MICHAEL DRAPER ON STEAM
Preservation’s arch critic on the challenges affecting steam’s future
Former Severn Valley Railway general manager MICHAEL DRAPER famously said in 1981 that steam railways were sowing the seeds of their own destruction. While that theory has yet to be proven on a significant scale, he still believes that preservation is headed for choppy waters. DAVID WILCOCK poses the questions.
With carbon dioxide levels said to be at their highest level for 800,000 years, and coal squarely in the dock as the worst and most damaging source of greenhouse gases, Britain’s steam railways are facing some very dark days ahead.
Heritage lines will not escape from climate change demands to slash their carbon emissions, with timetable and steam locomotive mileage cuts, reductions in the number of operating days, and shorter trains running shorter distances all in prospect, in order to comply with a crackdown on runaway levels of pollution.
Who says so? Well, none other than former Severn Valley Railway general manager, analyst, philosopher and arch-critic Michael Draper – the most outspoken pronouncer on the state of our steam railways for much of the last 50 years.
Worshipped by SVR staff and volunteers alike and enjoying almost exalted status – the Severn Valley was even known colloquially as ‘DraperRail’ during his reign – he was sensationally sacked in 1993 by the railway he ran for almost 20 years, ultimately becoming the loser in a bitter, controversial tussle with the board over his salary and expenses. This hiatus was eventually settled out of court when he was reluctantly compelled to pay back a handsome but unauthorised salary increase.
Though now 87, visibly thinner, and stooped, the energetic firebrand of the early 1980s who forecast financial collapse for an untold number of steam railways because of ‘proliferation’ – too many railway projects chasing too little cash and support – has not gone away, and neither have his batteries run down. Throwing his arms about his head in animated gestures to support his views, often forcefully stated but always with conviction, ‘MJD’ has lost none of his spark or charisma.
He hasn’t always been everyone’s favourite. A man with the capacity to incite anger and throw Cayenne pepper onto raw emotions, he could be as rude, as bombastic and as arrogant as he could be charming, likeable and gentlemanly – but he never ducked the issues of the moment when at the height of his powers 30 years ago and more – and even though he freely
describes himself as “yesterday’s man”, he doesn’t duck those issues now.
On the ‘carbon emissions’ crisis that the UK’s steam railways can no longer dodge, and amid November 2019 reports that global efforts to reverse climate change are barely a fifth of what they need to be, I asked him: “Do you think that the very ethos of steam running – i.e. burning coal and exhausting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – can avoid becoming the target of legislation that restricts steam railway operations, or perhaps facing a total ban altogether? Is it going to be as stark as that?
For several seconds, ‘MJD’ sits silent in his chair, and you just sense his cogs whirring as he computes the right, or most reasoned answer.
MJD: It’s a definite negative for the movement, and a problem we could well do without.
In theory and in practice, there is massive pressure worldwide for coal to be totally banned – that’s what we’re heading for, but steam railways will almost certainly try to seek special exemption from this. There is a parliamentary committee which has the interests of steam railways and the heritage movement at heart, and is thinking about this issue and the kind of legislation, either nationally or EU-inspired, that can manage that.
Most probably, in the foreseeable future I think there will be an overall coal-burning carbon emissions limit for the UK as a whole.
I can see a mandatory local pollutant number being enforced at some stage, which a railway will need to respect. The publication of photographs of locomotives belching out smoke won’t help us either!
DW: If smoke emissions were constrained to prescribed levels, how damning would that be? Surely the real fear here is that legislation may bring with it an outright ban on the burning of coal to atmosphere – no exemptions – in other words, the ‘end game’ for live steam. Is that being alarmist, or could it happen?
MJD: I certainly think I would be correct in prophesying that most railways will have to accept slimmer timetables and reduced steam mileage, and they will be
running fewer trains on fewer days. It is likely too they will no longer be able run all trains ‘full line’ and back, but to an intermediate station and back. And the trains they do run will have fewer carriages and this goes from the top railways down. What you’d be looking at as a steam enthusiast is fewer steam days and fewer steam locomotives in traffic on those steam days, and less choice of trains on those days.
DW: So, the autumn steam gala, from an emissions point of view, is going to be public enemy number one? How will tomorrow’s steam railways be able to even contemplate putting on major, multi-locomotive gala events in the way with which we have become familiar, when carbon emissions and coal output, in just one weekend, is through the roof?
MJD: I think they will be governed by the specified overall carbon emission limits. I think you will still have your 15-locomotive North Yorkshire Moors-style steam galas – wonderful viewing that they are – but each railway will have to account for its gala levels of carbon emissions within its own prescribed allowance. That’s how it will work out eventually – assuming that a coal supply can still be found. But even if the Government blocks imports of coal as a green measure, we’d still have a few opencast mines to supply the railways, so I’m not envisaging coal shortages at the moment. But I do envisage – and every railway will tell you this – steam coal quality and price being a hell of a problem. This is a demi-killer of what is happening to the movement right now.
From an emissions standpoint, steam railways would be advised to seriously consider staying as they are in terms of frequency of operating days, and frequency of movements on the days they run. It would be unwise to consider increasing the number of steam movements or the number of steaming days. This coincides with my feeling – as proven by the passenger numbers we see coming through – that it would also be in the railways’ best interests to stop this remorseless talk of expanding passenger numbers and special event days and all of that, and to work within sensible limits.
I believe today’s steam railway management should be saying ‘let’s take the worst passenger figures for the last ten years and accept that, come what may, we’re not going to increase those numbers on a day-to-day basis. Therefore we must build the railway’s viability round this core number of faithful passengers of, say, 100,000, or 150,000, or 200,000, or whatever, and if we can’t see a future for the railway as we are presently constituted, on those numbers, then we are really going to have to think again’.
If something doesn’t pay – if your catering doesn’t pay, if your gift shop doesn’t pay, if your steam operation doesn’t pay – cut it back, revise it, look at it again, but don’t take anything for granted, and don’t listen to what some of your own staff are telling you! They’ll say ‘this aspect of operation is sacrosanct and can’t be touched’.
Think again! Managers should not be afraid to ask, for example, big questions like: ‘Do we need 20 locomotives, or 70 coaches, when half those numbers will do?
The alternative to accepting your basic 100,000 or 200,000 passenger figure, and to acceptance that today’s numbers are static, is to say well, we’ll increase the railway’s turnover by focusing on ‘Polar Expresses’, ‘Santas’, and so on – we’ll try and make it a familyorientated ‘fun day out’.
Personally though, for me the ‘fun day out’ concept imperils the core concept which we adopted in the 1970s, of showing the public how a branch line, or a mid-sized line ran – with all its infrastructure of signals, bridges, viaducts, uniformed staff, steam locos, carriages, luggage, ambience – the re-creation of the railway as it used to be.
Now, with a few exceptions, we seem to have abandoned that. How many railways are faithful to their core concept? I think the Mid-Hants has been very good in this respect in particular, and I like the way the Gloucestershire Warwickshire really is developing the core concept of ‘the railway we used to know’.
DW: So how do you keep these railways ‘faithful’? How do you instil in people – who don’t remember the steam age and all that nostalgia – the desire to present their product as a look back through the
For me the ‘fun day out’ concept imperils the core concept which we adopted in the 1970s
windows of history, when more and more of today’s steam railways are driven by the desire to compete on as near equal terms as possible, with other out-and-out tourism attractions?
MJD: Then I fall into the trap of repeating yesterday’s mantra by saying ‘we’re sowing the seeds of our own destruction’, because while I haven’t been exactly proved right in all my predictions of the 1980s – and why should I over a period of nearly 50 years – I’m ‘yesterday’s man’ in more ways than one.
Many of my concepts and much of my thinking on preservation was embedded in my childhood, my adulthood, and my direct railway experience, so it is quite fair for people to ask ‘What relevance does Michael Draper have as a former manager of a railway? Why should we listen when he speaks? Does he make any sense?’
But even today, I have people come up to me and say: ‘We remember what you said back then. We often talk about you and your predictions, and you are right – many of the railways have only got away with it by the skin of our teeth and through a few fond benefactors and bankers looking kindly upon us.’
DW: Indeed, Steam Railway has reported quite recently on some very big legacies awarded to railways and societies, allied, I think to the age profiles of the donors, and reflecting their interest in the steam railway age. Can this ‘gravy train’ continue, or is it coming to the end of its journey?
MJD: It doesn’t seem to be just yet. We’re talking about the half-million pound legacy left to Tyseley Locomotive Works, and I see in a recent issue of Steam Railway the ‘MD’ [Cath Bellamy] says that this has enabled them to start work on Earl of Mount Edgcumbe and Rood Ashton Hall – to bring forward the locomotives in the queue. But there’s a question mark over this – are we not becoming entirely dependent upon this sort of thing?
I think we had a quarter of a million-pound legacy on the Severn Valley. The North Norfolk – or rather the M&GN Society – was given a million pounds, but I note the donor said that the million had to be ring-fenced for the repair, restoration, and ongoing maintenance of locomotives in the fleet – not anything else. Without that, again, the society might have been struggling to do the next heavy general on the ‘B12’, for example, so I think those six or seven-figure legacies will remain a part of the funding scenario for now. To my mind, they are a life-saver, and I applaud people who are doing it, but I say – don’t expect it from people much below the age of 70.
But look at how quickly things can change. We
have the new livewire chairman of the West Somerset Railway, Jon Jones‑Pratt, now saying he doesn’t think he can restore Thornbury Castle – that it will take 20 to 30 years to restore, will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and he has other, better or more urgent things to do. But a year ago, he was the saviour of ‘Thornbury’. How quickly things change.
He has found that his new association with the West Somerset is going to cost him far more time and money than he ever expected. And indeed, it is the West Somerset debacle which has refocused attention on where the steam railway movement is going. Railway magazine editors are querying the financial viability of railways now – more than they ever did before. They’re asking the Bluebell, or the Swanage, or the Severn Valley – how are you going to cope? They’re asking the questions I used to ask.
DW: What’s the best reason for anyone fortunate enough to be sitting on a substantial sum of money to leave it as a legacy to any railway? Why should they do that?
MJD: Well, I go back to the fundamentals of my belief that unless we can stand on our own two feet, we really shouldn’t expect other people to subsidise us. But if we are standing on our own two feet, manifestly so through the balance sheet and the profit and loss account, then it is entirely respectable of us – the railways – to ask somebody to put more time or finance in, because we have proved to you, sir, or madam, that we are running something that is financially viable, and we want you to feel that you have done the right thing, that you’re financing an ongoing concern, and maybe your children or your friends will continue the tradition. But they’re not doing that.
Railways are saying to people now in very broad terms – unless you give us money, we won’t be able to repair this locomotive, or that viaduct, we won’t buy more rail, we can’t do these carriages. Those of us who contribute financially to steam railways have become lenders of last resort, to fund many of the projects which are ongoing in the railway movement.
Put it this way: I am a member or a shareholder in 23 directly related steam projects. Four or five are locomotives – the rest are all railways. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every house magazine that comes through my letterbox quarterly or half yearly, without exception, will carry an appeal for money.
Over a period of 12 months, I will be receiving appeals for money usually running into five, six or seven figures. They will ask me through their house magazines for sums of between £50,000 and £5 million to do their projects. And so we’re back to dilution. I, in my wisdom, enjoy backing 23 railways, but I can’t possibly contemplate answering in a positive fashion 23 separate appeals over the course of 12 months. Now, that is a problem of proliferation.
If there were fewer appeals, you could probably, if you had sufficient money, give a decent sum to each of the people that are asking. I always get a shock when I fill in my Gift Aid forms to HMRC to see how much I’m giving and what I’m giving it to. It’s expensive – so why should I and other people of my age group put money into something over which we have mediumterm, or long-term doubts, when the railway concerned has manifestly come back to us time and time again? They are perennial askers.
Well, I say ‘put your own railway right first of all’ – make it pay – but many of them are not making it pay. I return again to my famous ‘seeds of their own destruction’ comment, because in my wisdom, I didn’t think there was enough support from the travelling public to enable a hell of a lot of railways and steam centres to survive without somebody going bankrupt, or without people like Jeremy Hosking coming on the scene, and relieving us of some of the burden.
And is it right – is it good for the railway movement, that perhaps increasingly in order to get by, we have to rely on four or five or six extremely well-heeled railway enthusiasts?
But Jeremy Hosking can only go so far, and he has to send his ‘A4’ to Margate for storage. He’s got a ‘9F’ and a ‘Modified ‘Hall’ coming out of ticket in the near future. He’s got his hands full with Blue Peter. It’s taken about a year to fettle up Royal Scot again, and he’s investing in sleeping cars, and a train operating company.
But, wise man that he is, the only money he’s ever put into a steam railway company, as far as I know, is the only one that I know is genuinely profitable – and that’s the Dartmouth Steam Railway Company, where I think he has a 30% holding.
I note that he hasn’t invested in shares in any other railway – very wisely. So bless Jeremy Hosking for Royal Scot, Britannia, and Bittern – but he’s got to keep them in traffic.
But with the memory of steam so far gone, there aren’t going to be any more Jeremy Hoskings, or Bill McAlpines, or Pete Watermans, or Tony Marchingtons, or Bill Fords. How very quickly they found they were investing in a hobby which was time-consuming, and even more money-consuming.
On the other hand, and taking the counter view, look at the success of the new ‘A1’ Tornado and the Gresley ‘P2’ Prince of Wales. Look at the amazing amounts of money which they have managed to raise. It’s there, isn’t it, for these projects?
DW: That begs another question. You have been roundly critical in the past of new-builds, suggesting that they were draining the funding pot of money that would be
Unless we can stand on our own two feet, we really shouldn’t expect other people to subsidise us
better spent on more needy historic locomotives. Have you now warmed to the principle of new-build?
MJD: Well I have mixed views, because this isn’t ‘preservation’, is it? So my thought really seems to be proved wrong with Tornado and Prince of Wales. But the money going into, or which has already gone into ‘Saint’ Lady of Legend, Betton Grange, County of Glamorgan, Beachy Head, 82045, and so on – is this money which would have gone into existing locomotives? Is it detracting from that? I’m asking the question.
People I know – Great Western fans – will absolutely love to see a ‘Grange’ back on the line. I would. You would. But then a part of me says ‘Well, what’s the point?’
We’ve got Earl Bathurst, we’ve got Hinton Manor, we’ve got Hinderton Hall, we’ve got Burton Agnes Hall, we’ve got Great Western locomotives galore which have been languishing for 10, 20 or 30 years through lack of money, and lack of labour to bring them back to life.
Then we hear railways saying they can’t get people with steam in their blood, and in their qualifications to come in and do the expert work which is now required if a railway company wants to do its locomotive work in-house. So if you ask the Severn Valley, the
Gloucestershire Warwickshire, the North Norfolk – it isn’t just money, it’s ‘Can we get the qualified engineers to work on the locomotives now’?
They’ve got dozens of apprenticeship schemes, bless them, which are springing up within the movement, aided and abetted quite rightly by the Government’s focus on apprenticeships. Okay, we’re training 18, 19, 20 and 21-year-olds, but do they have that knowledge at their fingertips to go in and around and over and above a locomotive and winkle it out and work on it, with that Alun Rees, Ray Tranter, Bob Meanley type of expertise? They don’t. That’s not being replicated in today’s locomotive engineering staffs.
So there’s a huge question mark on our ability – forgetting money for a moment – to maintain what we have – hence we’re going back to the ever-increasing number of locomotives, and if you’re taking new-builds as an example, all they’re doing is adding to the ‘tenyear’ problem – and that’s a hell of a problem, isn’t it?
Those people that are qualified are tending to set up their own independent engineering workshops, their own boilershops – and they are taking experienced people from the railways. Where once upon a time they might have worked in the railway’s own workshop, they are now recognising they’re in demand,
that there is a market in which they can specialise and serve as contract engineers to the wider movement. But as far as the railways are concerned, where are they going to get their next boilersmith, their next coded welder, and so on?
DW: Let’s talk ‘people’ for a moment. When you look across the steam railway spectrum today, who do you think are the standout achievers? Who in your eyes wears a halo, or really rings the bell for you? Who are the shining lights?
MJD: I like the way the Ffestiniog/Welsh Highland handle their railways. I like Paul Lewin’s (FR & WHR general manager) style.
He has shown to tremendous effect his ability to steer that railway, and he has an excellent chairman in John Prideaux.
There you have a superb combination, and John Prideaux, bless his heart, he’s poured not only his time, but his money and all his expertise into it. I remember him with great affection from my days when he was a London Midland Region manager at Birmingham. What a professional man, and when you have a man like that as your chairman, and you have a professional railwayman like Paul Lewin as your general manager, and you give him a lot of authority, then you’re onto a winning streak.
I’d also pick out Chris Price – general manager at the North Yorkshire Moors. He’s a lover of steam, and we’ll forgive him for not giving exact passenger numbers in his general manager’s notes in ‘Moorsline’ – but he delivers one of the most fulsome GM’s reports of any in the movement – the other being Paul Lewin.
They both cover all aspects of their respective railways and their own personal characters come through well. Bill Ford, managing director of the Great Central Railway until his death last year, was another standout name.
He had his critics, because he spoke out – but his reports to the GCR membership were always very valid and to the point, and very financially oriented. Time and again he would say there was no future for the Great Central unless it could become viable, and he would no doubt have rued the day when they went overboard for a ‘combined’ Great Central with an 18-mile line which will be incapable of paying its way. I’ll make that forecast now. The GCR will never, ever, get a return on all the money that has been invested.
DW: You’re saying a unified Great Central might not be viable?
MJD: Well, we are back to the question of survivability, and my ‘seeds of destruction’ prophecy. They will destruct financially – but I think they will remain in place. The means will be found to enable the GCR and other major railways – the West Somerset, the Swanage, the Severn Valley – to continue functioning, because they will be regarded by the local council, local government, central government and others as ‘essential components’ of the tourist scene in their localities.
DW: When Steam Railway first published back in 1979 and railway preservation was still in its full flush of youth, the imposition of diesels working passenger trains on what were essentially ‘steam’ railways sparked a good deal of consternation – even anger. Is that issue now laid to rest?
MJD: Today’s general managers will tell you – they tell me – that diesel traction is going to be part of our railway timetables because, whether you like it or not, the savings from running a diesel, be it a railcar, a DMU, a class 47, 50 or whatever – are so substantial that we have no option but to consider diesel traction.
I say that, from my limited knowledge, even of today’s railways, diesel traction puts people off. They then argue: ‘our last diesel gala attracted a record number of visitors’. Well I say that’s very different from running the railway on 200 other days of the year, when you’re already having problems – major problems – in attracting day-to-day visitors.
Most railways are now struggling to manage last year’s numbers – most railways are struggling even to match their passenger numbers from 1990 to 1995. Whether it’s the Kent & East Sussex, the Bluebell, the Severn Valley, even the North Yorkshire Moors, we are not even getting back to those late 1980/early 1990s boom years, and I don’t see them coming back.
DW: You’re saying this is an irreversible trend? Everything is going south from here on?
MJD: Well it is, isn’t it?