Future preservation of modern trains

[43096]

Does the NRM have any responsibility to keep records of what is left, who owns it, and what condition it is in? We almost need a listing kind of operation to ensure that the best examples of each class survive - the owners have to at least prevent further deterioration or sell. That would seem a bit unfair on owners but the same duties apply to listed building owners. It would mean that people would be more willing to donate time/money to preserving them if they knew the owner couldn’t sell (or be forced to sell by bankruptcy) to a scrapyard.

Sounds like an utterly impractical idea. The NRM doesn't have the resource to look after its own vehicles properly, let alone taking on something like this. It all sounds very Jeremy Corbyn - state control of railway preservation. No thanks.

 

[mdewell]

For carriages there is the excellent Railway Heritage Carriage Survey which has extensive records.
http://www.cs.rhrp.org.uk/se/search.asp
It still relies on people reporting their observations so it can never be totally up to date. It’s still a very useful resource though.

The RHRP is an excellent site for all manner of rolling stock, except locomotives. . .
. . . which is my fault as I beat them to it by several years and they saw no point in duplicating effort. So for details of all preserved locomotives have a look at http://www.heritage-railways.com/locosdb/locos.php
(As mentioned above, it can never be totally up to date, so any updates are very welcome (please use the contact address on the website))

 

[Meerkat]

That sounds like a way of deterring people from taking on any new projects - I could see the attraction in stumping up for a share of a recently withdrawn locomotive (say the Class 20 that I saw on the RHHT recently)... but you're telling me that I'd be liable to preserve it to the same standards as a historic building? That's quite an undertaking... especially as some locos are bought as "Christmas trees" (to donate parts to others in the class)...

...and would this apply to all preserved stock? Who is going to decide how many in a class need to be preserved? What if nobody wants to preserve a class like a 143? Would someone decide that we need to preserve multiple types of another class given all of the different subclasses/ liveries/ alterations?

And what about the hundreds of locomotives that were preserved prior to your legislation coming in? They are lumbered with a huge liability to maintain a hulking lump of metal (which is quite different to people purchasing a property that was already a listed building).

It's well meaning but it'd result in even fewer trains being preserved.

The lazy answer is ‘how it works for listed buildings’.
Buildings are getting listed all the time after people have bought them.
As for standards I think you are confusing a NT historic monument with a listed building. You wouldn’t be told to restore it perfectly right now, just told to prevent it deteriorating any further.
It also wouldn’t be all surviving examples, just ensuring that some survive - that they don’t rust away awaiting full restoration when a cosmetic job could be done to protect them.