6233 in LMS red and wider livery debate of locomotives/stock

Suggest you tell that to the face of the guy who has funded it then. I'm sure he'd love to hear your opinion.

 

Riverhead? That's a brewery and if you can get me steam haulage from Settle to there, I'll book ticket now.

 

There is a clear difference between an adaptation for modern use, so that the train (and not just the vehicle) complies with modern laws - a clear and necessary compromise for operation that does not intrinsically change the purpose of the vehicle - and cutting the end off a coach and fitting some metal railings for "commercial purposes".

Is it just because it was a Mk1 coach? What if the rear end had been cut off a Bulleid coach instead? Or a pre-grouping vehicle? Where do you draw the line between commercial needs and so called preservation then?

Asking me if I need a reality check is yet another one of your un-pleasantries. Do you ever discuss things as a reasonable human being?

Nothing of the sort - and the fact you continuously use that sort of thing to bait me is laughable in itself. Totally unnecessary and irrelevant to the conversation.

 

Ye gods.......I'm sorry.
Look, I'm old and just occasionally I get things wrong..............

 

He already has if he reads Steam Railway

 

Admit it, you've been on the Excelsior again.

 

Well that must be causing him sleepless nights - not.

 

And yet cutting the end off a coach and fitting radically different components to repurpose it is entirely in line with traditional railway practice, and we have some interesting survivals that owe their continued existence precisely to that sort of thing.

Such a slice and dice would be utterly inappropriate in a formal museum I'm sure we all agree. OTOH I suggest we must accept that it has always been standard operating practice on the ordinary service railway.
I think almost everyone accepts that a heritage Railway must tread an uneasy compromise between the often opposing requirements of museum and service railway. For myself I suggest that there is not a single perfect compromise, and that it's acceptable for different lines to take different positions. If I don't like the compromise a given line takes then they won't get my money, but I think we should avoid excessively aggressive criticism, or claim that there's only one correct way of doing things.

I remember thinking, on a steam tour last year, how one might design a carriage for enthusiasts who like sticking heads and cameras out of windows, and I was thinking something like a clerestory with a raised platform underneath... Would butchering an old Mk1 into something like that be a bad thing if it meant one were again able to enjoy the Cumbrian Coast line without safety restrictions?

 

That does not mean we can take perfectly good examples of coaches and change them irrevocably on a whim to suit a perceived commercial need - for which I am struggling to see that the Veranda coach serves. The observation coach? Absolutely, beautifully preserved as an example of its true purpose. There's your comparison for commercial need against historical value. They're not making BR Mk1s anymore - why is it acceptable to cut the end of one in that way?

Perhaps we should do an experiment and see what happens when someone cuts the end off a Maunsell coach to fit a veranda it never had. Imagine the outcry!

Sorry, but I just cannot agree that there was any commercial need for that truly horrific act to an historic vehicle, which is what a BR Mk1 coach is.

Right, so if it's on a preserved railway (note the term "preserved") but it is for "commercial purposes" it's acceptable, but for a museum, it isn't?

Sorry, I don't buy that.

For which I could agree, if this forum wasn't in fact named "National Preservation" and was instead "National Commercialism".

At the end of the day cutting the end off a Mk1 coach isn't preservation. You wouldn't cut the end off a Viking long boat to fit a diesel engine and a propeller, so why it is apparently acceptable to fit a veranda to a coach is beyond me. I think the notion of preservation has suddenly mutated into something distinctly unpleasant with enthusiasts of a certain age - perhaps seeing the £ signs and not remembering why people bought the steam locomotives, rolling stock and railways in the first place: to preserve or to portray as best as possible, a way of life that was disappearing from the everyday.

I think early preservationists would be utterly dismayed.

Surely it would be simpler to build a new coach in the first place and thereby satisfy the desire to poke one's head out of a window and not cut up a perfectly good, historic coach in the first place.

Such as that which is happening on the Welsh Highland Railway, actually!

 

I have some sympathy for various of the conflicting views expressed here, including some of S.A.C. Martin's, but I can't get excited about the (admittedly drastic) modification of one BR mark 1 coach. There are plenty of them about, in various states of repair, including many running on preserved lines and on the main line. The loss of just one as a preserved historical artefact in original condition seems to me a very small loss, arguably justified by its transformation into a different sort of vehicle that otherwise wouldn't exist at all. Quite a few others have been modified, albeit less extensively and only internally, for example to serve as support vehicles for steam locos.

 

This one isn't the slightest bit dismayed.

 

I presume therefor that you disapprove of those MK.1 conversions into support coaches (without which main line steam would not exist), volunteer accommodation, bar cars, stores vans, camping coaches etc.

 

Nor this one.

 

So don't...just shrug your shoulders and say 'OK.' Helps with the blood pressure and your keyboard will last longer

 

Hmm, the Verandah coach is no.70 because it was delivered ready for the chap's 70th birthday party. It was not a GCR coach in its previous incarnation. I don't personally like the thing (it looks like it should have some life-sized plastic animals on the verandah) but do we actually know that it was a "perfectly good" coach before the conversion? It might have been a total wreck, and maybe by restoring 4/5ths of it he's done more than anyone else has done to ensure it survives. I don't know, just speculating.

The Talyllyn, Ffestiniog, West Somerset, Llangollen & Didcot have all performed worse butchery on steam engines, and the Bluebell are going down the same path. And all of these are 'mature' 'preservation' schemes.


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I'm not dismayed in the slightest having been involved in preservation since 1973, its a Mark 1 coach and countless examples have been scrapped ON heritage railways in the past and possibly in the future.

This one has survived and has found a purpose rather than been neglected in a siding and left to rot, and in say 30 years and there was a need it could even be rebuilt back to what it once was (just another Mk1).

Celebrate the fact that it has survived when many have not - life's to short for all this breast beating IMHO.

 

I didn't think the concept of the veranda coach sounded that dreadful - until I searched for a picture of it. The thing's an eyesore, probably best left covered with a tarpaulin except when needed for the owner's birthday parties!

 

I have nothing to say regarding the concept of the vehicle but to me I would have not had all that open metal work at low level and had solid panels instead - it would soften the 'look' but also made it a dam site more comfortable to ride within?