Flying Scotsman

Seems the same answer as reported in the current issue of Trackside mag

 

Don't shoot the messager here, but online gossip is NSO have handed the contract and loco back to the NRM.

 

Has the NRM noticed that the Northern Steam Operations Director who wrote their Flying Scotsman custodian bid, left the company in June?

 

So, If that is the case, what happens now? does there have to now be another round of bids, or will the NRM, ask the former operators if they might wish to take it on,

 

Legally I would have thought under public procurement rules you would have to re tender unless of course there was only one other bid. Even then things may have changed and A.N.Other may now want to bid.
All a little messy if it is what is happening.

 

I think he's still involved. It's just a shuffling of the company to bring it under the control of Northern Steam Engineering. I was with James when the news that they were to look after the loco broke. He showed me it on his phone.
I can't comment on what was said in @guycarr360's post.

 

I think it would depend on whether there were two acceptable bids ranked first and second. In that case I think it would be possible to ask the second placed bidder whether their bid still stands. Time has moved on.

 

I've heard similar from a couple of sources.

 

Two tenders, you say…?

Simon

 

It’s normal to have three tenders in these circumstances. Wonder where they’ll get the third? Will it have a corridor?

 

Well, Its all turning out, to be a bit of a farce, if the reports do turn out to be true, The Science Museum group, who are the owners of the national collection, awarded the tender to a group that on the face of it had no previous experience of operating a main line locomotive, or one that's part of the national collection, please correct me if I'm wrong, How did this happen, might the NRM be better served if it was taken out of the group, and run as its own body, that way it could have its own director responsible for the collection and that included operations at its two main sites, and any NRM artifacts that operate on NR, in connection with chosen groups with the required experience and back up .

 

Why go of at a tangent like before we know the facts? I'm afraid it's not come as a surprise to me....
..

 

I'm sure it's just a cover up so that the NRM can say operating locos on the mainline is too difficult/expensive and let's spend the money on interpretation and more retail space

 

Museums should be about interpretation - not so much retail, although these days when we expect everything to pay its own way... however, I was saddened when the workshop disappeared: to me that was an integral part of telling the railway story.

 

Surely you’ve read Martin1656’s previous posts? He is a master of conspiracy theories!

 

Yawn, So back to the personal insults now are we, All I was saying is this, It did not make sence to me that a contract to operate an engine, owned by the NRM, and a high profile one at that, was awarded to an organisation with no apparent main line experience , And I have always questioned if the NRM, might have been better served as a standalone museum Where's the conspiracy theory in that ?

 

On the first point - do you really think that a bunch of middle aged men on a forum with no access to the facts can come up with a better judgement than a team with the specific role of doing a procurement, basing their judgment on reams of detailed plans, budgets, policies and so on? Procurements can go wrong, but one of the things you test for is evidence that the supplier can deliver what they claim in their submission.

On the second point - I remain to be convinced either way that the NRM would be better served as a standalone entity. The argument seems to be "the NRM is focused on [insert unpopular issue here] that I don't like and would act differently if independent". It is the second part of that premise that I think is debatable: an independent NRM may follow the same path as it is now under the wing of the Science Museum.

Still, I can see another rod for the NRM's back being created as we speak ...

Tom

 

All very interesting - when we visited Locomotion in late August and I had a lengthy chat with a couple of volunteers who had shown us round the support coach, it was strongly hinted all was not well with the Scotsman arrangements and that had led to the extension of it's visit to Shildon...

...there was also a suggestion that a lot of their locos were out of action and Scotsman and Rocket may have been the only things operational at that time.

Stu

 

I have worked (non rail) with procurement on both customer and supplier sides. At their best, they are excellent, but (especially in the public sector), they can also be dogmatic and process bound. In general, my view is that where procurements go wrong, it is usually because of an inability to see the wood for the trees once the process has initiated. That may be because the procurement itself is poorly prepared and therefore the assessments are defective, or it may be because the focus has been excessively focused on the stated assessment criteria, to the detriment of the wider whole.

All of which, long windedly, points to my not being altogether confident that the "reams of detailed plans, budgets, policies and so on" are the asset suggested.

 

I share your experiences on procurement from both sides, and would agree that as with many things (IT/AI for example) the outcomes are only ever as good as/entirely dependent upon the inputs.... what will be interesting is to see ultimately where the blame is finally laid if this sorry debacle reaches a negative conclusion, the favourite umbrella to hide public procurement failure under always used to be 'EU procurement rules' but they don't have that shelter any more.

Whatever has happened neither party are going to come out of it very well, the NRM are already derided by many (reading this forum some may suspect the majority) for various reasons whilst NSO are going to looking pretty odd spending all the time/money bidding for the thing only to hand it back sharpish, I suspect as much as anything any delay in announcing what is actually happening will depend on stories being got straight and faces being saved.

As for going forward, if only there were a heritage steam engineering company with extensive rail connected repair and maintenance facilities, experience of operating said locomotive, a very close relationship with its previous maintainers, who are already on the NRM's suppliers list (from experience of dealing with such organisation getting on the system to get your invoices paid can take longer than the duration of the sodding contracts at times!), and who desperately needed a high powered air braked locomotive.... that being said I suspect it will inevitably end up at Crewe.