Western Morning News (Saturday)
Railway sells locomotive to help raise vital funds
ASTEAM locomotive owned by the South Devon Railway Trust has been sold to a private buyer in a year of unprecedented difficulties for the heritage train operator caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Fundraising and Government support for hard hit tourist attractions has helped the Trust to raise nearly £900,000 since the start of the pandemic in March. The organisation, which operates a seven mile former Great Western Railway branch line, built in 1872, along the stunning valley of the River Dart between Buckfastleigh and Totnes, has a fund raising target of a million pounds to help offset the costs in lost revenue.
It reports in its latest newsletter that the Trust and the Dumbleton Hall Preservation Society have decided to take up an offer made to them to buy 4920 Dumbleton Hall. The engine was originally purchased from Woodham Bros in Barry for service on the Paignton to Dartmouth line, when both that line and the Buckfastleigh line were owned by the Dart Valley Railway. It is expected to move to its new home – so far undisclosed – in the new year. The price paid for the loco has not been revealed.
DHPS chairman Richard Elliott said: “After we received an offer to buy former GWR loco No. 4920 Dumbleton Hall, the South Devon Railway Trust and Dumbleton Hall Preservation Society decided to take it up.
“Dumbleton Hall last ran in 1999 and is now in need of a heavy overhaul. It is a long way down the restoration queue at Buckfastleigh and also would never be used regularly on the line because it’s too big as a Red route, Class 5 machine.
“The SDRT and DHPS have agreed to accept the sale offer from an unnamed third party buyer for an undisclosed sum. It’s a good deal for us and the engine will now hopefully run again in the not too distant future.”
South Devon Railway Trust chairman Jon Morton said: “This is good news, both for the loco and for the SDR. As Robin Jones, the editor of Heritage Railway, accurately said, ‘the SDR is the quintessential GWR branch line’.
“That means branch line trains and branch line locos, so a Hall is not really the best kind of loco for us. With a new owner, we can all look forward to seeing this loco returned to steam and working again, which is what we all want. With the cost and limited running opportunities, returning 4920 to steam at Buckfastleigh with so many other priorities was simply not an immediate option.”
South Devon Railway spokesman
Dick Wood praised local people and steam train enthusiasts for the support they had shown to the trust.
He said the railway has lost almost 280 days of business over nine months after being forced to suspend services thanks to cornonavirus on March 17, leaving the railway without its primary source of income from visitors and passengers.
“The railway still desperately needs all of the financial support that it can get even though our appeals and grant bids have done extremely well, plus the sale of a valuable asset in ‘Dumbleton Hall’,” he said.
“In business, one can only do four things to affect the figures positively to the good: Sell More; Cut Costs; Put Your Prices Up, or Sell Assets if you have any. We can’t sell more or put our prices up when we’re not open for business, so we have had to cut costs and sell an asset. It’s simple economics.”