4920 Dumbleton Hall

In an email I received from The Railway Magazine today about the next issue it is reported that Warner Brothers bought 4920 for the new Harry Potter world in Japan.

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Here is the news item clipped from my email:

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Shame. Never been a great fan of GWR stuff but IMO that’s a loss to the UK heritage railway scene.

 

On the flipside, it'll be a first rate advertisement for UK heritage steam in the Land of the Rising Sun.

 

On the other hand, it ensures it's kept in conditions which prevent further deterioration, and it's not as if it was the only Hall around. I can see why it might feel like a loss, but given the limits on resources for overhauls and whatnot, it may actually end up being a better route to ensure its' future.

Plus, and I don't know the details of the previous owners or what other irons they had in fires, is it not possible that the money that changed hands in this arrangement may ensure the speedier return to action of other locomotives?

 

It’s GWR so a fourth rate advertisement at best.

 

Dumbleton wasnt exactly the worst shaped Hall about. There's still two that are unrestored and not under the most active of restorations. Beyond that, Hollyweird can make Colin Farrel look like Ray Winestone but can't make a convincing Hall for a theme park out of some marine ply and a few tins of paint? At least it's got a dry future and it's not like it can't return but it feels like a waste of a complete locomotive. At least it's released some cash otherwise tied up.

 

Oh, is she a different shape to the others, then?

The "faux Britannia" made for a recent film shows that Hollywood can make pretty much anything, given sufficient resources. But they are a business like everyone else: if buying a basically intact Hall is cheaper than making one from scratch - even just cosmetically - then why wouldn't they do so? And clearly a complete, but tired, loco is going to be quicker and cheaper than one sill in scrapyard condition.(*)

On another thread, there is bascically a circular argument that is going round "why doesn't railway X restore loco Y?", loco Y doing the complete review of the currently non-operational fleet. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reason is "because the money, people, space, materials and skills aren't there to do them all, certainly not at once". As enthusiasts, we need to wake up to the fact that if we want to see locos running - and certainly if we want to see a return to the 1980s when seemingly there were operational locos aplenty - then we have to pay for it. Railways as commercial businesses will run their fleet as lean as they can get away with (even assuming they have enough resources to do that). Anything significantly above that is down to us as the enthusiast collective to resource.

(*) Musing: For works of art deemed of national importance, the Government can put a stop on export if an impending sale makes such a thing likely. But normally they would only do so in order to allow time for fundraising for the object to stay in this country, not to prevent a sale. Firstly, it is doubtful whether you would call a loco that is one of eleven of its type to have survived, to be of great national importance. And secondly, even if you did, who would buy it instead? I guess there aren't buyers lining up to have bought it, because otherwise they would have done so already.

Tom

 

Meee-oww! Just thank your lucky stars they didn't go for a red flat-top!

 

If the only way to restore loco A is to sell loco B, we'll eventually run out of locos to sell.

 

Remind me ... How many 15xx class were bought from NCB (wasn't it?)?

How many Hughes 'Crabs' survive in preservation? Ditto S15s?

Not saying I disagree with your sentiment, merely pointing out grim reality.

 

An ephemeral "shape". Pictures of Bickmarsh Hall for example at Barry are pretty grim.

 

Which was really my point. If the last five years have shown anything (pace Llangollen and West Somerset), it is that this is a massively expensive hobby, and arguably for the first four or five decades it wasn't really paying its way; but that was being disguised by residual life in infrastructure and carriages; residual life that is now largely gone.

Tom