NRM GIVEAWAYS
STEAM LOCOMOTIVES DE-ACCESSIONED BY THE NRM
Which other steam locomotives have been de-accessioned?
Following the recent disposal of LSWR ‘T3’ 4-4-0 No. 563 to the Swanage Railway, DAVID WILCOCK and NICK BRODRICK recount which steam locomotives from the National Collection have been made surplus to requirements so far - and why.
The disposal from the National Collection of North Staffordshire Railway 0-6-2T No. 2 and LSWR ‘T3’ 4-4-0 No. 563 begs the question - how many other locomotives and examples of rolling stock have been given away (or sold) by the NRM - and why? Since the museum opened in York in 1975, more than 70 items of rolling stock from the National Collection have been de-accessioned, of which six were locomotives - five of them steam, including Nos. 2 and 563. The remainder are mostly passenger coaches, including Royal Train vehicles and goods wagons, although the list also includes such items as steam and hand-powered cranes, an LMS dynamometer car and a horse-drawn railway fire engine. The number of smaller artefacts de-accessioned, ranging from railway buttons to signal lever frames, and from historic press cuttings to railway horse harnesses, runs into the thousands - far too many to document within one article - so for now, we focus on the case histories of the five steam locomotives that the NRM has disposed of. With more than 280 locomotives and items of rolling stock - to say nothing of the untold thousands of smaller exhibits, artefacts and documents in the NRM’s care - and with new items being added or ‘accessioned’ every year (some 239 items were added in 2015), it’s not unreasonable to expect that in order to manage our national railway collection, the NRM may from time to time dispose of some of its less relevant exhibits. Display and storage space is forever in short supply.
‘MUST HAVE’ …OR ‘SO WHAT’?
There will never be unanimity among enthusiasts over which items should be retained and which should be disposed; one man’s ‘must have’ is another man’s ‘so what?’, but there was a generally passive reaction from the enthusiast world when, in April 1994, the NRM announced it was getting rid of a front-running main line 4-6-0. There would surely have been uproar if it had been an example of our British railway history - but it wasn’t. It was the Nene Valley Railway-based French four-cylinder De Glehn Compound locomotive No. 3.628 - otherwise known as ‘the Nord’ - which the museum elected to put up for sale, together with Chemins de Fer du Nord all-steel monocoque construction Second Class passenger coach No. 7122. Both locomotive and coach were deemed ‘unsuitable’ for the National Collection, and in explaining its reasons for seeking disposal,
the NRM contended: “The locomotive has little significance to British steam locomotive development, and is outside the collecting policy of the NMSI (National Museum of Science and Industry).” The museum’s internal Board of Survey (one of the three committees which considers de-accession proposals) agreed that the locomotive and coach could be offered for sale, and that it should be transferred to the best possible home - not necessarily the highest bidder. ‘The Nord’ and its coach were key items in a then unprecedented clearance by the museum of ‘unwanted stock’, following a survey of all wheeled vehicles in the collection, which then numbered 270. Up for disposal at the same time was a dismantled GWR dining car, No. 9605, and fire-damaged Maunsell ‘Bognor buffet car’, No. S12529S. Further items of rolling stock from the collection would be put up for sale at a later date, said the museum, but NRM Chief Engineer at the time, Richard Gibbon, sought to forestall any criticism of the clearout, contending: “Doubtless some people will say we’re selling the family silver, but that is really not the case. “We need to take an extremely vigorous look back at what we’ve collected over 60 years. That includes items which were saved because they were ‘glamorous’, rather than significant in highlighting key stages of locomotive or rolling stock development. History will not condemn us for selling these items.” It’s reasonable to ask that if both the Nord locomotive and coach were held to be ‘unsuitable’ and ‘of little significance’, how did they come to be a part of the National Collection in the first place?