GWR Steam Railmotor

Gorgeous. But I kind've meant 'first hand'…

Simon

 

Ah well, you should have done it back in 2012.

 

the costs involved getting it out from didcot must be a big factor and were the trips on the looe and brentford branches sponsored by First Great Western

 

Might be a problem with the "self contained branch with no other traffic there" unless there's days the China Clay traffic doesn't operate.

Send it to Stourbridge Town, No more ridiculous than the Hamster powered contraption they normally use.

 

Does the hamster have a day off?

 

Is there any way of getting a statement from GWS. It was after all, Lottery Money so surely they have a duty of responsibility to continue to show the public. Do they want some help?

 

But wouldn't that involve honouring standard fares, like with the recent S&C Tornado jobs? Difficult with low capacity I would have thought...

 

sponsorship to cover the shortfall between costs and fares?

 

You mean like having it scheduled to be in service carrying passengers on every steaming day in January and February?

 

What choice do Didcot have? Other than diesels they don't have anything else to put out.

 

Why not! As everyone surely knows , when things are used , & this applies particularly to engines & coaches & in fact anything, they are better for it . when things are not used , they go backwards!

 

4144? 6023?

 

B

But using 6023 on the demo line is a bit like using a racehorse to pull a milk cart.

 

Then you could call it Ernie!

 

My understanding was that 4144 had been out of traffic over the last few months. Is this not the case?

 

As someone who works in conservation, I have to contradict you there!

In theory, any mechanical device is better preserved when it is not used. Using it will always cause wear and tear. It may be that in some cases that wear and tear is so minimal that it takes hundreds of years for the object to "wear out", but it will wear.

I take your point that in practice, at a "working museum" like Didcot, resources will be prioritised towards maintaining the working exhibits, and the non-working ones will deteriorate. But a conservationist would argue that maintaining a working exhibit usually involves replacing original material. So in a sense, the loco that is left to rust on a siding will actually be the better preserved one, because it will still have all its original parts.

It's a pedantic point I know, but still...!

 

When I was at Didcot last August, everything - including the working railmotor - seemed to be seriously deteriorating.

 

A lot of locomotives are of an age when not much of the original is left anyway, an operational locomotive will always beat stuffed and mounted

 

I don't think @Black Jim was strictly thinking about preservation with his comments, because in the context of keeping things in good working order he's entirely correct, in my opinion. Some of the machines I work with truly have minds of their own when it comes to downtime, you can replace all the standard serviceable components and fluids and they'll still come up with a failure that nobody involved has ever seen before, when they're being revived after an extended period out of use. High voltage electrical stuff is particularly temperamental in this respect, but with mechanical equipment it's just as important to keep oil moving around to protect the working surfaces.

To use a more conventional example, my car has a 12500 mile/two year service interval. I'll bet you it starts and runs much more happily on the 180th consecutive day of use, even if it's covered all those 12500 miles in that time, than if I leave it 179 days and then try to start it on the 180th.