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Ah, the joys of New Year’s resolutions. Thousands of failed attempted diets, tidiness regimes and aborted exercise – or in my case getting through the ever ‐increasing pile of books by my bedside (my excuse is that it’s a work in progress…). And it’s heartening to see that the same concept is being taken up by some of our railways as well, as you can read in our incisive and candid feature with Bluebell boss Paul Churchman. Over the years, the line has accumulated a glut of stock, and – after trialling a sale in 2022 in which it disposed of a forlorn ‘USA’ tank among other things – it is now grasping the nettle and clearing out a lot more.
Does this need to be done? Some of you may argue, but the answer is firmly yes. As our previous Industry Insider Chris Price said in one of his columns, it’s getting to the stage where many, if not most, of our heritage lines are becoming cluttered with an array of probable no-hopers. Through lack of space, time and manpower, most of these increasingly sad specimens are rusting to the rails and are a complete eyesore. Yes, it’s true – some of them do have a historic value – but at what stage do you draw the line? If you have a wooden-bodied coach that has a ruined underframe and very little on top that isn’t matchwood, and that’s been sitting festering for many, many years in a headshunt, then what do you do with it? I saw just such a thing at the Chasewater Railway recently – the vehicle in question being an ex-LNWR coach that had been offered out some time ago. Very little salvageable material remained and, in fact, what was re-usable will be stripped out and refurbished shortly with the rest going for scrap
