Standard Class 5 Found in Council Office

Suggested as resident of Derby?
Raising a relatively modest one off sum disposing of an appreciating and culturally important asset does not seem a wise course of action.
Would it be better owned privately?

 

I previously posted "How many other Councils own things, such as ships, aircraft, buses etc, they might decide to sell off?".
There's been a TV programme that showed Councils across the country are sitting on a fortune in art works.
One council in particular (Leeds?) has £120 million worth of old masters paintings sitting in a vault because they have nowhere to exhibit them. During the programme the question was asked "Why not sell them off to solve all your financial problems".
"These were bequeathed to the City, or else bought many years ago and are therefore owned by the residents of this city, so we cannot sell them off"

 

Can it ?, I get the impression from most loco groups if your even close to breaking even your doing extremely well.

 

You can make a small fortune from owning a steam loco. (Provided you start with a large one.)

 

To save everyone some time, I'd suggest people go and read the CoB thread from here onwards:

https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/46235-city-of-birmingham.16632/page-13#post-750251

since I suspect all the same arguments are going to get rehashed!

The digested read: any potential sale is a drop in the ocean relative to what the council needs to raise, while at the same time being fraught with PR problems as well as the technical difficulty of a museum de-accessioning part of its collection while maintaining museum accreditation (which instantly reduces the pool of possible buyers from "very few" to "hardly any", thereby further reducing the amount of any possible capital windfall).

The digested read, digested: Forget it, peeps.

Tom

 

In this particular case, the council can't sell it at the moment because of the existing care/custody agreement for the duration of the boiler certificate. When that ends, even if they are in a position to sell (as Anthony says, they won't be - unless the law has changed by then), the loco won't be worth much at all.

Just another example of this pressure group trying to manufacture a stink.

 

Sutton Council own the Terrier of that ilk. Formerly Whitechapel but they bought it and renamed it after the original Sutton was scrapped. The original idea was to stuff and mount it in a new Civic Centre which was never built. So, for as long as the Council has owned it, Sutton has never been there.

 

And some on this forum jumping the bandwagon without any thought as to why a council disposing of an asset would be of long term benefit.
Sell it so we can see it being played with on the big railway is not a massively compelling business case really, is it? MRC has done a great job already restoring it and allowing it to be seen across the country so why change anything?

 

Refreshing to see the number of positive comments from the newspaper readership (scroll down the page), very sensible and the vast majority in favour of the council keeping the loco. If the paper was muck stirring it seems to have backfired, as most locals appear to be in favour of Derby owning some of it's heritage. £350,000 (if they were able to get this for 73129) would be very little in the scheme of the £60 million of savings required. The council, the loco and the public of Derby have a very good deal at the moment, why change it? The loco is in steam, has a secure future (without any cost to the tax payer) and thousands of people are currently enjoying it at the Severn Valley - just sounds like some pathetic, anti public service, non-story to me.

 

And we all know what happened to Northampton Council's museum accreditation when it sold the Sekhemka statue.

 

And Bury when they sold artworks a number of years ago... As used to be in one of the Thomas stories "It's not that it's wrong, it's that we just don't do it"...

 

It would be if i had the brass....

 

On the face of it, a disposal would fail the "toolkit" test of the loco being more accessible to the public, but I don't think this would necessarily apply to all railway artefacts owned by museums. Paradoxically however, having a loco in operation practically makes it less accessible, as I found out when wanting to check out some construction details of a Duchess some years ago when 46229 was first operational - the NRM was unhelpful, Birmingham had no problem, come in an hour before the museum opens to the public.

Changing the subject slightly, Anthony, how does the other end of the process work, i.e. the acquisition process, as most museums including the NRM seem to have far more stuff than they can display? Do you actually reject anything which is offered to you? If you happen to find you have two of the same item, can you sell one? Some years ago, the NRM disposed of a number of nameplates, so it may be they were considered duplicates or the current policy did not apply.

 

I suppose the councillors of Derby might have been more enlightened if this loco was actually operating in their own county at one of the Derbyshire heritage railways. If it is a Derby Museum item then it should, I would think, be more easily seen by the citizens of that City and the County.

 

You do realise that is HAS been operating at a Derbyshire railway for a number of years?

 

I must admit, the whole de-acquisition process is a dark cave to me too. Museums do seem to do it fairly regularly, so why some have lost accreditation (above) as a result of doing so is confusing to me. There must be some process you have to go through to do it, and they didn't follow that, or something like that.

Noel

 

Of course if they had any sense they could use the engine as a "flagship" advertising not only the M.R.T. but Derby Council itself. What's more being a little mercenary, they could take the engine back and hire it out themselves to who ever/ where ever they like at a price. Thus making money out of it themselves......

 

Indeed!! I wonder who within Derby Council is an expert on Caprotti valve gear.