Which loco do you think should be built in the future

Absolutely, and there is plenty of evidence to prove that the oldest suviving terrier retains much of its original fabric, although it lessens with each major overhaul. Will be interesting to see if any of the standard tanks can retain their original tanks for 141 years.
Daniel

 

Well, clearly substantial parts of those locos have been changed, though there is evidence (on Fenchurch at least) that quite a lot remains original. But change has happened through their life - the first recorded replacement cylinders in Fenchurch was in about 1873...

But your original point was about diluting the "pedigree" of the historic gems. Such locos have a continuity of existence, but don't have a continuity of fabric: the fabric gradually gets replaced. So if you are really concerned about the remaining original fabric of such locos, the only solution is to wrap them in cotton wool in a museum. And if, at the same time, you want to preserve steam traction, the only alternative is to build new - or else to keep restoring the old gems, but accept that ultimately they contain little or no original material. You can't have both...

As for finances: yes, raising money for a new build is hard. But I don't notice money flooding in to keep "original" locomotives running either - the point is, all fundraising is hard in the current climate. Finding accurate costs is notoriously difficult, but I'd be interested to know whether the whole life cost of restoring a Barry wreck plus, say, two heavy overhauls (to give thirty years of running service over a period of, say, fifty years) is more or less than constructing a new build of similar size plus two overhauls to give a similar amount of service: I suspect the new build would have higher first cost but lower ongoing overhaul costs, at least at for the first two or three overhauls.

Tom

 

On a side note. Reading this months SR yesterday in the Mail bag section someone has asked should we consider building new coaches? I wonder how much longer mk1 coaches can last for? We can keep building new locos but at some point in time we will need to build new coaches.

 

A interesting point although many restorations of older coaches (I'm not thinking of Mk1's but those that served as garden sheds and the like) are practically new-builds. We certainly have no plans to construct matching coaches for our build, but in an ideal it would certainly be nice to have a matching rake of appropriate LNWR period coaches. In the long run, I suspect need will drive the call for new coaching stock to ease the load on existing stock.