7027 Thornbury Castle

I suppose the only hope now if if maybe someone that already has a fleet of Castles, were to use the chassis and running gear, for the next overhaul, and the boiler from one of their other Castles that way, 7027 might one day return to steam, possibly as an main line engine, if the desire is to shorten the time an engine spends under overhaul, so it can earn money sooner than later.

 

Is there any confirmation if & where they'd be safely stored? They're currently under cover at Loughborough but presumably that space'll be needed for something else before long. Does Didcot have a suitable spot ready and waiting?

 

I take your point Phil, but let’s be realistic…outside of Flying Scotsman, changing of a boiler on a mainline capable locomotive is non existent. We won't see 7027 without a seriously well off benefactor willing to pay to build a new boiler. At that point, you might as well build a new locomotive of a class that wasn’t preserved.

My views on engine swaps on cars probably summed up by my continual resistance to even turbo charging my naturally aspirated 4-pot in the various old Volvos I own…

 

It's not destruction, because Thornbury is still capable of being rebuilt, however difficult that may be. It would be different if someone was driving around in Thornbury with a Ford badge on the front, but they're not. Besides, most (if not all) GWR locos had boiler swaps at overhaul. Unless I've missed something somewhere, it's not the original boiler that is on the loco. As has been argued many times on here, it's the frames that carry the identity, so as long as the frames exist, so does Thornbury. See 841.

 

The idea that the frames define the identity was dismissed a long time ago. In BR days and earlier it was generally the accountants that had the last say. Nowadays it tends to be the owners. If it was the frames 45407 wouldn’t be 45407 and 5428 wouldn’t be 5428 for starters. At the other end of the scale HL 3860 wouldn’t be HL 3860.

 

Dismissed by some, not by others. Rood Ashton Hall, for instance....

 

The “frames carry the identity” line of thinking has long been dismissed by any serious historians. Working locomotives rarely are entirely original anyway.

 

<sigh/> - Do we have to get out the example of the short frame Drummond M7s that went into Eastleigh and a couple of months later magically reappeared with long frames while bearing the short frame number? If it were the frames that carried the number, they would have emerged with the identity of the long frame donor loco that sacrificed its frames in the process, and whose other parts were scrapped (along with a set of short frames).

Tom

 

The subject interests me as to why we place so much importance on identity of what constitutes an assembly of interchangeable metal parts? I often wonder whether Ian Allan would have had so much success with his ABC books of Locomotives if it were well known at the time that there was little point underlining with a coloured pen if identities were recycled at every works visit whereby each young boy could never be sure what he'd seen and what he hadn't. ;-)
The worse nightmare for a "spotter" would be finding out that what they had underlined was some other collection of parts than the one they thought they had recorded.......

There is clearly a human instinct in some (but not all) to know exactly what it is they see. I think the same reason why what constitutes by definition to be a species in the natural world, drives a similar urge to create lists amongst some naturalists?

Maybe Simon can confirm whether a relatively small class numerically, the Merchant Navy class, had only 30 sets of frames for 30 locomotives? I counted up recently that the class had 38 different boilers over their life in service with a few 'new' Loco's entering service with a second-hand boiler.

 

I would call it dismantling, splitting it down to it's components parts is no more destruction than it is when it would have been dismantled for overhaul during its service career. I have to agree with Phil that to 'destroy' the collection of parts that make Thornbury, would mean actually rendering the parts beyond restoration.

The best hope for seeing Thornbury together again now might be to let the 4907 group have their fun with the boiler. By the time it is built, through it's ticket and awaiting overhaul again there might be more call to put Thornbury back together again than to put the 49xx through a second ticket. As long as the rest of the Thornbury kit has been stored away properly, you're just back at the point you were when it came up for sale? Except you have a boiler that has been more recently overhauled.

 

The present adoration, respect and care spent on old iron will probably not last forever.
A more sporting view can take over.

How much and how fast can we take something up a hill somewhere in England.

Take the castle frame and remove the inside cylinder block and fit a single say 28/30 inch lowpressure inside cylinder.
Put a single new 4700 cylinder on outside between boggie wheels where cylinders belong.
Find a german single throw crankshaft and put on three new Saint wheels for 30 inch stroke
We now have a Chapelon beater thermally for next to no money.
Saints Castle?

 

I acknowledge that strong views exist about what is happening to Thornbury Castle (including whether or not it is actually suffering "destruction"), but that is an entirely separate matter from my exploration of the term "genuine", in the context of how genuine or otherwise 4709 will be.

 

If the restoration at the GCR were continuing, we would all surely consider what came out at the end as being Thornbury Castle, consisting of a lot of original parts, some new parts, and an interchangeable boiler. If Thornbury's identity doesn't reside in the frames, where does it reside? Does re-purposing the boiler mean that the identity has disappeared, so in that sense Thornbury Castle really is being destroyed?

 

I suppose the "classic case" is/are the two Gresley A1/A3 pacifics' Grand Parade. The first/original loco being involved in a quite damaging crash at Castle Carey between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The loco was removed to Doncaster works here it was written off and scrapped, with what ever was salvageable being repaired and put into the spares pool. A "paper" rebuild was made up from other spares from the pool i.e. frames, cylinders, boilers etc.........

 

I think that trying to pin a locomotive's identity down to a single component is a fool's errand - I recall reading that one of the Big 4 calculated asset life and the longest single component life (60 years) was the wheel centres.

"Thornbury Castle" will remain "Thornbury Castle" for as long as there is a collection of parts associated with that identity. That identity may well reside with the frames, but does not have to; as other examples given have shown, there are other ways in which identity may be carried through generations.

 

This is another strange thing, its been nearly a year that the 47xx group have (apparently) owned 7027 (on the basis that you shouldn't really offer to sell something that you don't actually own), yet until the last week or so (and even now I'm not sure) the bit that they really want, the boiler, has been left outside on a truck not covered up, no evidence of any preservative/protection works being undertaken, for gods sake with all the negative publicity its attracting I would have sent someone up to Loughborough to paint over the number on the smoke box door, but literally nothing seems to have been done, add into the equation that the frames are taking up valuable floorspace on the GCR it all seems extremely peculiar.

 

The identity is really just the remit of the owner. Lots of historical examples as mentioned in above previous posts. A current example might be : the frames and boiler from “Maindy Hall” are now “lady of Legend”.

 

One possible scenario and its not as far fetched as it may sound, is this, there are serious questions over the standard of work carried out by Llangollen engineering before they collapsed, look at the Patriot for example, it might even be the case similar faults are found, when the frames are built up, and the entire chassis needs to be stripped, and reworked, so faced with that possibility, of 4709 not being able to be progressed the more saner heads, will begin to question what are we doing why are we pursuing this, if we can't even get the frames right, and they might look at forgetting 4709 and completing the overhaul of 7027, instead, whilst reworking whats been done already to 4709,

 

The existential existence of Thornbury Castle is a new one for me.

But I think the salient point isn't the identity, it's the ability to restore it as a complete locomotive using as much of the components it was withdrawn with as possible, thus retaining a level of authenticity and a link to its past. This has been more than severely hampered by the removal of the tender tank and the boiler, arguably its greatest asset.

Then there's the moral obligation I have spoken about before, where we ask ourselves whether we are truly in railway preservation and restoration if we see things such as this (and the sentinel) being broken up for spares. For me, railway preservation does have room in it for conservations (where little is done), restorations to static display, restorations to working order, new builds, and conversions, but there's a clear difference between a more or less complete steam locomotive being broken up to service other projects and the use of a spare GNR boiler to build a replica Atlantic, for example.

 

Then why all this fuss over "destroying" 7027?