Heritage lines aiming for historical correctness

Wouldn't you need to cover the sleepers with ballast for a real 1880s feel, Tom?

 

The time thing is quite difficult - getting the right loco together with the right carriages is harder than it might be - you've got your 1950's condition loco on the front of the 1930's coaches because the 1950's coaches are being overhauled etc. Another option is somewhere like Didcot which although probably not scoring that highly on any given day for time consistency of what is on offer does have a very consistent representation of GWR artefacts of various time periods. However you might easily have the 1908 steam railmotor running on one line with the 1946 Prairie (4144) on the other line with 1937 and 1948 built carriages - in reality those two train sets would never have been in operation at the same time historically.

 

1950's Bogs & Food anyone??

 

Blimey! 1980s BR food was bad enough

 

Bowes does a good job of recreating 1950's ncb railways,as nothing has changed, buildings machinery and rolling stock are all original for the line.

 

Casey Jones was ok!

 

The Mid Suffolk Railway may be a small operation but is trying to recreate the feel of the origional.

 

It's interesting to note that the original poster has not visited the site since posing the question - he's obviously not that interested in historical correctness!


Keith

 

Wouldn't the only railway to be about 95% absololutly authentic be the VoR? Built as a tourist railway, but now using new(!) locos and not starting from it's original start point. Still doing its original job though. I dont understand the op's point about authenticity, if he wanted things absolutly authentic then there'd only be somthing like 4 trains a day on whatever railway he decided to visit, there'd be no place to even get a cup of tea, if he fancied somthing a bit stronger then bad luck if his 3 coach local rolled into say Bridgnorth at 5 past 3! We can have a good go at recreating the past railway wise in this country but 100% authentic? Not unless you put your smartphone down, dig out your box brownie and leave the Nissan, Audi etc and arrive at said railway in your Austin 7!

 

True enough, but you don't normally see the 2 trains at the same time, in fact each end of the branch line has been deliberately re-created as a different period of history so you won't get a perfect match from one end to the other, there has to be a compromise somewhere to show as wide a range of periods as possible to show how things developed, but does lead to these anomalies.

 

Generically to make any preserved line truly "pre closure" authentic, you would need one train every two hours if you were lucky, an engine with steam escaping from every orifice, windows so filthy you can't see out of them, and fleas in the seats.

 

The Mid-Norfolk railway runs authentic 70s livery trains which is unusual...Especially since the line closed to passengers between 1964 and 1969. To make it truly authentic for what I remember of 70s trains, most of the carriages need to have a stale cigarette smoke and damp smell and when you sit down a cloud of dust needs to rise up...The tables need to be filthy with a slick of ghastly instant coffee on them...Oh and by the 70sit was nits we got from the seats not fleas. Actually just thinking about that has brought back memories of summer holiday trips visiting my grandparents

 

Sadly take away the cigarette smoke and some preserved railway's mark1's are still like that

David R