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Contents Listing - Articles & Features in this issue
Keeping No 4498 at work - Micheal Harris
Resignalling the Dart Valley Railway's Torbay Line - - Geoffrey Kitchenside
An auspicious decade - ten years of the Severn Valley Railway - John Booth
Photo feature - Industrials preserved
Full steam ahead - David Eatwell & and John Titlow
Ed. E. Tawe 37 By the time this appears in print
Cover, top: GWR'5101'2-6-2T No.5164 leaves Knowlesands Tunnel with the 12.50 from Bridgnorth on 7 April 1980.
Bottom: LNER 'A4' 4-6-2 No 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley at Carnforth on 11 July 1978.
Article Snippets
THE ASSOCIATION of Railway Preservation Societies has called for 1980 to be the Year of the Volunteer. This is good sense for a reappraisal is needed of the system by which volunteer and paid staff combine to make railway preservation practicable. The demise of the Manpower Services Commission adult employment schemes has meant that a number of private restored railways have had to reconsider their labour requirements. It is good to know that on one or two railways at least the appeals for more volunteers to replace now departed MSC labour have met with very encouraging responses.
This serves as an introduction ta this issue of Trains Illustrated, for its contents demonstrate the current realities of railway preservation. If nothing more, the article on Gresley Pacific No 4498 reveals just how much work and devotion is put in by so few for the pleasure of so many. But financial resources are crucial and the margin between a serviceable locomotive and one out of traffic for expensive repairs is narrow. In the case of the articles on the Severn Valley and the DVR's Torbay and Dartmouth Railway it is hoped that despite their status of being long-established, one plain fact can be made plain. All railways need to generate enough profits to finance renewals. In the past many national railways have been unable to do this and the result has been slow (and not so slow) decline.
On the SVR and DVR the message is clear. Such railways need new investment and without it there is no chance of carrying extra traffic to generate more revenue to keep the railway going for the future. But even a very good operating year only produces enough profit to pay for the bare minimum of renewals. As Harold Macmillan once observed, 'our position is brilliant but precarious!'
This serves as an introduction ta this issue of Trains Illustrated, for its contents demonstrate the current realities of railway preservation. If nothing more, the article on Gresley Pacific No 4498 reveals just how much work and devotion is put in by so few for the pleasure of so many. But financial resources are crucial and the margin between a serviceable locomotive and one out of traffic for expensive repairs is narrow. In the case of the articles on the Severn Valley and the DVR's Torbay and Dartmouth Railway it is hoped that despite their status of being long-established, one plain fact can be made plain. All railways need to generate enough profits to finance renewals. In the past many national railways have been unable to do this and the result has been slow (and not so slow) decline.
On the SVR and DVR the message is clear. Such railways need new investment and without it there is no chance of carrying extra traffic to generate more revenue to keep the railway going for the future. But even a very good operating year only produces enough profit to pay for the bare minimum of renewals. As Harold Macmillan once observed, 'our position is brilliant but precarious!'
