Practical Issues in Preserving Steam Locomotives

The conservation v. restoration argument is certainly one which arouses great feelings and interesting debates. Maybe someone would, as Keith suggests, like to start a new thread for this interesting topic.
However, going back to my original post, and thank you to all who have supplied information so far - can no-one shed any light on any of the 10 locos listed in post #76?
A couple of pages back someone mentioned the 'LMS collection' scrapped under Stanier. I've since remembered where I saw the photos. The locos were MR 2-4-0 #156A, MR 0-4-4T #1226, MR Kirtley 0-6-0 #421 and NLR 4-4-0T #6445.
Cheers, Ray.

 

The question (for me) is who are you conserving them for?

Personally I would much rather see a loco in steam pulling a train than see it stuck in a museum hall. I can accept the fact that you can't steam everything all the time because there isn't the man power or the money to have everything repaired at the same time.

From a sustainability and business standpoint you need to get the younger generations involved. It's easy to get them to go for a ride on a train and enjoy it, than it is to get them to walk round a museum and enjoy it.
Continuing the example of the monobloc, at present it's stuck in the frames on display as a complete loco. So what are the options? You could remove it from the frames and put it on display; but do you clean it, or leave it as it is warts and all? That then leaves a 98% complete locomotive with no cylinders, which is useless and will likely result in bits getting lost or damaged as the pistons and valve gear would need to be completely removed, or just left hanging (not something I would recommend).

At the time of removal it could be laser scanned so you can view it in 3D from the comfort of your own home on a PC.

So my genuine question is, what does conservation (don't replace it, leave as original) bring us that preservation (steam it asap) doesn't?

 

Don't tap the anchors of HMS Victory too hard whilst you're admiring the skills of the Georgian welders.

 

But, if funding could be available to build and fit a new Merlin to essentially the same specification and materials, would that be OK?

 

On the Harz system, a number of the nominally 1950's built 2.10.2T's are essentially new locos of year 2000 onwards construction. They have new frames, boilers and steelwork, the number plates might be 'original' but date from the c.1980's when the computer number system took account of their conversion from oil to coal firing. Nothing is therefore original and any 'conservation' has been lost. But they provide pleasure to thousands each year and tell you a great deal more about how and why the originals were built in the 1950's than a loco in a museum. Put bluntly, only an academic or those in privileged position can appreciate that that particular engine has a monobloc rather than separate cylinders, whilst we can all appreciate a steam engine doing what it is meant to do - 'steam'. I do not think we need to restore Rocket or Locomotion to steam but principally because to do so would require almost total replacement of the original, this has already been recognised and resulted in replicas being built which 'do the job'. I would rather see any and all locos steam (where it is physically practical to do so) than see any plinthed for the very few to really enjoy.

Many of us who chase engines for haulage miss the 'enlightened' days of the NRM when the toys came out of the box. I'd wager that more attention was paid and enjoyment gained from Hardwick, the Stirling Single or the Midland Compound when they steamed in the 1970's than from their imprisonment in a dusty museum in York.

 

I think if anyone feels that we are suffering from a shortage of unrebuilt Bulleid pacifics in working order, I'm sure that Messrs Bunch and/or Smith would be open to offers for 34073. If I had cash to throw at a Bulleid, I'd rather give this poor engine a decent future rather than try to restore 34051 to steam which now looks in better condition than for many years. Having said that, I'll acknowledge the obvious point that 34051 would cost a lot less than 34073 to return to working order.

 

As has been said before the flaw in your argument s that many times more people will see the locomotive and be able to get up close in one of the major museums than will be able to see it if its tucked away in a running shed and doing the occasional trip.

 

That's only true to an extent. For a start, it depends on which railway it visits and how often it is used as to how many people see it. Personally I think members of the public would far rather see it in steam doing something, and so would most enthusiasts. I think the main stumbling block for re-steaming some locos that have been stuffed and mounted is, as has been said, money. Mr Coulls recently said he has a list of yes, no and maybes (although hasn't published it, which is fair enough!) for what could be steamed at the NRM if money was available.

 

As a conservationist myself (albeit in a slightly different sphere - I work in historic houses in my day job), I'd argue that the real meaning of the conservation approach is that you are seeing the real thing.

To me, part of the thrill of seeing a historic object is knowing that it provides a tangible link to the past. For example, I once worked in a house whose collection contained books once owned by Josephine Bonaparte. Now perhaps some people might argue that the real value of a book is not the leather and paper it is made from, but the story it tells. By that logic, we shouldn't be subjecting those books to a careful conservation regime - we should be leaving them out on tables for 100,000+ visitors a year to flick through at will. Inevitably, pages will wear out and have to be replaced, but that's fine - we can just keep on replacing page after page, until eventually we've replaced the whole book. But that doesn't matter, because the replacement pages look the same and tell the same story, right?

But if we go down that road, then eventually the real historic material - the actual leather and paper that Josephine Bonaparte touched, that sat on her shelves - will be lost.

Another good example would be Uppark, a National Trust house in Sussex, where you can see original white-and-gold paint and gilding applied by Humphrey Repton in the early 19th century. It was painstakingly conserved even after being damaged by fire in 1989. It would have been much easier just to repaint it all, of course. But walking into a room and seeing what the 18th century decoration would have looked like is not the same as walking into a room and seeing a real 18th century decorative scheme.

Now, I know that most preserved steam engines won't have quite the same links to great historical figures, but the principle still stands. Lode Star, for example, is the real thing. OK, not all of all her components go right back to 1907; perhaps some of them originated on different engines. But what matters is that it is all genuine, steam-age material, crafted by GWR and BR employees at Swindon works, using the materials and methods of the steam age. Many of them probably still bear the scars of the engine's working life; like a human face, each wrinkle tells a story! If you returned her to steam, then with every component you replace, modify or even repaint, you weaken that link with the past. A brand new cylinder (say), made from a polystyrene pattern in 2015, might look the same as Lode Star's current cylinders to the untrained eye, and it might serve the same function. But it is not the same. It is not the real thing.

Of course, very few engines now are such perfect time capsules as Lode Star - that it why NRM curators judge each engine's case for restoration individually, weighing up the pros and cons. A less extreme example would be Chaloner at Leighton Buzzard. Although kept as a working engine, original components have been retained wherever possible; just look at the plate-work and you will see she still carries the bumps and scratches of her life in the quarries. Replace those components, and you'll destroy many of the qualities that make her special. You'd make her look like a shiny, new engine, rather than one which has 130+ years of history under her belt.

My point is: every time you repair an engine in order to keep it running, you change it. Sometimes, that's perfectly OK. But all I'm arguing is that sometimes, just sometimes, we should try to keep things the same, at least for as long as we can.

 

My own take on this is that, in the long term, you can preserve the operation in which the machine was used, or the machine - but not both. Mostly, the machine has to be used to make the money to preserve it, in which case you have to accept the wear and tear which this involves, and the renewals. Where to draw the line is a matter of opinion and available resources.

Tim

 

To me, if one thing is important in all this it is that you can't have hard and fast rules. I'm a strong believer in the idea that history is best taught by demonstration because that way, you get more of a feel of what the reality was. That, therefore means that things should work and I'm not too bothered if a casting was made in 1815 or 2015 as long as it is the same in essence. Static exhibits can only be appreciated by two of our senses of sight and touch (and quite often the latter is not allowed). We also need to hear and smell where we can.

 

Fortunately there are enough steam locos around that we can do both. Stuff some; steam others. There are some difficult and unique cases, Green Arrow often being mentioned. But if you can't steam that particular V2 that's ok - all you have to do is build a new one.

 

we seem to have veered a bit off topic!

i have a vague recollection of one of the old Rhymney Railway locos being 'preserved' in one of the sheds at the insistence of that company's infamous and very long serving manager Cornelius Lundie, but scrapped after he died in 1908 at the age of 93. unfortunately due to my Rhymney Railway books having been loaned and not returned i cant check the details. can anyone else help?

i think that these days the 'restoration' of Dolgoch and Talyllyn of the TR in the late 1950s/early 1960s by Gibbons would now be regarded as almost replacements of the original locos - so much was not re-used that like FR Livingston Thompson in the NRM a complete (almost) 'original' loco could have been preserved.

the IOWSR at Havenstreet has quite a few parts from scrapped O2 class locos including a spare rear bogie and westinghouse brake pumps. (anyone know what was acquired from Fred Ward many many years later?)

the IOWSR have also preserved the old A1X boiler off W11 Newport.

cheers,
julian

 

But where does it stop? At what stage do we move Lode Star into a glass cabinet with controlled air temp and quality? What's the point of conserving something if all you can do is look at it? And eventually the only people allowed to look at it will be specialist historians because having it out at all is damaging.

Steam loco's were built for a purpose if they can no longer serve that purpose what's the point?

 

I suggest you re-read MuzTrem's post a bit up the page, but if that's tl;dr I'll chip in...

For the same reason that we have libraries. Think of Lode Star (or better still 4073 as it had a full heavy general before going to South Ken) as a 3D reference book of shop-floor practice; drawings won't help as that stuff wasn't written down, it was handed down from master to apprentice. Most of those guys aren't around any more, so as a result, all we have left to go on is their handiwork. Restore it to running order & an awful lot of that will get thrown away and lost forever*. There's a similar approach in archaeology - the vast majority of sites undergo partial excavation only, just enough to get a handle on what's there but leaving the bulk of the site untouched as the process of excavation is inherently destructive.

Cutty Sark is no good for the tea runs any more - should she have been left to burn & the dock filled in with executive flats?

*I can quote first-hand examples of this if you want.

Pete S.
C&W Dept.,
GWS Didcot.

 

As a one-time archaeologist, may I modify Guitar's post slightly:

But where does it stop? At what point do we move all the surviving Bronze Age hand-axes into a climate-controlled glass case? What's the point of conserving one if all you can do islook at it? If only specialists and experts can look at it because having it out is damaging? Bronze Age hand axes were built to chop wood! If people can't chop wood with them any more then what is the point?

Apologies, but I hope you get the point. And to all the people who said "well obviously you wouldn't steam Rocket" - at what point in Rocket's history would you have begun saying that?

 

Some interesting posts regarding preservation and conservation but in the case of locomotives, are there any in the same conditions s they were built? The same can be asked of any piece of machinery. In the case of multiple examples in preservation then having one stuffed and mounted is understandable. Not such an easy decision regarding a sole survivor and I can see the industrial archaeologists point of view where very old items are concerned. To return them to working order could involved so much new material and new engineering practice that you lose the essence of the original. On the other hand, I'm with Sheff and agree that it's impossible to appreciate truly and old bit of machinery if you can't see, hear and smell it at work. Shuttleworth Collection has one pre war aircraft and they fly them. Looking at them in the hangar you ask how on earth did they fly but on a nice calm day the pilots show you and it's a remarkable experience to watch something from the dawn of aviation doing its stuff.

 

Given how much new material goes into warbird "restorations" these days, a brand new Merlin would be a logical development. I suspect that those Merlins that are still airworthy have had a lot of new parts made for them over the years.

 

I like the 3D reference book analogy...

If we were to restore 4073 for example. Instead of throwing the bits away, why not display them in a cabinet next to a reproduction example to show the differences in construction. As each part was taken off it could be laser scanned so that you could view each individual part on a PC at home, you could see all the marks and indents from a life in service, and you could see it from every conceivable angle. Measurements would be exact to thousandths of a millimeter.

If I turned up and said "I'm a railway historian, any chance you could drop the cylinders off so I can see the port faces" I'd get told to bugger off I imagine, so who exactly are you preserving it for in its current state?

I can understand where you are coming from, but instead of saying we wont restore locomotives because of what would be thrown away, maybe more effort should be put into preserving what gets taken off where it is of historical importance.

You would end up with (in my opion) the best for everyone.
1) The original part, preserved in a glass case, can be looked at by those who like to see "the exact piece of metal" that broke x record or whatever. You could also display a reproduction part next to it to show the differences in construction, though this would increase reproduction costs as it would require 2 of everything (1 for use, 1 for display).
2) Laser scanned 3D models so you can look at the part from every angle conceivable, see the measurements and details close up without damaging the original.
3) A fully working example of the whole steam engine which can, on occasion, be fired up and seen it as it would have been on the 'big railway'.

I'm not indifferent to the plight of the historians, but in the modern world there is no reason not to please almost everybody.

It would also in time create an awesome resource of laser scanned parts that could be reproduced, not only in full size but scaled down for model engineers (and everything in-between).

As a programmer I would gladly donate my time to help develop this resource if required.