Bulleid Pacifics - Past or Present

Tom, your spelling is getting atrocious. It’s heavens, not heathens.

 

Sorry, yes, you are of course right, how could I have overlooked Blackmore Vale,

 

The first Merchant Navys to go, and as well as the @Jamessquared key point as to why they were sent there, I can only presume that Woodhams didn't get invited to tender, or for some reason didn't respond.

And, rather sadly for some of us, it seems that the missionary work by those two (who both paid the price for their work and were consumed by the natives) did have an impact and now means that 35018 is being kept by the same native populations in that bleak and desolate area known as 'North of Watford'.

Bryan

 

And look what they did to 35029 Bryan!

 

Display of nameplates at Duxford today.

 

A very serious reason for the Battle of Britain class nameplates at present of course (85 years ago), but re the runner up class, LOL!

And I am so pleased they are showing 303 Squadron - the highly succesful Polish Squadron that failed to get proper recognition for a very long time.

 

Indeed yes.

They were going to consume it, but thankfully a human missionary from the south, after having somehow got out of the cooking pot himself, converted them to Bulleid, so what was untouched of 35029 was left in the part-consumed state.

Bryan

 

Was it the cooking pot or the Spam-Can they got out of?

 

On a summer’s day it is sometimes hard to tell the difference …

Tom

 

...........and Rotherham is not in the North East! (Not in my book anyway)

 

Went about as well as the missions to North Sentinel Island, then.

 

The reason why Woodhams bought so many was for the copper in the firebox, as the price of copper was rising he looked at them as an investment and scrapped wagons instead. He was well and truly done with the Bulleids and for that we should be thankful

 

What copper would that have been in Bulleids then John?

Peter

 

I took the context of @Johnb post that Mr Woodham bought the Bulleid's in the same way as other locos, hoping to make a gain on the copper fireboxes, but hadn't realised that they didn't actually have them.

Would be interesting to know if that is in fact true or an urban myth - it would seem unlikely that a savvy businessman would make such a simple error? But maybe it was a later realisation, i.e. he bought them knowing in the 1960s what they contained, but realised in the 70's and onwards that any loco with a copper box was accumulating value very quickly. In other words, the realisation he had bought lots of cheap and rapidly accumulating copper came later in the 1970s with very rapid inflation, but hadn't necessarily been the intention in the 1960s when he bought them.

Tom

 

That doesn't sound very likely to me. When preservationists came along was he selling Bulleids any cheaper than locos with copper boxes? As you say, it sounds like an urban myth to me.

Peter

 

IMHO it is pretty inconceivable that BR would go out to tender for the sale of a loco and not say anything about the quantity of non ferrous material in it as that would significantly affect the tender offers. It is also pretty inconceivable that an experienced scrap metal merchant would put in an offer in ignorance of the amount of non ferrous material.

 

My understanding has always been that the wagons at Woodhams were much easier to cut up and sell on, so they were done first. Giving a much better cash inflow early on.

Bryan

 

They are certainly easier to cut up and there was a steady supply from BR during the 70's and later. A lot of the non-ferous could easily be removed from the steam locos, and was, so that much of the cost of buying them could be recouped without much effort. I think Dai Woodham also cottoned on to the fact that he could probably get more from selling locos to preservationists at scrap value plus a bit than he could from cutting up because cutting up costs money. It was just a question of waiting. He was a business man, after all.

 

After 92085 and 4156 were cut in July 1980, 35025 was next in line...

 

Very little, that’s why I said he was done.