The "linear scrapyard" revisited

From the "Titanic" LSWR carriages thread and the BBC report we also have an owners view, (although he might have exaggerated what the railway told him)
"Owner Charles James, who does not own the land on which the carriages are stored, said: "We were told if they were still here after the 30 June they would be seized and burnt, and cut up.
"I care about these things, and [have] owned them about 30 years now, but all we've been able to do is keep the wet out of them and stop things getting any worse."
Fortunately the publicity he got meant some funding from the Titanic society and other sources, so some from the MHR are able to rent secure covered accommodation near the MHR to progress restoration.
Although sounds like even after restoration getting secure covered space with access to the running lines at say MHR, Swanage or the Bluebell line may be a problem?

But not all abandoned rolling stock has historical value, so perhaps railway trusts, rather than set deadline, could work together to check if any might take on some with a view to help owners get a plan to restore rolling stock, or advise owners if scrapping to get a bit of cash is the only way forward?

 

The Binbrook Crab springs to mind

 

Which bits of it? I seem to recall, at very least a (new) boiler would be needed. A real shame, as Mr Hughes' striking mogul seems pretty much the ideal loco for so many railways.

Poor old S15 No.841 needs to go on that list too.

In the case of both, I suspect they'll need a couple of people with very deep pockets to fall in love with them.

 

Poor old S15 No.841, as you call it, is alive and well (well, sort of) and running as 825. It's number is the owners choice as it is using 825's frames but had the frame swap occured at Eastleigh the loco would have retained its 841 identity. It still runs with its 1936 flat sided tender as befits 841 whereas the 1927 batch of S15s like 825 only ever ran with Urie style tenders.

Peter

 

The assumption is that it is entirely the owners fault something doesn't get restored but it is often not the case. On most railways there is a compete lack of workshop space. I myself own a coach in scrapyard condition and would love to get on with it but can't because there is nowhere undercover or even outside near a workshop to do it, so it along with lots of other vehicles gets left. Many railways are like that with 30 potential projects outside in sidings but only shed space for the 6 inside the shed to be worked on. Another one I am working on inside.

I have also been on the recieving end of the "get your coach off our railway" type letters and it did cause serious stress and worry over it. It is easy for posters on here to imagine it will result in stuff "magically" getting restored but such pressure applied can often just mean the scrapman gets called às there are no other takers. In many cases owners bought stuff straight from BR which had they not done so it would never have been preserved in the first place.

Trustees applying such pressure is easy but for the owner there are no easy decisions. You can't put it in the boot of your car and take it home.

Railways should go easy, Thornbury Castle and the Titanic coaches are both examples of projects that were for many years in limbo but now hopefully have turned a corner and will make progress.
Bit by bit over the years new projects get started but they can't start if they have already been scrapped because some hothead here today, gone tomorrow trustees fancied having a clear out.

 

Eek ...... Now I've got the theme tune to 'Soap' running around my head.

So, there's a kit of parts, some of which may or may not be present and/,or knackered if they are .... and I never even mentioned any tender. Is there enough left (of whatever the non-running bits actually are) to render restoration feasible?

Confused?

 

There are two kits of parts in fact. In addition to what is currently running as 825 there are two sets of wheels and frames from 830 and 841, one boiler and a suitable six wheeled tender frame. More than enough to create another working loco if there is the money and desire to do so, but I doubt that such a restoration is very high on anyones list. There are more than enough complete locos awaiting overhaul/restoration without the workshop capacity to deal with them as it is, so I see little immediate prospect of this happening.

Peter

 

I understand that one of the sets of loco frames is badly bent, damaged or otherwise deformed which would make restoration challenging... But as you say, one good loco could be made from two bad ones!

 

In the grand scheme of things, new main frames are surely nowhere near the challenge of, say, a new boiler, let alone an entire Peppercorn A1 or Gresley P2. The big difference is simply the desire to take the challenge on. Put like that, it sounds easy, doen't it? Much, of course, hangs on the condition (or existence) of other components.

I suppose the real drive can only come down to two factors. The first (of course) is the slight issue of finding the funding. The second is requirement. Here, surely the S15 scores pretty highly, being an extremely useful machine, capable of shifting pretty much any load any heritage line has to handle, on pretty much any gradient (barring the Foxfield's 1:19 and I'm none too sure an S15 would fit on the Foxfield anyway).

Pretty much the same, plus a boiler of course, applies to Schrödinger's Crab.

 

And of course the Urie group have an 'extra' boiler which could then be used to bring a second loco back to life. Whether they would be willing to sell it is another matter!

 

It’s not really Schrödinger’s Crab, is it? I thought someone had lifted the lid on the box and collapsed the wave function firmly on the side of “dead”.

Tom

 

Many things are heard, betimes. At one point, Single Fairlie Taliesin was definitely, no doubt whatsoever, once and for all scrapped, yet is now miraculously on the cusp of the present boiler's third ticket*. Is there less left of either S15 or the Hughes mogul?

Has there been confirmed confirmation of the disposal of the disassembled component parts of the "crab"? With so many contradictory statements, I've completely lost track!

* Yeah, yeah .... I know!

 

I just hope that one day there are enough parts left to reassemble the second S15 from the two sets of parts, along with the additional crab. Boiler repairs are getting more and more extensive and there will inevitably come a point where new ones are financially viable, so it behoves the owners of the collections of other parts to make they are retained in as near to usable condition as possible, ready for when their time comes.

 

Sorry, but I am slightly confused here.
If S15 841 is using 825's frames, then surely the owner is correct in numbering it 825, or do you mean that "825 has the frames from 841?
I always thought that 830 was at the Bluebell Railway unrestored.

 

It was in a siding near Grosmont the last time I saw it…

Simon

 

From the Bluebell website "When the opportunity arose for the Maunsell Loco Society to purchase Schools Class loco ‘Stowe’ it was felt that this would give the society a much better balanced collection, and to help raise funds for the purchase this second S15 was sold, together with spares obtained and a tender chassis (a former Schools-class tender, converted to a snowplough, ADS70227), and moved to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway".

 

You're gonna have to help me out here, Simon. I was confused enough when it was an it, but now it seems it is a they, so I'm wondering if the it you saw was it, or one of they.

I'm now confuseder than I was already .....

How many ruddy S15s are there in GOC?

 

830 – sorry, should've been clearer. No boiler but I vaguely recall 830 on the cab side. I think the current form of 841 is rather more akin to an Ikea flatpack…

Simon

 

830 was sold by the then owners, the Maunsell Locomotive Society, in order to fund the purchase of "Stowe". Q, U, S15 and Schools was considered to give a more representative cross section of Maunsell's locos than Q, U and two S15s.

As for identity - it has been covered many times, but the correlation between a loco's identity and frames is an enthusiast myth, and not something that was set in stone in pre-preservation days. There are well known examples where a loco demonstrably had a frame swap with another member of the class but emerged with the identity that didn't match the frames.

Tom

 

At which point, I'm rather giddily getting off this particular roundabout .....