A4 owner should be assisted in keeping it running
IN Heritage Railway Issue 264, two pages are taken up telling readers that A4 Union of South Africa is very likely to end up, like its siblings Nos. 60008, 60010 and 60022, stuffed and mounted in some shed.
While I do recognise that, as owner of No. 60009, John Cameron has every right to do whatever he likes with his property, if he simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to maintain it in full working condition, public funds should be made available to him to do so.
Just seven years ago, an inordinate amount of money was spent repatriating Nos. 60008 and 60010 from North America when all that was done was cosmetic restoration (because their owners didn’t do it) and static display in the north of England, rather than spending the money returning Mallard to steam and touring the whole of Britain.
When the two locomotives were brought back, I said at the time
(in Platform) that it presented a unique opportunity to present all six locomotives in all six liveries carried by the A4s (silver/grey, apple green, wartime black, garter blue, Brunswick green, and BR express blue) and for them all to be displayed at King’s Cross and Edinburgh Waverley stations (the capital cities of the countries they served and so excellently connected).
The comment was made at the time that such an exercise would be too disruptive, but I’m quite sure that, with just a little effort, it could have been achieved. As it is, not one was presented in the silver livery of the first four A4s built specifically for the ‘Silver Jubilee’train. Okay, none of those four locomotives has survived, but I’m quite sure that there would have been few objections if one of the six had ‘borrowed’one of their identities for the occasion. (No one minded Bittern
becoming Dominion of New Zealand
for a while!)
As it was though, two locomotives thathadabsolutelynocredentials(other than their eventual names) to even warrant them being preserved had several million pounds spent bringing them home and then returning them.
Not only do I believe that John Cameron should be offered assistance in restoring No. 60009 (which should be permanently restored to its original name, Osprey) but also his unique K4, No. 61994 The Great Marquess for use on the‘jacobite’trains.
In the same issue, the National Railway Museum (NRM) is reported to be planning to move Locomotion No. 1
to Shildon (it would seem) against very strong opposition. Why?
As most enthusiasts know, the NRM is, as its name clearly says, a museum and, as such, is not particularly concerned with working exhibits. Possibly the best exhibit is Merchant Navy No. 35029 which has been sectioned to illustrate as comprehensively as possible how a steam locomotive worked (as is its function). Lines of steam locomotives that will probably never steam again are relatively pointless as exhibits for the general public since, to their untrained eyes, the principal difference is their colour!
I applaud the NRM for gifting T3 No. 563 to the Swanage Railway where it will, indeed, see action as it was designed and built to do. I sincerely hope that this policy will be repeated many more times.
The same should be done with V2 No. 60800 Green Arrow and several other NRM exhibits.
Personally, I believe that the money spent on No. 4472 Flying Scotsman would have been much better spent restoring Mallard to full working order but that is, as I say, a personal opinion. There will only ever be one world record holder!
However, the only reason that Flying Scotsman can be claimed as ‘The world’s most famous steam locomotive’is because the media has made it so. City of Truro has a claim (albeit unsubstantiated) of being the first steam locomotive in the world to reach 100mph, but I doubt that 1% of the population has even heard of it and that is just as much down to the media. Meanwhile, the beautiful locomotive (No. 3440) sits stuffed and mounted and probably means nothing to anyone until they read the plaque!
My point is that the NRM has a function to educate the general public (preferably with non-unique locomotives) about the history of railways in Britain whilst heritage railways and heritage train operating companies should be left to cater for enthusiasts.