Current and Proposed New-Builds

I've banged on about all this before, but as I know you all love hearing me bang my drum...

And then I cleverly brought in another of my hobby horses:

The background to this is here:

and here:

 

I had, unfortunately, forgotten that the F5 project even existed until you pointed it out! Having looked at their website, I see that there's been visible progress on the project recently

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I understood that the GWS' decision was down to the very considerable additional costs of main line operation with no guarantee of being able to recover those costs.
Ray.

 

Yes, the G5 and F5 groups are quietly getting on with it, as of course are the 3MT group. Nice to see. I'm sure all three will be big attractions at their home railways and at galas when they appear. As Tom says, probably more of an attraction than a mainline loco.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

 

Yes, I believe that was the main reason. But it hasn't stopped some of the other new build teams.

 

I'd be interested to know the breakdown of the costs. Fitting all the gubbins necessary can quite sensibly be left out (as they can always be retrofitted). Physical size issues for loading gauge issues seem sensible to do now (as they can't be retrofitted). The whole accreditation paper trail (which seems to be a significant cost on many of the newbuilds) is interesting - can you retrospectively get it?

 

Surely there is more to it than that. It's not just the cost of the equipment and certification - it is the fact that at the end of it you end up with a loco of very restricted route availability and likely low speed potential that is also expensive to get in and out of its base. If you were a promoter of main line charters - why would you even give such a loco a second glance as potential motive power when you could have Tornado or a Merchant Navy that fit anywhere in the country with the same haulage ability and for pathing can run at probably 15 or 25mph faster?

So it seems to me that more realistic heads must have realised that they would likely go to considerable expense to make a mainline loco that would get essentially no work. Far better to go down a heritage route where it either forms an attraction at Didcot and keeps future overhaul costs down by virtue of running very low mileage; or else would probably be attractive to two or three of the larger GWR-origin heritage lines that could conceivably offer 100+ days per year if desired.

To me, the surprise isn't that the decision is to eschew the mainline; it is that it has seemingly taken a long time to reach that inevitable decision.

Tom

 

Tom,

I dont doubt that in one sense you are quite right.

But the 47xx is a big powerful machine - like Tornado & Blue Peter. Nice I am sure on the WSR but it really needs to be put through its paces and that means the main line.

Yes, I know it costs but if you can get the money................

 

Money is the one thing that is going to be in short supply right across the heritage railway movement once the present emergency ends. Some railways will struggle to survive without the income lost due to the shutdown. I'm sure worrying about which new-build is, or isn't, going mainline will be the least of the many problems we will face.
Ray.

 

There just aren't the people there to make it happen.

Not long after it came back from the GCR in 2013, I remember being sat on 6023 with one of the paid staff during its annual, and it was the resolute opinion of both of us that it would never make it onto the mainline. There were just too few people trying to take on too much, with known obstacles, such as gauging, threatening to undermine the whole thing. However, we also knew not to underestimate the naivety of those who will continue to believe something is still possible no matter how much reality they are confronted with. And so the announcements in the railway press continued. 'Mainline this year', 'mainline next year', 'mainline by Christmas'... Not to mention several more years of physical effort, for no result.

Putting a 47xx on the mainline seems to be based on a lot of 'ifs'. There comes a point when it becomes akin to standing over a military map, pushing around unit markers that bear no relation to the actual strength of the unit in the field.

 

It's not only the 4700 and the King that won't be going main line. The same applies to the Saint. I don't know about the County or the Grange.

 

The Grange is a non-GWS group. I believe they are still planning on going mainline in the future

Keith

 

Apart from making a change from a Black 5 and having some useful climbing grunt its perhaps not your ideal mainliner...
If the Corona situation does close some railways down the focus on saving/ salvaging the most significant/ important items from those railways before they get sold off for scrap will surely suck a significant amount of attention from New Build activities

 

I think that's rather jumping the gun. If a railway was to close due to Coronavirus, I would expect there to be a revival company setup to take over and resume operations at a suitable date.

The idea of taking unrestored or part restored locos for parts for an unannounced new build is, I feel, a bit of a stretch. Yes it has been done in the past with the Barry 10, but those were a bit of a special case. The idea that locos (particularly steam) would be sold off to the scrapman as a first call would not seem to be the best method of realising cash.

Keith

 

The difficulty however would be the ability of the Heritage Railway movement to raise sufficient cash to buy everything at a better rate than the scrapman.

If there were to be a crisis in Heritage Railways, I wonder if The Government might step in to prevent 'heritage' items going for scrap?

 

I wouldn't bet on it - but I would put a bet on the government pressurising creditors (especially banks) to make sure that they try to support keeping struggling firms going rather than doubling down on a Covid induced recession by shutting down otherwise viable businesses because they couldn't trade through the lockdown period.

 

Hard to imagine. Firstly, the Government already has a collection of 100+ locos that it deems of national significance. Difficult to then say that several hundred more should be added to the collection - apart form anything else, what would the Government do with them? And then you have duplication: there is already a Black 5 preserved by the Government, so it would be very hard to justify that another dozen or more should be added based on their cultural significance just to prevent their being scrapped.

The other point is why just railway items? If you made the argument that railway items had a cultural significance that warranted state intervention to prevent their being scrapped, then why not historic cars, aeroplanes, paintings, country houses ... There is a huge amount of cultural capital in the country, and the Government can't preserve all of it.

The most I would expect, or hope for - as @35B mentions - is that some way can be found to keep inherently viable organisations going until such time as confidence returns to their core visitors to resume visiting.

Tom

 

AFAIK there is a mechanism in the USA that protects 'artefacts' in the same way we protect buildings.

I'm not suggesting that HMG takes over responsibility for the remains of a rusting Austerity or whatever BUT that some sort of 'listing' prevents its destruction

 

I think that is the wrong mechanism. In principle, the Government does occasionally step in to prevent significant art works being sold abroad, typically to allow museums or others a chance to raise sufficient money to keep them in this country. But listing is a necessarily going to be too bureaucratic a process for what is really a requirement for immediate support. The need is to get through the next few months, not come up with some criteria for deciding what is significant.

There is also the question of significance that might not be related to future need. For items of which many exist, rarity would inevitably be a key part of deciding significance, but at which point - do you just list one Black 5, or one Standard 4 tank? And if so, what happens to the dozen others that thereby aren't listed?

From the Government's point of view, the value of heritage railways is that they are significant components of the tourism industry, which is a significant generator of foreign currency. So really the need is for whatever support they can give in the short term to ensure that, 12 or 24 month down the track, the tourism sector can bounce back as rapidly as possible.

Tom

 

On top of the very valid points from @Jamessquared, I'd add that "listing" of buildings in the UK doesn't prevent destruction but puts barriers in the way of casual destruction. Any Private Eye reader who knows the "Piloti" column will be aware of the many serious weaknesses in that legislation, and the buildings that "just escaped" being saved as a result.

Wearing my hat as a PCC member at church, I'd also comment that listing incurs significant costs - obtaining the permissions to be allowed to do work is time consuming and frequently imposes noticeable delays on jobs, while the standards of accountability required are not cheap to achieve.

Beware what you ask for.