Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Indeed. As I have mentioned before, I have been trying - in vain - to locate the whereabouts of one specific small L&BR relic known to have been entrusted to a particular member some years ago. All attempts to contact him have failed and no-one else seems interested in/bothered about its absence. How many other examples of such a situation may exist? Yet we have a Trustee supposedly with a 'heritage' portfolio.

 

Absolutely agree it all needs to come together at some point. Problem then is that storage, often needing climate controlled environments, specialised archiving containers, cabinets etc to help prevent further deterioration.

It could be said at the moment, while being kept in people's homes that any items are possibly being kept as well as can be for now.

The is no reason a slow burn project couldn't be started with a website where people can register any item they have, whether in a private collection or being held as part of items donated to the railway over time, a description, where and when found or given, and a photo attached.

The items can then be assigned a catalogue reference which the current holder keeps as a record and until needed when the a proper museum is created.

At least people will then be able to see the objects even if not as yet in that museum, a virtual museum online.

But, with all these things, it will take time to set up,

 

And what is already in the custody of the Trust? Let's sort that out - even if storage remains in peoples' homes - so that there can no question about what is where, especially if (as is sadly uncomfortably possible given the age of many members and custodians) something were to happen to them unexpectedly.

Good record keeping is essential - and hard. If a world class institution like the British Museum can lose artefacts without knowing for years*, then how much easier is it for a small organisation like this?

* - given the current criminal case, "lose" may well have more sinister overtones in that case; I do not imply anything of the sort at the L&B.

 

I think unfortunately a small few may be lost, it's many decades worth of items being found by so many, people have moved, been lost track of, and sadly died and possessions maybe disposed of without knowing what they are during house clearances etc.

Sadly that may have to be just accepted as there is no true catalogue for now.

That's why I think initially, a fairly simple online database based website, simple submission form, and then the catalogue underneath is all that needed for now and promote it anywhere it can be.

I am very aware it's something else that's pulling time, often of volunteers, from other things which may be more pressing at the moment. There will inevitably be some items now lost to time or have disintegrated away completely being as it's now over 100 years ago, but no reason not to start as urgently as possible.

 

All fair, but without addressing the elephant in the room which is the apparent lack of a catalogue for what the railway is already custodian of.

How much effort, and with what priority, need to be considered carefully against other priorities - but bearing in mind that for those existing collections, we're straying into the legal duties of the Trust here, not the discretionary choices around extensions, carriages, etc.

 

It is straying into legal duties perhaps, but it's stretched over such a long time now, to perhaps point the finger at the current trustees, or incarnation of the trust, how ever you wish to look at it is a little unfair. It could be argued why wasn't a catalogue set up many many years ago and in the time of the association...or before.

As long as we try and do something fairly quickly, start that catalogue, start finding where things are, and for now maybe create some form of virtual museum based around the catalogue, we are doing something about it.

 

I am pointing no fingers, though that duty has long existed and the seeming absence of a catalogue or asset register casts a shadow over those who've been in office for much of that long time. But now that the issue has been identified, the requirement to act is increased and becomes more and more urgent.

Ultimately, though, this is about the protection of individuals. If items are believed to belong to the Trust, and cannot be found, it may cast suspicion on entirely innocent people as to why those items cannot be found. In the worst case, that could become criminal suspicion.

 

The west Somerset have been through this process over the last few years and are now on the verge of getting accreditation. Worth talking to them, I have contact details.
Keeping things in people's homes is the worst case. Again, we went though this. One member kept a number of valuable (to us) items in his home. Then he died and the whole lot got chucked away by his executors. We didn't know about this until after the event. It was a great loss. So do keep things on the railway in decent conditions of at all possible.
Ian

 

Maybe, but I doubt you can bring any criminal case where no database exists to reference to. In the case of the British Museum I expect they have had a catalogue for many many decades with which to present to any court.

Here, we just have to make a starting point, arguably something that should have been started a very long time ago by whoever, and go forward. As with many of these things it's another pull on time, most of which is volunteer time. We just need to do what we can as quickly as time allows.

A mistake, yes, anyone really to blame? Not really.

 

It's amazing how no-one is ever to blame, @DaveE . Even if they're the Trustee in charge of heritage matters. How odd....

 

This railway has been finding artifacts long before the Trust was even created, so, why wasn't a catalogue started then?

 

That may be true, but it doesn't get away from the fact that there is a trustee on the board with specific responsibility for heritage matters.

Anyone else who was voted/appointed into that position would immediately take action to correct the inaction of their predecessors, not just ignore it and say 'well no one has done anything before now, so I'll not bother either'.

It is literally their job.

 

Because, it seems no Officer has ever considered it necessary, and it was ignored when the subject has been raised. And as a member of 44 years standing I can recall it HAS been raised more than once, and here we are with Officers of the Trust with duties including 'Heritage' and 'Conservation', but no-one with a role as curator of relics/archives etc. Unfortunately, it would appear that despite the wording of the objects of the Trust in the Memorandum and Articles no Trustee has considered it a duty to set this up, or supervise it. As an illustration of what is in danger of happening, I was given Fred Kidwell's small collection of photographs by David Hudson some time when he was editor of the Magazine (so pre 1998), and I still have them locked in a fireproof safe. So that is probably 30 years ago. It is self evident that no current Officer even knows of their existence, let alone who has them. How many other instances have there been over the 45 years of the railway since it started. If Charles Box's glass negatives came to the Trust, as I have heard a rumour they were purchased, who has those ? And who knows ? It must be recorded and safeguarded so that the information is passed down to successive Trustees. This omission leads to a lack of safeguarding of the railway's history with the relics it has. If the rumour is true, all of the half carriage doors with Southern Railway paint and gilt lettering were reused for carriage building without one being retained for historical purposes. I hope I am wrong - perhaps @Dave can tell us that one was retained as received. If we had had a curator, such losses would hopefully have been prevented. What has been implied is correct it seems to me - it is the duty under the M+A for the Trustees to ensure this role is undertaken, and successive incombents have not done so. This ommission should be rectified at the AGM.

 

I wouldn't want anyone to be subject to criminal suspicion because they were the last suggested holder of an item, and it was then not known. No database would be required, and an evidence trail that ended with one person could easily be presented as evidence of their guilt.

The point about the British Museum is that maintaining such catalogues is hard, and that the alleged thief (a curator who has now been sacked) was in a position of trust and able to remove items from store, and deflect blame for a while. As importantly, and where the Trustees of the British Museum are rightly under fire, they sat on their hands when missing items were reported over a decade before the issue blew up.

So while it maybe not anyone in particular's fault, I'm reminded of the old story about Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody:

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have.​

In an organisation, that accountability falls upwards. Which means that it lies with the Trust Board as a group, because they have not for whatever reason already taken measures to deal with the issues that have been repeatedly raised to their attention

 

If I may give a simple example which I have encountered elsewhere...

Many heritage railways sites now have either rebuilt some form of signal- box for operational purposes and/or created a 'demonstration' box specifically as a museum-type exhibit - been there, done that One of the things which usually they need is the correct (for their railway) pattern of Lever Description Plate (LDP) - known by various names by various railways. So quite often they acquire a load of 'scrap' LDPs from somewhere, paint over them, and then have the new descriptions painted on them - and make a nice job of it usually.

But...how often do they first photograph all the LDPs for the historical record and note their provenance? - very rarely, I would suggest. Yet the information on the LDPs is often as valuable, if not more so, as paper records, especially in cases where it can be shown that the paper records vary from the physical reality (Chelfham being a good example). Equally important too can be the reverse side of such items if it includes the manufacturers details in the casting - a good example being this L&BR example http://www.trainweb.org/railwest/images/hw/ld-pilton6.jpg, where a photo exists of the front but none is known of the back.

 

We still have one of those doors in the high value container along with a few panels. We also acquired recently a number of thick walled polystyrene chilled food boxes, which we are beginning to move things into for better storage and easier labelling. For example the finds at Snapper, given to us by Chris Lane some time ago from Carriage 1, are now all in one of those, labelled and safely stored away for when we need them. But, it's a "when time allows" task.

By the way, I did say I would post some mid manufacturing pics of those seats in the centre of Number 9.

Below is the component parts for the straight parts mortice and tenoned, the next part of the process is the scarf joints for large piece you can see for the front of the seat. Second pic shows the reinforcing plates for underneath.

 

Oops, sorry Dave! I meant not outsourcing. My purpose in mentioning getting advice from a museum was so as to set up cataloguing using best practice as the last thing we would want is to reinvent the wheel, surely? Not to run the show!

 

In all seriousness - and admittedly as I'm no longer a member it's quite literally not my trainset, though I remain an EA shareholder - there is probably nothing more important for anyone on the line to be doing except those with direct operational safety responsibilities, than sorting out the catalogue. Carriage construction, planning applications, everything else can wait. There needs to be a laser like focus on who has got what and where it is, pretty much immediately.

Might sound melodramatic, but let's say that your mind isn't half sharpened when [non railway example] you have to sit down with a grieving widow and a representative of a leading auction house, the night before the sale, and work through the lots on the basis of 'actually, this wasn't his....' thank God the connections ran so deep that she co-operated fully, but it was deeply unpleasant for all concerned, we're talking a lot of items being 'safely' stored here, at the home of a celebrity with a related if not completely overlapping collection of their own (and only the appearance of the sale catalogue had made someone sit bolt upright and say 'er, hang on'....)

I dread that happening ever again.

But of course when he took them into safekeeping, it really did seem like the best option at the time...

 

My uncle (a senior banker) had a good line:

You can delegate work
You cannot delegate responsibility

Sent from my SM-T575 using Tapatalk

 

Not quite right - responsibility is delegated. What you can't delegate is accountability. In the supermarket, the manager is accountable for the store takings. The lady on the checkout is responsible for making sure she scans stuff correctly.