Why are preserved railways so unpopular as layout subjects

[rockershovel]

On 22/07/2019 at 10:14, HonestTom said:

With the question of locos that were never preserved, I think you can get away with it to some extent, provided it's reasonably plausible. There have been an awful lot of near-misses in preservation history - the Bluebell looked at acquiring a LBSC K and Captain Bill Smith was originally interested in a GNR C12. And there are plenty of pre-grouping engines only survive because they happened to be sold into industry. But I don't think you could realistically justify, say, a Leader or an original P2, because all examples were scrapped long before the preservation movement and they weren't the kind of everyday workhorses that might have been sold on.

 

I can imagine a parallel universe where the Bluebell Railway didn't exist and there's some modeller being told off for modelling a heritage railway with an H, an E4, an Adams Radial, a Dukedog and a North London Railway 0-6-0. And two Ps? Ridiculous!

 

Wasn’t 92220 Evening Star earmarked for preservation from the outset? City of Truro was donated for preservation by the GWR, and what about Mallard? 

[Steamport Southport]

I seem to remember reading the LBSC K was turned down as being too big and modern. Likewise they turned down a Z Class which was in storage. The Bluebell members at the time wanted small pretty engines.

 

Whilst the C12 was replaced by the J52 as it was in poor condition.

 

 

 

Jason

[Steven B]

To do justice to most British preserved/heritage railways is that you'd need long lines of stock at various levels of decay, none of which has moed for years. Whilst these would make interesting modelling projects, few modellers could bear to see long lines of unused stock and would soon be restoring them to running condition at a rate the real lines could only dream of!

 

Steven B.

[newbryford]

7 minutes ago, Steven B said:

To do justice to most British preserved/heritage railways is that you'd need long lines of stock at various levels of decay, none of which has moed for years. Whilst these would make interesting modelling projects, few modellers could bear to see long lines of unused stock and would soon be restoring them to running condition at a rate the real lines could only dream of!

 

Steven B.

 

Rather than long lines of decayed stock, how about piles of boxes of unbuilt/unfinished kits and projects?

[HonestTom]

19 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Wasn’t 92220 Evening Star earmarked for preservation from the outset? City of Truro was donated for preservation by the GWR, and what about Mallard? 

 

You could certainly invent some museum that the engines were donated to straight out of service, but it's worth noting that in the days before the end of steam, there just wasn't that "preserve EVERYTHING" mentality we have today. For instance, the NRM weren't originally interested in Flying Scotsman because they already had Mallard - so why would they want another LNER Pacific? Unless it was historically significant, as per Evening Star and Mallard, it was unlikely that it would be donated. Even the historically significant City of Truro only survived because of Collett's intervention, the GWR had no interest in preserving an obsolete locomotive otherwise.

 

Lest we forget, an awful lot of really, really important historic engines only survive by chance, because they lasted long enough for their historic importance to be appreciated. Rocket only survived because the colliery that had bought it figured that maybe it was worth saving. Lion made it because it was converted into a pumping engine. North Star and Lord of the Isles were preserved and then scrapped.

 

I'd also argue that the NRM is rather different from a preservation society, which would often have to take what they could get, when they could get it. I don't doubt that many preservation societies would have given their collective right arms for a P2 or Raven Pacific, but there just weren't any around when the preservation movement existed.

 

Of course, there's always Rule 1. An unlikely survivor on your layout is only a problem if you have a problem with it - it's not my railway.

 

Personally, I think you could have a lot of fun inventing the circumstances that allowed your engine to survive.

 

[melmerby]

On 17/07/2019 at 18:05, Joseph_Pestell said:

I guess that people here are only thinking in terms of UK prototype. In France, there have been at least two preservation operations run on tracks that are used during the week for SNCF freight.

The Strasburg Railroad in the USA is an operating Short Line, established in 1832 with regular freight flows and heritage steam (including Thomas!) running alongside each other

https://www.strasburgrailroad.com/dig-deeper/history/

It's also connected across the road to the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum.

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by melmerby

[Steamport Southport]

Flying Scotsman wasn't on the list because Great Northern was. But Great Northern had been altered too much for the purists so was cut up.

 

Evening Star was actually still owned by BR until at least the 1980s. It was always shown as being on loan from the BRB.

 

I had a copy of the scheduled list somewhere. Quite a few were removed over the years, Britannia, Duke Of Gloucester, BR 5MT, Ben Alder, J21, etc.

.

 

 

Jason

[Pacific231G]

22 hours ago, Edge said:

 

With the condition of either railway when they were saved, I find it hard to argue that either has not been ‘preserved’ in the traditional sense of the word, regardless of ownership status (I do know that the FR is certainly as outlines, no idea about the TR myself) as both lines needed almost total reconstruction of infrastructure, rolling stock and also became the home for a number of ‘foreign’ engines/coaches etc.

With the TR the clue is in the name of the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society that took over the shares of the Talyllyn Railway (via a holding company) in 1951. The fact that they extended passenger services from Abergynolwel to Nant Gwernol and introduced locos etc. from other railways doesn't alter that. The railway itself was certainly preserved.  

[The Johnster]

It is probably a good idea at this point to recognise the work of the 'preservation movement' that existed before the advent of the Talyllyn, Ffestiniog, and Bluebell (and Capt. Smith).  Credit here is due to the LNER, not the wealthiest of railways, in establishing the old Railway Museum at York.  It is a shame that the other Big 4 did not follow suit, and kudos to them for preserving City of Truro, a loco they had a vested interest in downplaying as they had their own 100mph claim for Flying Scotsman to consider.  A very good selection of NER locos were saved that would otherwise have been lost.

 

The BRB's official list was 'informed' by the desire to show the technical improvement of locos over the years, to mark the significant developments and display them in way that made sense to an engineering student studying them, rather than considering the spurious, ill-informed, romantic, impractical, and generally wishy-washy requirements of enthusiastic amateurs.  The prime purpose was academic and educational, and nobody thought any purpose was served by actually operating the locos.  A single Gresey 3 cylinder loco is sufficient in this scenario, and it had to Mallard as an example also of the Kylchap exhaust and the speed record holder.  The York museum already had good examples of pre-grouping practice from the NER, from Stephenson long boiler through 4-4-0s, Atlantics, and Compounds, so we were probably lucky that they went for 41000 as the example of a Compound.

 

By the 1960s, modernisation was the buzzword and enthusiasm for steam could kill careers.  Amateurs had proven capable of running narrow gauge lines and a branch in Sussex with small engines and elbow grease, but full size preservation by the nascent groups was thought unwise and even dangerous in some quarters, and the early preservationists met a lot of opposition from BR.  The official line was that the correct range of locos had already been preserved and were either on display at appropriate venues (York, Kensington, Clapham) or safely stored pending space being found for them, so what was the point of supporting amateur groups that were probably going to fail and might well kill people in the process.

 

This was somewhat circumvented by the sort of people who were in positions to deal with the railway at Board level, the likes of Bill McAlpine, Lord Montague, and Alan Pegler, and to some extent David Shepherd the artist.  Bulmer's Cider got involved with King George V and the steam ban was broken; nothing disastrous happened and from that point BR's opinion began to become a bit less unsympathetic.

 

[brack]

Regarding the tallylyn and festiniog I have to agree. They're preserved (technically) but Oscar Wilde had it right when he said "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." I do not wish to undermine the efforts of those involved in the heritage movement and I'm glad they preserved what they did (went to shildon today, heading to north wales on friday) but in preserving them the precarious, neglected beauty and decrepitude of the tallylyn or festiniog, the character or soul of the lines, has been destroyed or altered completely. It had to be - they couldnt continue to function for over half a century in the state they were, and without the money from tourists/families they would not survive - preservationists have to make that deal with visitors to fund their efforts. There survives a railway on the same right of way, with some of the same stock, but it certainly isn't the railway that was there before preservation. That doesn't mean I disapprove of what has happened, in many ways what we have now is the best possible outcome, but it isn't what they set out to save, regardless of the legal or technical claim to continuity. Were I to model the FR I'd be looking at that romantic, struggling period. I suspect that romantic appeal is part of what drives us to create models.

[Andy Kirkham]

On ‎07‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 22:53, friscopete said:

A preserved line is a bit like a re enactment group .

 

Do military modellers ever build dioramas of Sealed Knot re-enactments?

[Reorte]

6 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

Do military modellers ever build dioramas of Sealed Knot re-enactments?

Maybe not military models but IIRC there are some re-enactors on the World's End layout.

[Zomboid]

16 hours ago, brack said:

Regarding the tallylyn and festiniog I have to agree. They're preserved (technically) but Oscar Wilde had it right when he said "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." I do not wish to undermine the efforts of those involved in the heritage movement and I'm glad they preserved what they did (went to shildon today, heading to north wales on friday) but in preserving them the precarious, neglected beauty and decrepitude of the tallylyn or festiniog, the character or soul of the lines, has been destroyed or altered completely. It had to be - they couldnt continue to function for over half a century in the state they were, and without the money from tourists/families they would not survive - preservationists have to make that deal with visitors to fund their efforts. There survives a railway on the same right of way, with some of the same stock, but it certainly isn't the railway that was there before preservation. That doesn't mean I disapprove of what has happened, in many ways what we have now is the best possible outcome, but it isn't what they set out to save, regardless of the legal or technical claim to continuity. Were I to model the FR I'd be looking at that romantic, struggling period. I suspect that romantic appeal is part of what drives us to create models.

I couldn't agree more. There's a variety of different levels in this, and given the amount of original equipment still in use at the TR then it's probably amongst the closest to "preserved" out of anything in the heritage sector.

Personally I'm involved to a minor degree with the Epping Ongar Railway, and whilst it's brilliant that it exists, what goes on there is almost completely unrelated to the GER branch line which the underground took over and electrified, before ultimately closing.

[tomparryharry]

22 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

I seem to remember reading the LBSC K was turned down as being too big and modern. Likewise they turned down a Z Class which was in storage. The Bluebell members at the time wanted small pretty engines.

 

Whilst the C12 was replaced by the J52 as it was in poor condition.

 

 

 

Jason

 

I'd reckon if an LB&SCR K class came along today, there would be an almighty scuffle to make that happen.  me included, I'd have to say.

[Pacific231G]

18 hours ago, brack said:

Regarding the tallylyn and festiniog I have to agree. They're preserved (technically) but Oscar Wilde had it right when he said "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." I do not wish to undermine the efforts of those involved in the heritage movement and I'm glad they preserved what they did (went to shildon today, heading to north wales on friday) but in preserving them the precarious, neglected beauty and decrepitude of the tallylyn or festiniog, the character or soul of the lines, has been destroyed or altered completely. It had to be - they couldnt continue to function for over half a century in the state they were, and without the money from tourists/families they would not survive - preservationists have to make that deal with visitors to fund their efforts. There survives a railway on the same right of way, with some of the same stock, but it certainly isn't the railway that was there before preservation. That doesn't mean I disapprove of what has happened, in many ways what we have now is the best possible outcome, but it isn't what they set out to save, regardless of the legal or technical claim to continuity. Were I to model the FR I'd be looking at that romantic, struggling period. I suspect that romantic appeal is part of what drives us to create models.

It's an interesting argument and the "precarious, neglected beauty and decrepitude" clearly was attractive to the enthusiasts who discovered them  towards the end of or even after their commercial service,  However, if you look at Edwardian and pre WW2  postcards  of the Welsh Highland, the Weslshpool and Llanfair, the Lynton and Barnstaple and even the, in theory primarily mineral, FR , that's not what you see. What you mostly see are properly buit railways with neatly finished ballast. well tended flowerbeds, well polished locos and smartly turned out staff . I'm not quite so sure about the TR which seems always to have been a bit marginal but it too had to satisfy the railway inspectorate before it could carry passengers. 

The curious thing is that, before John Ahern, I can find very little interest at all amongst modellers or enthusiasts in branch lines and light railways.  It does seem that it was to a large extent their decline and virtual disappearance in their traditional form that made them so attractive. 

 

[The Johnster]

The pre-war Festiniog, without the correct Welsh double f in those days, was a pretty main line concern that happened to use a narrower than usual gauge, and frequently ran faster than the 25mph specified in the preservation era LRO.  Gravity slate trains of several hundred tons ran at up to around 70mph on track as well maintained as any used for such speeds anywhere, some curves being superelevated in a very main line fashion to facilitate this.  The Fairlies were easily capable of around 40mph in normal service.

[47137]

On 19/07/2019 at 15:17, The Johnster said:

...

 

But if you model an imaginary heritage railway, the boundaries are not so much indistinct as invisible; they are IMHO still there, though, if you want to present something believable.  There are fundamental questions ignored at your peril in the concept stage; do you model locos actually preserved, but which are in reality on other heritage lines that actually exist, and claim they are all visiting attractions, do you restrict yourself to types actually preserved but class members that were in reality scrapped, or do you run everything and anything?  It is never really going to cut the believable mustard IMHO if you adopt the last scenario, and you'll end up with a train set and an LMS Beyer Garratt.

 

...

 

I think there are some more scenarios, especially in front of "everything and anything".

 

I've got a Polish S160 on my 2012 layout and I want to use this engine on my as-yet unbuilt 1967 layout. I am happy, because I have a mental back-story for the 1967 scene, and this story supports my present 2012 scene. This works for me.

 

Different people put their own thresholds on what they feel is believable. I suspect, if I presented my 2012 scene at an exhibition it would be "unbelievable" and even "absurb"; but some of the people who judged it to be absurd would accept its appearance in the 1967 scene. There are limits to what you can fit onto a layout description for a show. When the history is a fiction, it can be quite complex to the originator (it probably needs to be complex to satisfy me) but it has to be digestible to a casual audience. This is doubly difficult if the scene shows something unpreserved in preservation.

 

The usual "Rule 1" is fair enough as a back stop, but there are many degrees of its interpretation before you end up with your suggested train set and a Garrett.

 

- Richard.

[newbryford]

On 24/07/2019 at 11:28, tomparryharry said:

 

I'd reckon if an LB&SCR K class came along today, there would be an almighty scuffle to make that happen.  me included, I'd have to say.

 

I think that even an unloved (at the time) design such as a Fowler 7F 0-8-0 would also create a scuffle should there be the faintest hope of one[*]

And the same goes for a North British Type 1, or any other lost diesel class.

 

Cheers,

Mick

[*] but not from me.

[greatcoleswoodhalt]

On 22/07/2019 at 01:45, jafcreasey said:

Absolutely.

 

A visit to the Spa Valley Railway generally offers an eclectic mix of locomotives and rolling stock - on Saturday, the 10:30 'steam' service from Tunbridge Wells West was hauled by RSH 62 Ugly with Class 33 33063 R J Mitchell at the rear.  Rolling stock consisted solely of MK1's, the majority in BR green and one in BR blue/grey!

 

This isn't a reenactment group, it's a heritage railway.

 

Resurrecting a thread and quoting myself...

 

Last weekend I visited the Mangapps Railway Museum which has been established on a farm at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex (there was no railway history there prior to 1989) - for their thirtieth anniversary they had a varied mix of traction and carriages, not forgetting a Canadian Pacific Railway Caboose!

 

Whilst Rule One may occasionally seem far too outlandish, you'd be surprised...

Edited December 16, 2020 by jafcreasey

[rockershovel]

On 24/07/2019 at 17:57, Pacific231G said:

It's an interesting argument and the "precarious, neglected beauty and decrepitude" clearly was attractive to the enthusiasts who discovered them  towards the end of or even after their commercial service,  However, if you look at Edwardian and pre WW2  postcards  of the Welsh Highland, the Weslshpool and Llanfair, the Lynton and Barnstaple and even the, in theory primarily mineral, FR , that's not what you see. What you mostly see are properly buit railways with neatly finished ballast. well tended flowerbeds, well polished locos and smartly turned out staff . I'm not quite so sure about the TR which seems always to have been a bit marginal but it too had to satisfy the railway inspectorate before it could carry passengers. 

The curious thing is that, before John Ahern, I can find very little interest at all amongst modellers or enthusiasts in branch lines and light railways.  It does seem that it was to a large extent their decline and virtual disappearance in their traditional form that made them so attractive. 

 

 

The Southwold Railway was an exception, to prove the rule; comic postcards made fun of its supposed bucolic and at times, chaotic nature 

[Pacific231G]

On 01/09/2019 at 10:25, rockershovel said:

 

The Southwold Railway was an exception, to prove the rule; comic postcards made fun of its supposed bucolic and at times, chaotic nature 

I'm not sure about that. The Southwold probably was too slow at 16 MPH to compete with motor buses and lorries but I don't think it was ever run down and chaotic.

 

 

These postcards drawn by local cartoonist Reg Carter are amusing but a more authentic sense of it in reality can be seen in this newsreel from the time of closure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHrWbNrVs_s

I assume the first part was filmed some months before it closed and the latter are of the last day itself.

Some of the same shots and other also appear in this film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygtjCLh4YBs

The captions, especially in the Gaumont Mirror newsreel are trying to go along with the unreliable joke "express" theme imagined in the postcards but what you actually see is very different.

 

Clearly it was a lightly laid railway with its sleepers largely covered with gravel especially in station areas , normal for light railways at that time, but the track is almost completely free of weeds and doesn't look all decrepid. The locos in use are spick and span and, while the tramway style coaches are perhaps old fashioned and rather austere even for 1929, they seem to be clean and in perfectly good condition. Some of the open coal wagons look a but bashed around but that is the nature of wooden coal wagons  Station staff all seem well turned out  and other photos indicate that wasn't just because they were being filmed.   The scene with the signalman-porter (?) dropping his newspaper apparently in surprise that the train has turned up and leaping to open the signal is clearly staged and though there may well have been days when the train took fifty minutes to make the normally thirty five mintue nine mile run they probably didn't come that often.

 

I can remember similar postcards about the Isle of Wight railways

 

 

This is a very old one but more contemporary cartoons had passengers getting out and picking the flowers while the train trundled along. My actual memories of that railway, from a childhood holiday, are of crowded trains delivering hordes of holidaymakers from the ferries to the resorts. Ryde Pierhead, in particular with four trains lined up in its platforms, impressed me greatly as a very busy station. My even clearer memories, from later visits as a teenager in its final years, are of a surviving steam railway with fairly old coaches but kept in very good condition by a staff who did their work with immense pride until the very end. The locos in particular were far cleaner and well looked after than was typical of steam locos on the mainland in the last years of steam. 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Andy Kirkham]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

 

I can remember similar postcards about the Isle of Wight railways

 

 

 

I'm sure there were a number of designs  like like - a generic scene  overprinted with the name of the local railway.

[Andy Kirkham]

Peter Strange writes in his introduction to The Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway - A Pictorial Record: 

 

"Although regarded by many as something of a local joke, the railway was, in fact, efficiently run by an enthusiastic and  friendly staff. It provided a most useful service for Clevedon commuters and school children making regular daily trips to and from Weston-super-Mare.... WC&PR trains generally ran to time , although breakdowns occurred occasionally."

 

I think Pacific231G's points about the Southwold probably apply to the majority of minor railways: photos of the Leek &  Manifold, Lynton & Barnstaple, Corris, Welshpool & Llanfair, Campbelltown & Macrihanish seem to show them fairly spick-and-span until the end. The Talyllyn conforms to our image of decrepitude because it was run on a shoestring by its owner to maintain local employment, and the Festiniog and Welsh Highland went through a period of deplorable unreliability because their locomotive superintendent was not up to the job, but I believe they recovered under the management of Colonel Stephens and his successor Austen.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Andy Kirkham

[rockershovel]

32 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

Peter Strange writes in his introduction to The Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway - A Pictorial Record: 

 

"Although regarded by many as something of a local joke, the railway was, in fact, efficiently run by an enthusiastic and  friendly staff. It provided a most useful service for Clevedon commuters and school children making regular daily trips to and from Weston-super-Mare.... WC&PR trains generally ran to time , although breakdowns occurred occasionally."

 

I think Pacific231G's points about the Southwold probably apply to the majority of minor railways: photos of the Leek &  Manifold, Lynton & Barnstaple, Corris, Welshpool & Llanfair, Campbelltown & Macrihanish seem to show them fairly spick-and-span until the end. The Talyllyn conforms to our image of decrepitude because it was run on a shoestring by its owner to maintain local employment, and the Festiniog and Welsh Highland went through a period of deplorable unreliability because their locomotive superintendent was not up to the job, but I believe they recovered under the management of Colonel Stephens and his successor Austen.

 

I think these sort of cartoons are more representative of the humour of the time, than any real relationship to the actual line in question. Railwaymen pre-WW2 were respected as being in regular, skilled work with real prospects, in a time when that wasn't usual by any means. Even a minor byway like the Southwold represented a substantial investment of someone's money. 

 

The TR was flogged into the ground, long past the end of its economic life; the FR underwent a long process of decay during which the historic resources of a once-prosperous operation were entirely consumed. The WHR was a failure as built, but lingered on as a parasite on the declining FR. 

 

The nearest thing to the "image" in England was probably the Snailbeach, or the Ashover; built from army surplus and limping on long after their purpose had faded away. 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by rockershovel

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

I'm sure there were a number of designs  like like - a generic scene  overprinted with the name of the local railway.

Indeed. I did a Google image source on the "our local express" postcard and found at least nine examples of the same image being used for railways from Dublin to Invercargill  and even for Ryde to Ventnor. They were signed and published by "Cynicus" who was Martin Anderson, a Scottish cartoonist who'd been a political satirist before turning to such mass produced "humorous" postcards  with his own Cynicus Postcard Publishing Company. There were a couple of other similar generic railway postcard, a Last Car to.... for trams  and one titled Our Village. After initial success he died in poverty. There were probably other "generic" railway cartoons but Reg Carter's cartoons were specific to the Southwold and I've not found any sign of them being used to represent any other line.