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Paint your wagon

They had joined the media scrum at York to see ‘people’s engine’ Flying Scotsman turned out in wartime black livery, which it will wear for a while before reverting to Apple green later this year. Even though the thing doesn’t yet steam, a coat of paint seemed to get them all excited. Indeed railway enthusiasts get very excited about liveries and heated debates on the subject often ensue.

Three days later after ‘Scotsman’ revealed her new coat of paint I was at Sellindge rally (dry and sunny) to witness the little Wallis tractor in steam at her first rally – two years after we first entered its owner’s garden where it had lain for years, to say “S’cuse me mister, please can we take your engine to Great Dorset?”

The day after Sellindge it was up country via Carrington (wet and windy) to see two Robey wagons in steam together for the first time in the preservation era.

What I witnessed at Sellindge and Carrington were, to me, far more important than the hype surrounding ‘Scotsman’ – because the ‘new steamings’ were the result of individual achievement. No chequebook restoration for the Wallis. No national newspaper headlines. No TV cameras on hand.

Each month our pages are full of stories of individual and club achievements, battling usually against the odds in their pursuit of a good restoration job. Never do I fail to be impressed by the dedication of the restorer – which is why, when it comes to liveries, an engine or vehicle owner can damn well paint it what colour they like.

Thankfully most restorers choose correct liveries that pay homage to their vehicle’s commercial past, with lettering applied in the traditional signwriting method. Some choose more conventional adornments proclaiming current family ownership and the like (nothing wrong with that, it’s what happened in the past) and I think the only engine lettering that winds me up is where no imagination is shown and the canopy simply reads ‘Fowler of Leeds 1922’ or ‘Burrell No. XXXX Built at Thetford 1906’. Boring.

But any amount of paint and good lettering always comes second to an engine or vehicle that is working while still, to all intents and purposes, carrying ‘working clothes’ and which has not had the benefit of fresh paint. That’s a real ‘hairs on the back of the neck’ job because it’s living history and which is not normally found on a railway locomotive that, after three overhauls later, has very little original anything about it.

Not many preservationists have £74m to play with to exhibit their collection, so hats off to the curators of Glasgow’s new Riverside Transport Museum, which if the preview shown in this issue is anything to go by, will look absolutely stunning when it opens later this month.

Telling the story of transport and its place in social history is very important and it is certainly being done with a liberal dose of imagination. Individual cars on the shelves going up the walls like Dinky models is a masterstroke, as are the railway locomotives that appear to come from out of square holes in the wall.

The downside is that the collection includes Caledonian Railway single No 123, which will now almost never be steamed and grace the metals of the Bluebell Railway as it did in the 1960s.

It shows that not all history is repeatable, even in the preservation era. Indeed many places that were once a bastion of early preservation are now shadows of their former glories. Bressingham is a good example that comes to mind - and next month we’ll bring you the story of Alan Bloom’s vision and whether he would like what Bressingham has become.

Colin Tyson
Editor