CLAIMS... AND BOA TS AND PLANES
TONY STREETER is baffled by the NRM’s ‘Scotsman’ cost comparisons with Mary Rose, Cutty Sark, a Spitfire and a Vulcan bomber
THE NATIONAL Railway Museum has not yet given a confirmed final figure for Flying Scotsman’s overhaul - £4.2m being an estimate from last summer - but what it has done is issue a ‘fact file’ detailing the costs of various other preservation projects. At the media launch for No. 60103 on January 8, York gave out a press pack that included figures not for other railway schemes, but the project to raise the Tudor warship Mary Rose from the Solent, and the restorations of Cutty Sark, Avro Vulcan XH558 and a Mk I Spitfire. What was the purpose of the sheet, I asked the museum, and why did it not include schemes that would provide a better comparison with the ‘A3’ - in other words, other locomotive overhauls? York’s response is that “The Legends Back to Life sheet is a factsheet aimed at news journalists about other heritage projects with a multimillion pound cost.” Now, you might notice that doesn’t quite answer the specific point about other locomotive re-builds, so you’ll have to make up your own mind why the museum chose not to make that comparison. Had it done so, however, it would perhaps have recorded that Flying Scotsman’s major re-build is by far the most expensive of any UK engine, and dwarfing such other big projects as the reconstruction of Bulleid 4-6-2 No. 34027 Taw Valley, reported to come in at around £1m (SR438). Yet what of those other projects that were chosen as worthy of attention? How comparable are they, either to Flying Scotsman, or indeed to each other? The last time I checked, Flying Scotsman had neither been on the seabed for more than 400 years (Mary Rose), nor subjected to a devastating fire that cost millions of pounds of damage (Cutty Sark), nor indeed had it crashed from 12,000ft to then spend over 30 years as a wreck before being recovered (Spitfire X4650). Former Heritage Railway Association chairman David Morgan was also vicechairman of the Cutty Sark Trust. He told me that while the cost of the tea clipper’s restoration roughly doubled from the originally anticipated £25m - that was largely down to the devastating fire of 2007. (Anyway, a doubling is nowhere near the over five-fold price increase of No. 60103). Certainly the ‘Vulcan to the Sky’ team that triumphantly put delta wing V-bomber XH558 back into flight between 2007 and 2015 appears to think the comparisons are limited. After all, in their case we’re talking about a multi-engine jet bomber that has occupied a unique place in the Civil Aviation Authority’s lists. “The challenge of restoring a complex ex-military aircraft of the Vulcan generation to flight is so different to other engineering heritage projects that it is difficult to draw a direct comparison,” said the Vulcan to the Sky Trust’s PR man Richard Gotch. “The trust restored and flew XH558 in a really tough safety regime. Everything was sourced in compliance with original 1950s specifications. If a replacement component, as approved by Avro, could not be found, then a new one had to be manufactured to precisely the same design, from original materials using an identical process.” In other words, the Vulcan project was unique pioneering stuff - just like say, raising Mary Rose. In contrast, re-building large steam locomotives for ‘ten year’ overhauls is hardly unknown territory, even if No. 60103 was a particularly big example. Or, perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it and the Vulcan or Cutty Sark projects (neither of which went anywhere near five times over budget, despite challenges that did increase costs) should put out fact files detailing how No. 60103’s overhaul has overrun…? Given the remarkable crossover of interests between steam and old aircraft, you might like to know that while the Vulcan is sadly no longer to fly, it is still allowed to race along the runway at Robin Hood Airport (ex-RAF Finningley). It’s also planned to be the heart of a new complex including a heritage centre and aviation skills academy.