Flying Scotsman

It gets more and more tabloid and I never buy it nowadays. The epithet of "Steam Beano" is all too justified. In anything Heritage Railway is worse.

P.H.

 

I do hope the wording of the questions has been amended to make them appear more 'hard hitting' otherwise I am surprised that Mr Davies didn't walk out or land one on the interviewer!

Just pathetically unecessary.

 

Not just me that thought that, then. DW spent so long trying to get the director to admit it was a "humiliation" - which, let's face it, he was never going to say regardless of what had happened - that he fluffed his opportunity to actually find out anything new. You could sense through the interview that the NRM Director started from the viewpoint of using an opportunity to tell their side of the story, but rapidly tightened up when the questioning took such an aggressive turn. A textbook case of " how not to get your story" - and put the backs up of an important stakeholder to boot.

Tom

 

I'm just writing an email of complaint about that interview. Dreadful interview, Steve Davies should be applauded for his patience in answering such petulant sensationalism.

Steam Railway are picking on the NRM and Scotsman as easy targets, because they have, as a public body, to disclose and justify everything they do with the locomotive. Not so for previous owners and those in charge of overhauls previously.

I do not understand the aggression and sheer crassness displayed by David Wilcock this month. It's wholly unnecessary and sets a bad example in railway preservation.

 

True - you have to consider that only about 75% of whats in SR is fiction. I love how they are trying to take the credit for the A4 line up 60007-60010, wasn't that mentioned on here months ago and I cannot believe that the NRM hadn't thought of it.

 

I think its sheer desparation of an editor who is desparate to make a name for himself and seems to have no understanding or appreciation that by alienating his readership and the movement that provides his stories he is killing the publication. In terms of DW the majority of his pieces in SR now seem to be extremely self indulgant on topics that he has a personal gripe about so we shall see.

But then again I keep subscribing so perhaps I am the fool here!

 

There are times when it seems that SR and HR are engaged in a 'race to the bottom'

 

Didn't intend to say more on this topic but you would be advised to go over the editorial heads and send your complaint straight to the publishers. You will only be likely to get self justification of the "Public have a right to know" kind from the former but if the publishers sense that their sales loss is because rather than in spite of the trivialisation then things "might" happen.

Paul H.

 

Can't agree with anything here. Steve Davies obviously agreed to the interview knowing full well David Wilcocks style. David has asked pertinent questions and Steve has given clear answers. Where David has felt that the question hasn't been answered he has repeated it. I'd call that sticking to your guns.

I don't think Steam Railway are 'picking on the NRM', read the whole issue and there is much positive support of current and future activities (A4's from the US, Sir Lamiel successfully being managed by 5305LA, 850 and 925 on the Mid Hants)

I'd rather a magazine (or a forum) had a view rather than sycophantically following the line that all is well everywhere and that we as enthusiasts and taxpayers should put up and shut up.

 

No but tabloid journalists tend to have an obsession with being part of the story rather than merely presenting it. We all know nowadays where this can lead.

P.H.

 

When you are the head of any organisation whether it is a government minister or banker or newspaper owner you are the one that is responsible for what goes on with in that organisation and get well rewarded.

Has for tabloid journalism Dave Wilcock was just doing is job just like Jeremy Paxman does.

 

Didn't see too much wrong with the interview to be honest. Too often the NRM have themselves put up their own PR barriers which have been particularly light on factual information. I think some direct questioning is needed on a project which is nearly 4 times over budget and is severly late (not discounting the huge amounts of public money that have been swallowed). I like Steve Davies and think he is doing a grand job at the NRM. But like it or not he is now in charge there and answers are needed. As the poster above notes, Mr Wilcock has been around a long time and his style is well known and shouldn't come as a suprise. I am sure Mr Davies will have to answer much tougher questions elsewhere to much more imporatant people on this subject. Like Paxman you either love him or loathe him really. He has written some very poor as well as very good articles in his time!
I have posted before in defence of Steam Railway and will again. I subscribe to both SR and HR and have done so for a number of years. SR really did go through a dodgy patch, but in the last year under the editorship of Gary Boyd-Hope (not Dave Wilcock who is now freelance) has really turned a corner with some great articles and some pretty accurate reporting. HR on the other hand really needs freshening up and has had some shockingly embarssing reporting of late and is perhaps more deserving of the Beano tag these days.

 

I agree wholeheartedly here. The magazine has always worked very closely with the NRM and has a long history of successful collaborations with them (70013 and Truro for instance). But that shouldn't stop it from asking difficult questions on a project that is a mill stone around the museum's neck at the moment.

 

I don't disagree that the bare facts of the project mean that the NRM has some serious questions to answer. But this article didn't get to ask those questions: instead David Wilcocks just seemed obsessed with trying to make a headline by getting Steve Davies to admit the project was a "humiliation". That was never going to happen, so instead we got a bit of journalism that came across as being written by some school sixth form Jeremy Paxman wannabe. By all means ask tough questions, but there is a way to do that, and this article was an object lesson in the journalist forgetting the cardinal rule that the story is about the interviewee, not the interviewer.

Tom

 

Just so!

 

Don't forget this is only part 1, the interview concludes next month.

 

This
is very true....... the interview was dreadful as it highlighted what a
disgraceful job the NRM have made of managing the overhaul of 4472. It just
goes to show that you can put the right face in charge of engineering or the
right face as a director of the NRM but they are not actually competent at
their roles.



The NRM clearly do not have the skills or knowledge to carry out a restoration
like this and at the end of the day their incompetence has cost the general
public money to put right and it is about time that the NRM face up to this.



The bottom line is that the NRM sent a set of 'finished' frames ready to accept
a boiler that had been effectively painted and put back together and Ian Riley
has spent the last 12 - 18 months trying to put it right.



This performance by the NRM is unacceptable and I hope that someone does
justice and removes those concerned from their current positions of looking
after the nations assets

 

That works both ways. Steve Davies has that right too. There's no excuse for rudeness and bad manners.

 

It's so very, very easy to make all of those accusations at a public body though. Flying Scotsman was clearly mismanaged and poorly looked after for a good decade before the NRM got anywhere near it.

I'd rather have 4472 in the hands of an accountable public body like the NRM because then we CAN see where the money's gone, explicitly, and hold those in charge to account, unlike previous owners and people in charge of overhauls (which to HIS credit, Steve Davies declined to comment on).

But there IS a significant difference between "sticking to your guns" and "beating the dead horse" and David Wilcock was downright rude. The article/s might have gone some way further to examining further what HAS gone wrong this time and allowing the public to make up its own minds with all the facts laid out calmly, but instead David Wilcock sought to try to humiliate Steve Davies more and more. I am amazed it was published as it's crass, opportunistic and cringing to read.

I don't think anyone agrees that things could have gone better for Flying Scotsman - but which would you prefer? 4472 in the NRM's hands where things absolutely have to be made public, or in private hands where...they don't, and then we get 400+ pages of speculation as to why things went wrong/continue to go wrong because in private hands, no one's saying anything...!

Well said Tom.