LSWR T3 563

As Mellish says above its not the Swanage Rly per se, that most people on here have a problem with its mainly, in my eyes, the way a former publicly owned item seams to have been just given away to a privately owned company for free without any discussion before hand, I'm sure that 90% of the negative comments on here would dissappear if it had gone on a 10 year loan instead of being gifted away

 

No I didn't miss that part but I felt no need to comment on it.

Returning to the focus on the NRM; it occurs to me that someone could put in a Freedom of Information request to the NRM. What were the reasons for selecting this particular locomotive rather than any other item for possible transfer to another organisation? What was the basis for choosing the Swanage Railway as the recipient? Why was de-accession considered rather than long-term loan? Why was gift considered rather than sale? Who was consulted? What conditions were placed on the recipient to provide long-term protection of the artefact equivalent to what it would have had if kept in the National Collection?

Maybe one of the magazines has already submitted such a request. If not, they should.

 

I fear that would have ensured an even larger plethora of indignant comments but of the "x railway should not have it. y railway should" kind. The more I see of this correspondence, the more I feel NRM were right.

PH

 

Why don't you do it yourself, why depend on magazines?

Keith

 

The procedure for the 'disposal' of NRM stuff has been discussed many times - see my earlier post 119 but also read the threads on the North Staffs 0-6-2 you will find most of your answers there. What is new is the disposal rather than loan route - I would say this is all down to money, their budget has been cut drastically by this woeful government and if you want to see such a policy reversed suggest you first try your local Tory MP who no doubt will have more important things on his mind than stopping slashed budgets to museums and the arts. I too would not castigate the NRM as they are only trying to make the best of a job in bad circumstances.

 

563 was a public asset in the care of a public institution. Why is it OK for the NRM to avoid public debate and ignore public opinion? Are they not accountable to the public in some way?

 

The sort of yelling and screaming that has been generated is not calculated to encourage calm decision making. Personally I hate referenda for this reason.

PH

 

OK, but the same thing happens at General Elections too. So do we abolish democracy completely in the interests of calm decision making?

I think there has been a lot of passion about this topic. That's because we are all railway enthusiasts, and we all care about the nation's railway heritage. The fact that the PTB choose to ignore us and make these decisions in secret is guaranteed to raise the temperature.

 

The NRM is accountable to the Science Museum board. They would of had to of produced a complelling case for transferring an asset out of the national collection.
The board would of voted on it and approved it democratically.
To say this was done on a whim is to be ignorant of the processes that are in place.

 

you can't have that sort of openness...nothing would get done if the public had to be consulted on everything.

The NRM people are Civil Servants and they are accountable. If they get things badly wrong, it affects their career prospects

They will have followed their procedures and it's none of our business what the process is

 

Indeed - remember it wasn't that long ago that there was talk of actual closures within the Science Museum Group. Recently I examined the disposal list for the National Media Museum. I wondered why a particular item was on it, it being a very rare item indeed.

Turns out that the larger Science Museum Group owns two of said item. With the squeeze on funding and the space an item occupies in storage, it has been offered up for disposal. The procedure seems to be that preference is given to a relevant group that can display the item. Private individuals it seems, do not get a look-in.

So with that in mind, is there anything that can be said to be broadly similar in technique/design/era to the T3?

 

Democracy is often confused with government by referendum (or government by indignation as I think of it)

PH

 

a) because although I care about it I don't care as passionately as some on here.
b) because a FoI request from a magazine publisher might carry a bit more weight than one from an individual.

I know we've been reminded several times about the procedures that the NRM is expected to follow, and it's unlikely that they failed to follow them in this instance, but the questions that I and others have identified are specific aspects that we can't know just from the procedures.

 

If the public were to decide it would be down to which organisation had the most voices to where it would end up. It would probably have not gone to Swanage where it will be a big asset and help put Swanage too continue to grow into the big league of railways. Had it gone to the Blubell for instance it would have just been anothwr pre grouping engine. After a couple of steamings would no longer be that special. As it happens it will continue to stand out and be a flag ship for Swanage.

 

Most other areas of government decision-making DO have some form of consultation process. Only in matters of national security are decisions made in secret.

Why is it none of our business? We are the people who pay thousands of pounds a year in taxes so that we can have, amongst other things, a National Railway Museum.

 

"I could not consent to the introduction into our national life of a device so alien to all our traditions as the referendum, which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism and fascism." - Clement Attlee.

"Referendums are a device of dictators and demagogues" - Margaret Thatcher.

 

the result would be stalemate. If ,say , the Bluebell wanted to borrow the Q1, there would have to be a lengthy consultation process and it would probably be easier for the NRM to say "no". Multiply that by every other decision made by the NRM and then by all the other museums and then by Government in general and surely you can see the point....

 

If the result of that public decision went the way of BREXIT there might be enough people with vested interests to block the move.