7027 Thornbury Castle

Reminds me a little bit of this…

 

No need thanks. I know what I need to know, which isnt a lot and I'm satisfied not knowing.

 

All gone a bit quiet on the Thornbury Castle front. Is still donating to a worthy cause?

 

Hopefully folks have seen sense and she will be restored in her own right and not butchered.

 

Hmmm - Nothing on the website since last August …….


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Or Facebook. But their previous update was September 2022 so 11 months previous. It's only been 6 months since the last one!

To drag up this comment from six months ago, I think it's fair to say both 4709 and 7027 are GWS locos.

"Expenditure overall for restoration and preservation increased from last year and amounted to £1,663,287 as compared to £875,782 last year. The Water Tower restoration was £477,041 and locomotives with notable levels of expenditure included Loco 1014, Loco 1466 and Loco 4709. Expenditure on Loco 4709 included the acquisition of component parts from Loco 7027 and full and final settlement of these amounts will be made in the coming financial year."

From https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search?p_p_id=uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet&p_p_lifecycle=2&p_p_state=maximized&p_p_mode=view&p_p_resource_id=/accounts-resource&p_p_cacheability=cacheLevelPage&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_objectiveId=A14096623&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_mvcRenderCommandName=/accounts-and-annual-returns&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_organisationNumber=272616

 

It's all gone very quiet, not seen much mention of 4709 in the Echo even, for a group that is a) trying to pay for a locomotive they have recently purchased, and b) trying to fund the completion of said project they seem to be incredibly quiet on all matters.

On the bright side they don't seem to have been blighted by the same woes which have been suffered by the Patriot project in having to basically redo loads of tuff undertaken at the same time in the same place after the engineering audits were completed.

 

I note that the Didcot Railway Centre shows 4709 on it's stock list despite it being built elsewhere and as I had thought, independently from the main GWS?

https://didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/article.php/50/steam-locomotives

There is no mention of 7027 as an historical relict as there is for 280T 5227

 

Is she at Tyseley, about 35 secs into this?

 

4709 or frames there of, were at Llangollen, then Tyseley but never Didcot afaik

 

Didn't the 47xx then end up going down to Devon somewhere between Llangollen and Tyseley, pretty sure she has never been near Didcot so far, albeit my comment re the Video at Tyseley related to 7027?

 

Sorry yes, 7027 is at Tyseley with 4709 afaik. My point was that Didcot mention one but not the other as part of their stock list.

 

One suspects that one is rather more controversial than the other, which possibly explains the overall silence for now.

 

FWIW this was explained in this years finances booklet. Apparently a County bill was accidentally paid for out of the 47xx budget, so the money had to be transferred back.

 

That's because they probably don't/didn't have the labour resources to do the work at Didcot. As such, buying 7027 for its boiler wouldn't have made much sense if there was no labour to do the work. But now, the folly of buying 7027 has probably near-terminated the supply of donations!

 

According to the GWS balance sheet in front of me "Locomotive 4709" had the greatest income of any of the restricted funds last year. While my impression is that they are not popular with many people who are based at Didcot, judging by newsletter (lack of) content and my very limited contact with people there, the project is clearly still pulling in the cash. At Didcot there's an emphasis on infrastructure. They have restored the water tank and coal stage and installed the much needed entrance ramp and are currently rebuilding the former Heyford station and planning a major renewal of the locomotive shed roof.

 

Which makes the lack of news of any progress on 4709 for a year even more puzzling.

 

Not when you consider there is a limit on the number of volunteers available for any projects. I would imagine that even with contractors working on some of the infrastructure projects, there is likely still a lot of volunteer hours going into those. While volunteers who prefer to work on locos are probably concentrating on the 'operating' fleet.

[Edit. Thank you Jimc, I'd forgotten the project was based at Tyseley. Above comments still valid, but not necessarily relevant to 4709 project.]

 

Don't forget 4709 is based at Tyseley. As far as I can tell its really not much to do with Didcot staff and volunteers. My suspicion, and I have no more information than the rest of you, is that after notorious events the 4709 people were requested to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. If you want unofficial reports on what's going on I would have thought they were best sought from Birmingham.