A Royal appointment
A COUPLE OF months ago, you may remember we finally finished off Lewis Perry’s Project Excelsior Universal, largely thanks to Ferret and his boxes of electrical trickery. The Project had been cut short by last year’s lockdowns and then Lewis’ heading off for university – but it’s just as well we managed to get it finished, because it turned out that the National Transport Trust had decided to award him Young Preservationist of the Year and he was to visit the ceremony, where he would receive the award from the Trust’s patron, HRH Princess Anne.
The National Transport Trust (nationaltransport trust.org.uk) describes itself as ‘Britain’s only charity dedicated to the preservation of all modes of transport and its infrastructure’. The Trust has been around since 1965 (as the Transport Trust) and among its aims seeks to encourage young people to take an interest in matters mechanical - whether land, sea, air or rail-related. It also operates a Red Wheel scheme to highlight and identify important transportation landmarks (in the manner of a ‘blue plaque’) and a Green Wheel scheme which aims to encourage emissions reductions in the field of transport heritage while taking the opportunity to illustrate this area’s low carbon footprint.
All sounds good to me. Hopefully the Trust are working toward convincing people that repairing old vehicles – even if they puff out a bit of smoke – is still a more responsible way to deploy resources than scrapping them and building brand new ones whose exhaust fumes exit from power stations, mines and factories...
I couldn’t be there to see Lew’s big moment – a friend’s funeral took precedence – but congratulations to him and here’s hoping he can be instrumental in encouraging other young folk to get involved.