THE OFFICIAL VOICE OF PRESERVATION
HERITAGE RAILWAY ASSOCIATION CHIEF EXEC STEVE OATES TACKLES STEAM’S BURNING ISSUES
IWONDER IF those inspired individuals like Captain Bill Smith and Captain Peter Manisty, who did so much in the early days of steam railway preservation, envisaged what they were creating when they took the first steps to form what is now the Heritage Railway Association.
In 1962, when the HRA was born, there were only two operating standard gauge heritage railways in the country. Narrow gauge preservation was slightly more advanced and the Ffestiniog Railway was making great strides forward.
But who would have predicted that those few lines being reborn would one day grow to become well over 160 heritage railways, with more than 600 miles of track?
This year, more than ever, we need to remember the great work of those inspired individuals and people like Dame Margaret Weston and David Morgan who would follow them in the HRA over the years.
Entire books have been written on how tough things were in those early days. The challenge of negotiating with a reluctant British Railways to save locomotives or entire lines was real … And often it was the expertise of those at the top of the HRA that made the difference.
But in 2022 what is the equivalent? We’re not trying to battle with a state-owned giant that’s looking to destroy what we hold dear. We’re not fighting officialdom to prevent treasured Victorian infrastructure from being turned into baked bean cans. The world has changed.
The extinction of steam on the main line was an artificial construct. A date was chosen by a politician and it only applied to British Railways. On Monday August 5 1968, steam all-but had gone, but almost everything else remained the same. Operating practices of the steam age were slow to disappear and heavy industry was still the order of the day.
Now though, everything is different. While heritage rail has been so successful in the intervening years that it is flourishing in 2022, the rest of the world has gone flying by. The challenge now is maintaining what we’ve got. We’ve preserved a microcosm of how things used to be and now we need to justify why we should be allowed to continue doing that.
The key might be borrowing an approach that the former London & North Eastern Railway pioneered in the 1930s.
It realised that the world was changing and that it needed to adapt. Reinventing much of what it did, it introduced glamorous trains that tapped into the mood of the moment, all backed up with what we’d now recognise as a brilliant PR and communications campaign.
We need to learn to speak the language of the modern world too. We need to accept that everyone now cares about carbon emissions. We must learn – quickly – how to explain that most of what you can see coming out of the locomotive is steam, not smoke. We must recognise that the public don’t understand, or care, if a locomotive is owned by a different body. They just see your railway.
And we need to realise that safety expectations are different too. A quote I use very frequently comes from Ian Skinner at the Office of Rail and Road: “Passengers expect a 1950s experience with 2020s safety.”
Working together, we need to draw upon the collective expertise of the heritage rail sector. And we need to make sure it applies across the board.
Do I think we can do that? Yes, of course I do. Will it always be easy? No. We might not be saving ‘Pacifics’ from the scrapyard or rebuilding the permanent way, but there’s still a job to do here. And if we all work together, in 60 years’ time the next generation (or maybe the one after!) will be marking the 120th anniversary of the Heritage Railway Association.
WE NEED TO LEARN TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF THE MODERN WORLD