Practical Issues in Preserving Steam Locomotives

That would truly be fantastic if we laser scanned items of rolling stock! However I expect it must take a while, and icdont know how difficult it is, but I know some model railway companies have had a go with the tech.

 

The actual scanning process is quite quick. I think it's quite expensive equipment, but so is almost everything else in steam engine terms. And you only need to buy it once.

 

Quoted elsewhere, approx £6k to scan a loco.

However scanning a loco for a model, and scanning all 10k bits that as a collection you call a locomotive is a different matter.

 

£6k is because the equipment is hired. A one-off purchase would be expensive, but the only sensible option rather than hiring per use.

Some of the costs could be recouped by charging to access the database of scans, I would suggest a relatively low price for non commercial use (model engineers, modellers etc) and a higher price for commercial use (Hornby, Bachmann, etc etc).

Plus it could be used for Train Simulator, and you could digitally model everything from a single part through to a complete loco.

As time goes by laser scanners will become cheaper. It would be a big undertaking but it would create a tremendous resource, the sooner we start, the sooner it's finished.

 

Presumably that would include hiring the equipment to do so - if you buy it then do everything probably end up cheaper?

 

This thread has turned into an interesting debate, far removed from the original post/question might it be time that it became a thread in its own right?

I am always fascinated by the argument of historical material vs portrayal of an object in context, surely at its most extreme solution we no longer run 'historic' machines and instead have to only use replicas in order to not loose any historical material?

Is keeping a machine running, and replacing serviceable items as and when they require replacing not part of the continuation of the history of the item- surely history is not static and our actions today become as much a part of a story of the item as those from the past, in some cases the preservation 'history' of a loco is perhaps more important than its work-a-day life?

I have always felt that any machine (in particular) is always best portrayed operating, be it car, plane, loco etc etc, as it is not possible to get a real sense or full experience of it otherwise. When visiting the NRM sometimes I do get a little pang of sadness that some of the locos incarcerated there will unlikely ever turn a wheel again! Whilst admitting this, I fully acknowledge that there are some items that should be left as is!

The biggest grey area in my eyes is modern day modifications to locos- mainly those on the mainline. Air brakes comes to mind- quite a few mainline ticketed locos have them and display the hoses on the bufferbeams, and presumably (I am fairly ignorant on the subject having not studied it in detail) significant changes must have been made to the loco braking systems in some cases, 5029, 34067, 70000, (4)6100 have/will have quite visible air pumps too- which I have to say I am not overly keen on. Again, I understand these are concessions for running on the mainline but these are significant changes to the fabric surely? What about the new diet version of 6024 that will emerge?

Chris

 

It's a very valid point. There is a general recognition in conservation circles that in practice, it is not possible to keep anything the same forever; the role of a curator is to manage change. (I'd like to be a curator one day - can you tell?!)

There is also a recognition that there is little point in preserving an object if you can't allow access to it, and that the competing requirements of preservation and access must be balanced. So, for example, light is damaging to many kinds of historic exhibits - but in historic houses, we don't take all the exhibits off display so that we can keep them in the dark forever. What we do is aim to keep light levels as low as possible whilst still allowing people to see. We accept that even this low level of light exposure will damage the exhibits, and that one day all the exhibits will become so damaged that they really will have to be taken off display. But by sticking to this regime of low light levels, we can extend the lifetime of those objects from tens of years to hundreds of years, and thus allow as many people as possible to enjoy them.

We also accept that the aim of a historic house is to display exhibits in context; for that reason we try to avoid putting large exhibits in glass cases, even though that would lengthen their life.

I would hope that Lode Star would never need to be put into a glass case - metal and paint are actually fairly resilient as long as they can be kept at a reasonably stable level of relative humidity. But yes, it may be that one day in the distant future, her condition deteriorates and the curators who look after her will have to sanction some kind of restoration that compromises her "time capsule" status - and that's OK (as long as the work is properly documented). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to conserve her as she is for as long as we can (which, hopefully, will be hundreds of years).

As for the 3D scanning idea, I fully agree that it opens up some very exciting possibilities. But having a 3D scan of Lode Star as she is now is, to me, still not the same as being able to see a perfect, untouched time capsule physically standing in front of you.

 

I think someone has already suggested that there may be no right answer for some particular locos. But overall it is clearly good to have some locos that can be seen, heard and smelt pulling trains and others that can be examined up close at leisure.

Having one loco sectioned so that museum visitors can see its internal works is good, and very little is lost thereby when there are others of the same class in working order.

One or two locos (of any types) should be mounted on rollers so that their moving parts can be seen moving. (Obviously lubrication has to be provided.)

I do agree that there is little value in preserving Green Arrow's monobloc if hardly anyone ever gets to see it. I would certainly be in favour of removing it (even at the expense of destroying a few fixings) and scanning it to build a digital model and/or putting it on display. There is then the option, if and when funding becomes available, of casting new cylinders, in one piece or three, and putting the loco into working order again, without losing anything of much importance.

 

Not like 4472, then?

 

The problem with untouched time capsules is that they also preserve some 'nasties' that a curator could really do without. For example: -
- asbestos lagging and gaskets
- radioactive paint on instrumentation (WW2 aircraft)

With respect to asbestos I suspect Lode Star etc have all been stripped, so could not be regarded as untouched.

 

I know that was one of the issues with Cheltenham pre-restoration in the NRM, the problem being that Asbestos sometimes degrades and starts to break up.

Having recently seen the amount of asbestos warning stickers on City of Birmingham, I wonder if this time capsule is close to receiving some minor strip down work (in a negative pressure tent to remove the issue)

 

Well its been ok over the years to reposition them and prop them up again. Is it true that on midsummers day you see see the rising sun through Green Arrows firebox?

 

For the most part overhauling locos has absolutely no historical significance at all. As long as any parts that are remade are so done to the same specifications, using the same materials to the same design. Its not a Tudor building with unique hand made bricks, a unique mix of daub, timber that was already 200 years old before it was cut and used and then weathered for 600 years. A loco is not a work of art produced by a mad genius out of his head on absinth or other mind altering drugs. It was purely an engineering exercise to meet an everyday requirement of the day.

I think you do, however, start to have issues when you need to start adding technology. Start adding TPWS, ATPS, GSMR (and god forbid ETCS) different coupling systems, compressed air pumps, electrical generators, etc etc, then you can say, "Hey hold up - this is becoming unrepresentative of its class, genre, mark, etc etc" Thats a difficult idea to balance. I do know however that a museum full of dead cold exhibits (specially those that can't be touched) is in itself unrepresentative of the exhibits within.

In summary "We wont change the block for historical reasons" is a load of rollox. An excuse to hide behind.

 

So come on clever clogs, what's the answer to 4771's problems?

 

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking?

 

ditto

 

I guess the difference between 4771 and 4472 illustrates some of the issues of this thread. 4472 has been rebuilt and chopped around so much since withdrawal, unlike 4771, that it has rather less historic integrity left to be compromised. But if it is no longer a historic artefact it is still, without question, a historical attraction. And there is no reason why the NRM shouldn't have both.