THE OFFICIAL VOICE OF PRESERVATION

HERITAGE RAILWAY ASSOCIATION CHIEF EXEC STEVE OATES TACKLES STEAM’S BURNING ISSUES

GOVERNMENTS DON’T instinctively know why heritage rail is important. We have to tell them. And governments don’t instinctively know why coal is important to us. We have to tell them. But that means talking a language with which many in our sector are not fluent. We don’t talk about the history of a line or the importance of its locomotives in the development of railways. Instead, we’re discussing economic impact, jobs, cultural value and other aspects of the heritage rail sector that you’ll never find in an Ian Allan Abc. And when you’re talking coal and all the associated environmental stuff, and asking a government to change tack, it’s challenging – really challenging – getting the right message through.

Encouragingly, there are signs that the issues around coal are now being recognised. There’s still masses to do, but we’ve seen things over the last few weeks that we wouldn’t have expected not so long ago.

I don’t just mean the very welcome short-term news that Ffos-y-Fran is once again producing lump coal until November. I mean the longer term problem of securing support for the right coal for years to come.

It’s no secret that we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make our case to decision-makers in both Westminster and Cardiff. But meetings with the right people is only one part of the job. We understand that the people we’re meeting don’t have a huge knowledge of our sector. That’s not a criticism and, for the most part, it’s hardly surprising. A government minister will have to work with several different sectors and will need to be more of a generalist than a specialist.

So when a minister replies to a question in the House of Lords (from HRA President, Lord Faulkner as it happens) stating how important heritage steam is for the visitor economy, we know we’re making inroads. And when he then offers to work with the sector to find solutions to the coal issues we’re facing, we can see that the hard work is starting to pay off.

The HRA is putting heritage rail concerns towards the fronts of minds of people like Lord Parkinson, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DCMS. It’s not ‘job done’, but it’s a substantial step forward.

It’s a similar story in Wales. We’ve made sure that a number of Senedd members understand that in Wales alone, the economic impact of heritage rail is £52 million per year, it attracts 1.2 million visitors a year and directly employs 500 people. Those statistics help us to open doors and let us have the conversations we need to have about coal.

Just the other week, the Welsh minister responsible for climate change appeared on BBC TV making the case that we still need coal – for steel to manufacture wind turbines even. Julie James MS actually asked “rather than importing coal from all over the world, with the carbon footprint that goes with that, why not have it from right next door?”. This is a seismic shift in the maturity of environmental debate, and the conversations that we’ve been having played their part.

A single heritage railway working on its own will never be able to do this. It’s the sector’s trade association – the HRA – that’s leading the way and making these things possible, with colleagues in the worlds of road, stationary and maritime steam all following our lead and using figures and arguments developed by the HRA.

I still won’t promise that all the solutions are going to appear overnight, this month or even this year. But I can be completely certain that we have the best chances of success if we have a single, strong and well-informed voice. The last few weeks have started to prove that beyond doubt.

A SINGLE RAILWAY WORKING ON ITS OWN WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THIS