6100 Royal Scot

Perhaps this whole sorry saga is the WAKE-UP call that the preservation movement has been ignoring for far too long despite Pete Waterman pointing out the sad facts of ( heritage ) life in the 1990s during his involvement with 4472 The Flying Grotman. It is time to stop thinking about "playing trains" and enter the real world where handling large sums of money means having serious controls, serious management, respect for and knowledge of legal requirements and the understanding that the commercial realities are a world apart from playing trains where there is no responsibility and a complete lack of knowledge about finance and law.

Pete Waterman was castigated during his involvement with 4472 but - as he said at the time - it costs serious money to operate any steam locomotive and if the only income is hire charges then they have to be at a level that can fund the locomotive's need - both current and future. This view was similarly expounded by David Smith at Carnforth who - in the same decade - stated quite bluntly that main line steam operations would last only as long as owners like himself were daft enough to continue digging ever deeper into their pockets to fund it.

It really is about time that some enthusiasts who demand owt but pay nowt understand the true costs of restoring, operating and maintaining a steam engine and give credit for those who commit and succeed and take note of those whose failures can best be explained by a lack of organisation which confirms their inability to move from the amateur to the professional approach in locomotive management.

 

http://railways.national-preservation.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=17460&start=240#p279264

Posted on 21st March and stating "So don't expect to be hauled by 6100 in a passenger train anywhere for a while yet." Yet five days later people were doing being hauled by 6100 on the WSR.

 

Focussing on the giving credit bit, if you were an owner, who would you trust with your locomotive project, to create a dependable and impressive performer, without bankrupting you? I'd trust Carnforth, Crewe, Tyseley or Loughborough, not because of any regional bias but because my knowledge of who's responsible for other success stories like 34067 is lacking.

Would anyone else like to accentuate the positive and name other names, but in a good way?

 

Okay that's fair enough. Very reasonable.

If it appeared that I was having a go at you, then I apologise without reservation.

 

The line about the valve gear being worn is a smokescreen to mask more serious issues. Pete Waterman has been wise enough not to air the preservation movements dirty washing in public unnecessarily. I hope and feel sure he will do his bit towards setting the record straight without it becoming too overtly public. He does know where the problems lie, having experienced something similar during his involvement with Scotsman.

 

I should think the fact that Pete Waterman and his team have been non-commital about 6100 working on the main line this year with a few hints from various sources that there is more work to be done than had been previously been made known would be suffficient clue to those with a feel for the situation to accept that problems exist - but they won't be solved by showing blame but by simply getting on with the work which - as most owners now report - will be finished when its finished.

 

"Don't expect" means there is no guarantee it will. It doesn't mean it definitely won't. Just that it wouldn't be wise to expect it to happen.

Anyway, since the point has been raised, I'll tell you a bit about the background.

That comment was posted around the time that 6100 had been steam tested and it had been discovered that incompatible threads had been used on steam fittings, rendering them rather dangerous. The Crewe staff were apparently quite shocked and a decision was made to take it to the WSR and run it light engine. They did not at that stage expect to be able to run it on any trains. Pressure to meet the deadline for funding meant that enormous efforts had to be put into getting the engine into a reasonable state of fitness. My understanding is that subsequently it was thought prudent to operate a train with it on the WSR if possible in order to avoid disputes later (about whether it was really operational or not) and that was achieved. It was in no way an indication that it was really fit for purpose. To be frank I dare not mention on here some of the problems that engine has presented. Suffice to say there is a lot still to be done.

 

That's self evident to most people. But there are a small minority who relentlessly try to present a case that there is nothing wrong, when plainly there is. That is what perpetuates the debate. It's happened on other threads as well, one of which has been recently locked because of it.

 

A reply worthy of a politician, you should enter parliament sir. You posted the comment on the 21st March, it left Crewe on the 20th so the steam test had already been carried out and someone, somewhere deemed it suitable to send it to the WSR. I can't believe it was sent without the intention of it working trains. It operated more than one train at the WSR and then went on to operate trains at Llangollen. No matter what problems still exist with 6100, and it's obvious there are a fair few, this is a far cry from "not expecting to be hauled by 6100 for a while yet." Any normal person would take this to indicate that haulage by 6100 was highly unlikely in the near future, not exactly what happened in the end.

 

It would have been interesting to see a main line FTR inspection report

 

It's not been put up for main line yet has it Frank? Fit enough to run on a heritage line is a different kettle of fish to fit to run on the main line. I'm not denying that 6100 has problems but I refuse to believe that it was allowed to operate on both WSR and Llangollen in an unfit state.

 

You can say what you like. In fact you're the one that comes over as the potential politician. What I don't get is why you and one or two others so resolutely defend the shoddy state of affairs that surrounds 6100. Unless of course you have some direct involvement...

I don't have a hot line from Crewe or anywhere else, and I don't have time to devote to hourly updates on this forum. Sometimes I don't get to see it for several days, or even weeks. So it's unreasonable to expect up to the minute information, and from what you say probably what I posted was a few days old. But it was certainly correct, whatever you might 'believe' or not. Developments happen, situations change, and it's a kind of tribute to the hard work those guys put in, that they were able to progress as much as they did. After the shock of discovering very unsafe mountings on steam fittings, the feeling and the message I got was very pessimistic and that's what I based that particular posting on.

If you feel accuracy (in this case predicting the future as well) is so important, perhaps you'd be better rewarded if you directed your attention towards those who are actually paid to report, but are considerably less accurate than is typical on this forum.

What I try to do is give a general guide. I don't do press releases about other peoples affairs. Especially not when the people involved aren't expecting it.

 

Who said anything about defending anything regarding the state of affairs surrounding 6100? Most people who have posted here accept that all in the garden is far from rosy. As for not having a hot line to Crewe and not having time to post hourly updates, perhaps checking with your sources before posting info would be a good thing. How many people were dissuaded from planning a trip to the WSR on the basis of you saying not to expect haulage behind 6100 for a while yet? Maybe none, maybe some, we'll never know I suppose. If you must recycle hearsay - and you don't admit to being on the inside so it must be hearsay even if your sources are on the inside - then at least double check before posting before posting what turned out to be misleading info.

 

SO WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY GO??????????

 

I see Impala is back to his usual old tricks.

Pity he does not have the balls to disclose his real name. although Im sure other "friends" Know him!

No doubt Bressinghham will think long and hard before they return another loco to steam? But after the bashing (rather than credit) they have received getting 6100 who can blame them?

Jim S

 

This is a typical engineering scenario where switching contractors mid-work leads to an overall lack of confidence in the end product.

Stepping back a few years, I would imagine the overall project objective IMHO is "to overhaul 6100 to mainline condition to allow it to operate railtours on the national network and preserved railway lines for a period of 10 years with a set constraint of x amount of time and within a budget cost of y"..

It's clear 6100 met the milestone of time, but the budget was exceeded.
The mainline objective has yet to be reached.

In the news, reports suggest owners lost confidence in the original contractor based up timescales not cost or quality, and transfered to a new contractor.
Any new contractor will perform their own thorough investigation, and naturally "as a work in progress" they will find a large list of defects for a product yet to perform any level of testing or UAT.
Any contractor's list of reccomendations has to be balanced against the contractors own objectives (which almost always is financial in one way or another) and in relation to the projects overall objectives...

For example (and I theorize here).. Air Brakes ar not a mainline requirement, neither are smoke deflectors, nor an extended waterspace in the tender.. these are all nice to haves, which detract funds from the overall budget but dont help reach the objective... and could have lead to the budget overrun (i.e. where the money went to). (I dont know the circumstances).

At this stage where funds have been exceeded, stricter controls are needed on the contractors, no matter what the circumstance that the contractor was appointed these are required...remember Trojan Horses are always glittering and shiny, it's best to check first.

The best way to check is impartiality, therefore I think Tbirds suggestion of an FTR exam may be very useful, it's impartial.
It provides a complete list of what is required to meet the objective.. and excludes a list of "nice to haves" to make a perfect engine...

it's easy to get carried away in industry it's got a name that every PM knows to well... "Scope creep".

If I were running this project, I would have the FTR, (it's contractor independant) and the acceptence test criteria for Network Rail, table this list as action items, consider the budget and exclude, postpone any items that would not meet the projects overall objectives. Seek quotes for the work.

If the Mainline objective cannot currently be reached then I guess you have a few other options, Ive suggested some below

1. Do nothing (retire the engine).
2. Minium work to allow preserved line access.
3. Consider selling the engine ?
4. Seek additional funds to meet the mainline objective at any cost.

In a cold hard commerical world, from my view point, I dont believe the objective of 6100 was to make profit, if so this project would have never started or if so, it would have been on very different terms. With no money on the table I would suggest option 2 for a couple of years then option 3 to recover costs... remember the engine is secured to a loan to the bank as well.. which may end up some day being a risk to it's owners !

I feel sorry for the project sponsors.. they must be having a nightmare.

 

You're one of a small number of posters that have been quite aggressive on this subject for several months. Not just on this thread either. On top of that I received an interesting PM not long ago which suggested that you have a particular agenda. The sender knows a lot more about what goes on in and around this forum than I do, and it sort of explains your apparent rabid mentality.

Anyway, I don't intentionally post inaccurate information, and it's certainly not heresay either. All but a couple of forum readers understand that. If you don't or won't, that's too bad.

 

Now there's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

What tricks would they be?

Certainly not sending a series of abusive and threatening PM's, and posting similar on a public forum, as you do.

 

Oh dear. This is the best laugh I've had in ages. I have absolutely no connection with Bressingham, Southall, LNWR Crewe nor any other contractor/organisation involved on the whole sorry saga so have absolutely no agenda of any description whatsoever where 6100 is concerned. My prime objective for the past 33 years and for the foreseeable future is the well being of 34081 and anyone who suggests otherwise clearly doesn't know me well if at all. If you wish to believe what others send you in a PM then so be it but I won't be losing any sleep over it. As far as "hearsay" is concerned then I suspect semantics are at work here. The dictionary definition is "information received from another person that cannot be adequately substantiated" so if the information you post is received from another person and not backed up by personal substantiation then it is technically hearsay. NoW you may have been to see 6100 and verified the reports first hand but if this is the case then you have not AFAIK imparted this to the rest of the group.