Steam engines available for traffic in 2014

Are there any preserved locos not already recorded somewhere/how on Wikipedia?

Simon

 

At least one - try finding out from Wikipedia what the current status of Stroudley Terrier No. 62 "Martello" is …

The other issue with Wikipedia is simply getting everything together in one place and in a queryable format.

Tom

 

Preserved at Bressingham according to this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LB&SCR_A1_class#Preservation

 

Hit and miss as Tom shows. There is a reasonable list of the heritage railways, and most of the pages referenced include mention the locos based there (although locos get lost from time to time when someone updates for a loco leaving site A without someone else updating that it has arrived at site B). However information by class or manufacturer is very variable in quality and quantity especially for Industrials. For example:

Start at the BRC page. Link away from 5080 to the GWR 4073 Class page. You find a list of all the preserved example, links to sites where they are based, who owns them, lots of other info, just as it should be.

Now try with a Peckett. Via the Peckett company page you can get to a list of Peckett locos. Not too bad.

Now try with an Andrew Barclay. Dead end, no list of preserved examples. Or a non-austerity Hunslet. Ditto. Or a Hawthorn Leslie. "A number have been preserved", and vague details of around 10 or of the 30 that exist.

I do say the dedicated Wiki idea comes in my wilder moments. I can't remember the whole systems development life cycle, but I do know you need to define the requirements fully before you start looking at possible solutions (wiki/database etc), and you need to evaluate the potential solutions before you begin developing. Oh, and a project sponsor and a budget holder helps....

 

Yes, but my point was that it is not very clear which locos are serviceable. The list is as of 2011, so gives Martello in service and Newport under restoration, whereas now Newport runs, and Martello is - I assume, it is very difficult to find out - stored but not under active overhaul.

Any system - whether Wikipedia or a new bespoke system - is only as good as the commitment of the authors to keep it up to date.

Tom

 

I fear this thread is becoming like one of those theological "how many angels can be got on the head of a needle" discussions!

Paul H

 

At least we haven't yet reached Godwins Law of Heritage Railways by discussing what colour they should be painted!

Maybe the original question is better answered thus:

Stephen Fry: "Does anyone know - to a reasonably authoratative level - how many of the rest, probably 1000 machines, are available for traffic this year? And is that number more than or fewer than there were a decade ago?"

Alan Davies (excitedly waving card): "Nobody knows!"

 

Why? the question "how many steam engines are available for traffic, and is that number more or less than at some arbitrary date in the past?" is an interesting question. To answer it, you have to define terms - which locos are in scope, and what is their current status? From current information, the first part isn't completely known (no-one has come up with a number of industrial engines, for example); the second part is actually difficult to answer from available information.

Tom

 

Alas it has descended into something rather too akin to a train spotter's book of numbers. No-one can say with any authority at all how many there are and I am reminded of Disraeli's maxim "there are lies, damn lies and statistics"!
I don't wish to put words into G-F-G's mouth but took his original posting as another of his admirable attempts to get people to think rather than an exhortation to compile lists.

Paul H.

 

It was rather a facetious comment, sorry.

 

So… my thinking was that a) there aren't many categories of loco's that aren't featured, b) most individual loco's are listed already, c) anyone can add new pages or edit the many individual loco pages and d) it's not rocket science to extract data from Wikipedia.

So rather than Robin's (?) suggestion of a big requirements gathering and technology build, that it would be better to look at using existing tools and adding some value by extracting data and re-representing it (eg the gant chart would be quite easy if there was a common format for boiler life dates).

Just a different perspective to trying to create a standalone alternative (largely because they become dependent on techies who lose interest - cf loads of preservation websites full of out of date information or stuck with antideluvian technology).

Simon

 

A few thoughts. Re-reading my post last night I appreciate it could be taken several ways (moral, don't drink and post). I wasn't the one who made the original move of involving the mods but what is done is done. For the record, my very OTT comment about the systems development lifecycle (surely the first mention in preservation history? Ed) was not meant as "we need to start and this is what we need to do to achieve it". It was meant as a caution that "if as a result of the mods’ deliberations they think that something should be done, please think long and hard before doing it and when you do, do it properly". I fully concur with your middle paragraph, although unhelpfully AFAIK there is no published register of in-ticket boilers either.

Drawing breath, we have a thread called "steam engines available for traffic in 2014". The initial question asked how many were in service in the past, and how many today.

How many were in service in the past is historically interesting but in today's terms pretty much irrelevant. The past is like a foreign country etc.

Regarding how many are in service today, the last few years have given most of the bigger players a pretty good idea of how far you can cut your in-service fleet before you hit steam shortages, and most have at least a short term plan to address the situation. Beyond that, counting them is to me as I said earlier "just a bit of fun to while away a wet afternoon". How many are in service today has no impact on how many will be in service in the future.

Regarding the future, in one of GFG's comments he asked "should we be worried"? Of course we should – escalating costs, declining revenues, ageing locos, ageing infrastructure, lost skills, the list is endless and we could discuss it to eternity. So let’s ask the question in a more positive manner instead. "What steps can we take to ensure the survival and prosperity of steam railways in the future?” Isn’t that what we should be concentrating on?

 

I wasn't having a go… there's nothing intrinsically wrong with what you proposed, drunk or not!

I was just suggesting that there are other ways to skin a cat, and that wikipedia has both a good head start in terms of decent (if unstructured) content, and 10s of millions of people maintaining it.

Simon

 

Oh grief no, unstructured and unstructurable, and too prone to mad editors who write citation needed over the simplest of facts... Oh, and virtually useless when I was trying to do my survey of the GW locos because there's no date information.

 

Up to a point Paul, but I genuinely wanted to know myself, although as you say, not by painted number of each machine. The 32% figure has added something to my personal and painfully limited knowledge of what is happening in this business/community/
whatever you want to call it. I did and do hold an impression (for which I still have no eactual vidence) that across the board fewer engines are doing more work and both hire engines and diesel diagrams are becoming more common by stealth. Underlying trends are a useful tool if you can understand them. I have also learned that at least one engine I regarded in 1980 as a shocking and futile waste of time, Eddystone, is just about to complete 11 years of service with some very organised and realistic owners and probably won't be out for very long, which shows what I know. But it is comforting to see from some posts here that I am by no means the only one without a clue. I am grateful to all contributors here who have worked to produce the 32% of working ket..oops....er..."chuff-chuffs".

 

You may be right that "hire locos" and diesel diagrams are more common (particularly the latter perhaps) but compared with 10 or 20 years ago (in general terms) there are more railways and they are each operating more trains on more days. So whilst current steam fleet may be doing more work it doesn't follow (necessarily) that there are fewer of them. Actually I suspect the number is fairly static with just a hint of an upward trend. There are some very well publicised examples of "steam shortages" such as the SVR or the Bluebell, and the NYMR has had "just enough" at times, but these examples aren't true of all railways by any means. Also I would observe that for a variety of reasons locos not owned by a railway have been much more "mobile" in recent times as owners seek to maximise the work they do by moving them around in a way which arguably didn't happen as much 20 years ago. This might (emphasise might) actually suggest that there are more locos chasing the available work not fewer.

 

It's also worth saying that hired-in engines are still steam engines, they still take restoring and they still take funding. So presumably, if some of the larger lines (in particular) are using more hired-in locos and less of the home fleet, it doesn't necessarily mean an overall diminution of restoration capacity, just that the a available capacity is being more efficiently utilised, with railways increasingly drawing on a nationwide pool of resource. Which ultimately ought to be a good thing for the movement as a whole, even if it is potentially less than ideal for those railways that have needed to hire in a loco to guarantee the service. After all, if one major concern is the long-term availability of skilled engine fitters and boilersmiths, taking the big picture, does it matter if those skilled people are also located at Crewe and the Flour Mill, as well as at Sheffield Park and Bridgnorth?

Tom


Tom

 

48624

 

Try looking up the list of Austerity 0-6-0STs. It includes three examples in the Netherlands but omits one of the ones in Loughborough.

 

This is going to sound facetious, and it's not intended that way, but has anyone updated it? It's not that hard to make changes, though I take JimC's point about citations, but that is the way WikiPedia works…

Wouldn't it be possible to create a data template for Wikipedia that addressed a lot of the concerns that people here have (e.g. a single 'locomotive' template could include all of the data about build/class/ownership/livery (god help us )/withdrawal/scrapping/preservation/restoration/ownership/overhauls)? Once you've got a workable template, you can use the power of the Wiki-editors for good…

Simon