraid, didn't choc & cream mk1's come in in the mid 50's? About the same time BR changed loco emblems. 7903 carries the earlier version. Unless of course there was some kind of overlap in the change over period.

 

when I see in cinema or on TV capture attempting to show a particular point in time, I do bore my wife and family picking out glaring mistakes but to be honest, if we're wanting 100% authenticity then surely we're setting our sights a little high? In locomotives restored from rusting hulks, components will have been sourced from all over. Does the steel need to have been forged in Sheffield or coal mined from Welsh valleys? No of course not but how authentic does 100% authenticity need?
If a Jubilee is running mainline with a rake of correct matched coaches, doesn't the overhead wires somewhat spoil the 100% authenticity anyway?
I viewed 46235 City of Birmingham recently in stuffed-and-mounted state and looks 1960's authentic to me but most locomotives on mainline or preserved lines will often have some adornments that don't really matter to me as long as their isn't a Thomas face on the front!