WILL YE NO’ COME BACK AGAIN?
Now the carnival really is over for The Great Marquess.
We hoped against hope, and prayed that somehow, in this crazy goldfish bowl called ‘steam preservation’ where financial logic and rational thinking are frequently overwhelmed by the power of ambition, that the North Yorkshire Moors Railway might find a reason, an excuse, or a way to restore The Great Marquess. The three-cylinder Gresley ‘Mogul’, hired to the NYMR for the 2015 season, has been laid up at Grosmont since a ‘minor’ crack of the copper firebox structure caused it to be stopped on October 23 that year. With just seven months then remaining on the locomotive’s ten-year boiler certificate, and with designs on retiring his endearing little West Highland Line 2-6-0 to an inert future at a purposebuilt visitor centre on his 400-acre sheep farm at Balbuthie, near St Monans, Fife, owner John Cameron elected not to plough any further money into the engine. But in December 2016, in a meeting with NYMR General Manager Chris Price, he threw down a gauntlet. “Put the ‘Marquess’ through another heavy overhaul at your own expense - and you can run it for free for the next two years,” he said. “But whatever happens, in the summer of 2019, the ‘K4’ will be joining ‘Number Nine’ [‘A4’ No. 60009 Union of South Africa] in permanent retirement, at the new visitor centre at Balbuthie.” Who would ever have criticised the NYMR for that flight of fancy, that excursion into the realms of ‘justifiable lunacy’ in which the railway would spend crazy money in order for the much-loved ‘Marquess’ to turn her dainty little five-foot-twos in anger, for two last glorious years? But that final vestige of hope - forlorn as we always knew it was - died on January 24 2017 when, after not too many days of cogitation, Chris Price deliberated: “We’d love to have the ‘Marquess’ running again - but there’s no deal to be done here. “We estimate it would take between nine and 12 months to get it back into service and, straight away, we know it would need £40,000-worth of boiler tubes putting into it before we’ve even looked at the firebox crack, and anything else that might turn up in the course of a heavy overhaul. “We respect John Cameron’s decision, and his ambitions for his engines in two years’ time, but from our perspective, restoring the ‘Marquess’ is simply not economically viable.” Those final three words hammer the nails firmly into the coffin lid: ‘K4’ No. 61994, built at Darlington almost 80 years ago, has already run for the last time. Even if some well-meaning benefactor appeared on the horizon, willing to bank-roll the full restoration of the ‘K4’ for a further tenyear stint, John Cameron would reluctantly turn him down, for as he told Steam Railway back in December: “It would be easy enough to write out a new ten-year certificate for the ‘Marquess’ - but I’m 77 now; who is going to write out a new ten-year certificate for me?” The sadness of this ending, interwoven with fulsome respect for the man who first shared the joy of his ‘private’ ‘A4’ class ‘Pacific’ with us 50 years ago, and who has done the same with the ‘K4’ for the last 14 years, is already being voiced with passion in letters to Steam Railway. In last month’s ‘Mailbag’, Bob Lumley wrote: “...this was the inevitable outcome that we all knew would come, but continued to hope it would not be any time soon. No person could have done more than he [John Cameron] has in providing us with so much joy over so many years.” There are many more letters in a similar vein.
Perfect foil
It was as easy to own two locomotives as one JOHN CAMERON
In late January, John Cameron was busying himself with his plans for the new three-road ‘railways and farming’ visitor centre at Balbuthie that will become the permanent resting place of the ‘A4’, ‘K4’ and his group’s Mk 1 main line support coach, Brake Second Corridor No. 35486. But he broke off to share with us his thoughts about his new ‘museum’ venture, to tell us why he bought the ‘K4’ in the first place, and to reflect on some of the more magical moments he has had since it became his, early in 2003. Unsurprisingly, the course that he has decided to take
has much to do with his strong sense of Scottish patriotism. He explains: “I didn’t actually have any special hankering to own The Great Marquess. I was pretty happy looking after ‘Number Nine’, but towards the end of 2002, Alun Rees, then General Manager of the Severn Valley Railway, which provided a home for the locomotive, approached me to say that Jamie Lindesay who, coincidentally, happens to own the estate which borders my farm here in Fife and who I knew, was looking to sell the engine on. “He didn’t have the interest in locomotives that his father had had, and the engine had been in a siding for four or five years, with not much happening. I told Alun that if Jamie was really serious about selling, to give me a call - and he did. “I took the view that it was as easy to own two locomotives as one, but what particularly appealed to me was that like ‘Number Nine’, which was only ever a Haymarket and a Ferryhill engine, the ‘Marquess’ had spent its entire career in Scotland, and had cut its teeth on the West Highland. “I think it’s well known that I learned to fire and drive steam locomotives at Stirling shed when I was studying for my agricultural engineering degree at Glasgow College as a teenager. Part of the learning process involved spending three months with an engineering employer - and British Railways happened to be one of the names on the list - so I plumped for them. I learned a lot, firing and driving, mainly ‘Black Fives’, ‘Standard Fives’ and Standard tanks on the Oban line; on Callander-Glasgow and Callander-Edinburgh ‘locals’; and on coal trains from Stirling through to Glasgow and Thornton. “That’s what gave me my taste for steam. I knew what a ‘K4’ was, but I’d never worked one. “I always thought that the ‘Marquess’ was the perfect balance for Union of South Africa. ‘Number Nine’ is a big engine with limited route availability [RA9], whereas the ‘Marquess’ [RA6] is a not-so-glamorous freight locomotive designed for bread-and-butter work, to go almost anywhere. I thought it was the perfect foil; I could run ‘Nine’ up the
main line to places like Perth, Inverness and Aberdeen, but the ‘K4’ could work over the West Highland where an ‘A4’ can’t go. It was the ideal match.” Did he ever regret buying either engine? “Certainly not” he retorts smartly. “I bought ‘Number Nine’ for its scrap value at the time - £4,000. What’s an ‘A4’ in running order worth now?” he asks. “£250,000? £300,000? I only wish I’d bought a few more of them!” Much of the empathy which exists between the enthusiast world, John Cameron, and his engines, is down to the fact that he has always remained faithful to the BR liveries that most people remember, and has never been one for ‘showroom’ presentation. Under his ownership, both engines have been believably of the BR steam epoch - not the highly polished ‘preservation era’. When he bought the ‘Marquess’, it was already in BR mixed traffic livery. “It was what I remembered,” he recalls. “There wasn’t any need to change it to anything else.”