Museum should get back to basics not play politics
I MUST convey my disgust at the conduct of the National Museum of Wales over its views on the slave trade and railway development in Wales (News, issue 292) and express my total support for the stated views of Robert Poll, founder of the Save Our Statues campaign.
In 1986, I visited the museum’s site in Cardiff Bay only to find that its most neglected locomotive was Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0ST No. 544 of 1900, a beautiful and unique inside cylinder 0-6-0ST built to a design later used by the Cardiff Railway (and sadly desecrated by the GWR as Nos. 681-4 by conversion to pannier tanks).
When I questioned the curator about the locomotive’s plight, he made no apology for the state of the locomotive and said (I quote) “we need something for the children to play on” (even then the health and safety people would have had a fit!).
Since those days, the loco has moved to Big Pit but substantially nothing has been done on its restoration (including the portions of the mainframes that were ‘butchered’ to enable its movement to Cardiff in the first place) and it has just been left to rust.
Quite frankly, the worthies of the NMoW should focus their minds on spending time and resources on restoring and looking after important relics of this status rather than playing silly politics of the type that we are seeing here. If not, they should make way for people who are fit to hold office. Mark Smiths,