North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

They are in many ways, but as others have stated, painted in specific periods. The juxtaposition of a British Railways Black 5 with an NER country station, for example, jars to this eye at least as much as pairing a set of blood & custards with a malachite green loco.


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It was, and preservation of that kind is also important. As someone born in the 1970s, with children born this century, I don’t personally like the emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s that there often is, because it underplays the role of previous eras.


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Except that Black 5s were very much a part of the NER towards the end of steam - there are a few photographs of them doing just what you mention that are available - and many country stations might still be seen in old colours too

 

You are right, but the fact is that there has never been any sort of plan to assemble an NER/LNER collection of rolling stock. I accept the need for the core operation to be Mk 1 based but there has never been any encouragement for subsidiary groups that try to do something different. I don't think that there is a historical plan of any description, which is a serious failing for

 

You are right, but the fact is that there has never been any sort of plan to assemble an NER/LNER collection of rolling stock. I accept the need for the core operation to be Mk 1 based but there has never been any encouragement for subsidiary groups that try to do something different. I don't think that the Trust has a historical plan of any description, which is a serious failing for what is supposed to be an educational charity.

 

The fact is, any locomotive looks good on a rake of uniform carriages, even if the pairing is mismatched or anachronistic, with my own personal favourites, a green Deltic on our Gresley rake and City of Truro also on a short teak set.

The project I'm currently working on, is a carriage, which will be the only carriage able to carry the livery it will be out shopped in, added to which only one class of locomotive, in one particular livery would legitimately be able to haul it.

So should it be used with what is available, giving people a unique flavour of the past, or just be a museum piece?

Sawdust.

 

One of our local stations, Catford, was never painted in the steam era and there was so little paint you could not tell what livery it was in.

As to a malachite loco on blood and custards that was entirely prototypical, albeit it would have been Bulleid's. Seeing as a MK1 was a Bulleid in Derby clothes its not un-prototypical

 

I tend to think that teak and plum & custard work well with any locomotive livery. Other colour schemes, less so. BR maroon and BR blue and grey in particular look miserable no matter what is hauling them unless they are spotlessly clean.

 

The problem with that notion is that it assumes that the minute a new livery was adopted, every item of rolling stock suddenly popped into it. In reality there was a fair bit of overlap (I know of one instance where a SECR P class was painted in Maunsell Green in 1937, never received Bulleid colours and didn't become painted in BR livery until more than 4 years after nationalisation). So it was perfectly normal to see, for example, a GW locomotive painted in BR early black hauling a train of GW coaches still in their GW colours, or a SR loco still in its bulleid colours hauling a train that had been repainted in the early standard Blood and Custard livery. There was fluidity in what you could claim to be an 'authentic' pairing, it isn't just a case of 'BR engines can only run with BR colours and Grouping engines can only run with grouping colours.'
You then have the fact that many railways which have locos from Big 4 companies only have Mk1s to make up their trains with. So should the Mid Hants repaint Cheltenham in BR colours, or the East Lancs repaint their Crab in BR Black? Were we wrong at the GCRN to have an LMS liveried 8F running on Mk1s?
Then what about locomotives like the Q6 which never hauled a passenger train until preservation. If we're trying to stick to authenticity, is it wrong to put the Q6 in front of coaches full stop?
Then, there's the issue, as has been raised, of the period chosen to restore certain stations to. Should the NYMR only allow Mk1 trains to stop at those stations which are restored to 50s/60s condition? Is it wrong to have the bluebell run it's Metropolitan carriages to a station where everything else screams Mid 1930s?
Yes, I'm being a bit ridiculous with some of these suggestions, but that's the point. If you pursue complete authenticity in every single aspect, you either end up with almost all preserved railways having to replicate the same era, so you hardly ever get Big 4 represented, and even less from Pre Grouping, which would, I think we can all agree, be a big loss. Only in a few extreme examples can you ever have complete authenticity of all components, and so you will have to compromise. Thus, say you are restoring a Black 5, and the last 8 or so Black 5s to run have all been in BR colours, it is a bit of shame to slap the exact same paint scheme on it, if only for the sake of it goes slightly better with the stock.
Also, for the record, I think, even though it's not 100% authentic, Blood and Custard looks good coupled behind pretty much any steam loco livery (I can't really think of one where it doesn't). And as a good percentage of visitors to heritage railway don't know or understand whether the livery matches are authentic or not, the only thing they'll really care about with regards to liveries is whether it looks nice
Also also, I would like to challenge the notion that Mk1s are as durable as suggested. Yes, they cope better with being stored outside than something like a wooden bodied Teak coach, but it will still be deteriorating. We have many more Mk1s because they survived longer both for the initial preservation wave in the 60s, and then into the 70s and 80s when more preserved lines started up. That means that railways are more used to restoring them, but when you compare the different skills needed to restore a Mk1 (metalwork) vs a wooden bodied coach (carpentry), the relevant complexities in those skills, and the costs associated with restoring and maintaining one, aren't actually that different. Time for us to stop taking Mk1s for granted

 

Blimy - what have I set in motion? All I was trying to do was to speak up for uniform train sets and it just so happens that the best chance of doing this is pairing a string of Mk1s to a BR era loco. I agree that if you have the locos and coaches from a pre 1948 period they too would look great but most railways, for reasons that are well known, do not have these. I do not buy the notion that you have to have a certain period station to run a certain period train. This is 2018 whether we like it or not. I still say that that blue Deltic with a matching blue and grey Mk2 set in York the other day looked just right, despite the fact that when in service York looked very different. To me its about making the best of what we have, not what we could have had nor what we might have in future. I just feel that it's a shame that more effort is not put into matching locos to the trains that they pull - that is what heritage preservation should be about. But hey - I know others will disagree and it really isn't that important.

Peter

 

Peter - paint colour seems to generate much debate even though in reality its only rustproofing

I am very priveliged to volunteer for a railway that can roster 10 LNER/GNR teaks, 8 LMS, a maroon rake of 8 MK1, a carmine and cream rake of 9 MK1 and a good number of GWR coaches. I appreciate that we were lucky to collect such a stunning line up and appreciate other railways had to make do with what was available. The detractors should also remember that the average MK1 dates from the mid 50s and are themselves 50 to 60 years old

 

So you don't think it's worth collecting bodies from farmyards etc to restore and represent an earlier era? And you believe that the big four didn't run trains with a mixture of pre and post grouping stock? Or that BR ran trains of mixed big 4/Mk 1 stock? The railways that have charitable status are usually educational charities and therefore have a responsibility to go outside the realms of having trains where the coaches are all the same colour because they look nicer that way.

 

The big four lasted for 25 yearts; the BR steam age for 20 years. The NYMR hjas been an operating railway for 44 years so there is as much history in that time as with the other two. Why is what it did yesterday any less prototypical than what was done on the 13th March 1932 or 25th June 1964, to choose just two dates.

 

I wonder if some of this is generational. In the 1980s it seemed like grouping liveries were the order of the day where possible and br/nationalisation was seen as a dirty word. Now, after privatisation it is as I feel it is ok to like br 1950s liveries.

I think we are seeing more people say ‘oh I love br blue and blue and grey’. Which when clean looks good.

Maybe the choice of liveries reflects the youth of those making the decisions?

 

Jes - I give up on this one! Why do you think that I think that it isn't worth collecting coach bodies from farms etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. A terrier with the four wheelers on the Bluebell or the IoW is marvelous and beautifully representative of the Victorian era. I have great respect for the efforts involved But if you are trying to educate people about history surely you should try to to represent authenticity in the process. If you have a 1930s set of coaches - and, as noted, some railways do - then by all means paint locos of that period appropriately. But if you you mainly have stock from the 50s and 60s why not persuie authenticity and where possible paint the locos to match. But please, I do not think anyone's efforts are worthless and those who do the graft can choose any paint scheme they want. In expressing an opinion I am not trying to disparage with anyone's heartfelt beliefs. Honest Guv! It's only my thoughts on the topic

Peter

 

And don't forget to remove the rebuilt overall roof at Pickering, as there is a very low chance any MK1 coaches ever went under it in BR days as it was removed in 1952, and the first MK1 came out in 1951 and the first ones were used on the main express trains and not a line like the NYMR. Also if based in the 60's to turn the stations into halts and let the gardens get overgrown, take out the goods sidings and most likely most of the station loops as well and close down the signal boxes.

Remember some railways are closer to what they were like in the BR days, but most of them are far removed from the stock which run along the line as well. Also far too many people are on the trains as well. These railways only survive because Jo Public use them and so most likely not bothered what colour the engine/coaches are painted as long they are clean.

 

I think Pete has already said that all he is talking about is matching locos to carriages, not the 'whole scene'. Trains spend most of their runs not in stations, but running along lines which may now be single instead of double, probably lack telegraph wires and with linesides probably not an manicured as in steam days but the aim should be to do the best that can be achieved, or at least (or maybe even preferably) highlight and explain the differences.

Steven

 

Playing devil's advocate (who, me?) most visitors to heritasge railways only see the trains and locos in the stations.

 

I'd like to see as much as possible of the "whole scene" replicated - goods shed with a train and a loading gauge and a display of the range of things that were carried, a cattle dock with cattle wagons and so on, ought to be important displays, but the problem is so many of these facilities have been lost or have to put to alternative use because there is no suitable alternative. On the NYMR, for example, our best chance was at Goathland where there is the complete collection of components, complete with goods shed and the site of the stone crushing/loading plant, but any possible use of the goods shed had to be subservient to its modern day function as a tea room. Other features such a pole routes will have to wait for the unlikely day when there is money available. But... we should do our best, and as carriages represent the primary point of interface with travelling customers they are an obvious place to start and they're the sort of thing that enthusiasts will put their hands in their pockets for and will work on. What the NYMR has never had, from workforce to Trust Board, is the desire to collect and restore such a train, and provide encouragement for those wishing to do so, and it is that lack of desire that I find so disappointing. Even when we had a Trust Chairman who was supposedly preservationist in outlook he was unable to steer the railway onto a preservationist track.

 

Does the NYMR do many operations to Battersby nowadays? Is there anything planned for 2018?