PART ONE
Managing the National Collection’s locomotives is no easy task, especially when so many are on loan away from the National Railway Museum and its outposts. Steam Railway sits down with the people responsible for making sure the nation’s engines are well cared-for.
It’s hard to keep track of all the steam locomotives in the National Collection – and where they are. Excluding those based at Science Museum Group locations – i.e. the National Railway Museum at York, Locomotion at Shildon, the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester, and the Science Museum in Kensington – there are 37 steam locomotives on loan to 20 different external museums and organisations (see table). That number has grown in recent weeks, with the relocation of ex ‐LMS Stanier three-cylinder 2 ‐ 6‐4T No. 2500 from York to the Bury Transport Museum on an initial three-year loan. And all those locomotives and their respective loan agreements need to be managed.
That’s where Paddy McNulty comes in. Paddy is the NRM’s Railway Partnerships Manager, having been appointed to the newly created role in late 2021. It’s his job to keep an eye on the museum’s loaned-out locomotives and make sure they are being looked after properly. With that in mind, Steam Railway sat down with both Paddy and Anthony Coulls, the NRM’s Senior Curator, Rail Transport & Technology, to discuss how it all works.
People person
So, what exactly is a Railway Partnerships Manager? “Effectively, I’m the interface between the museum and heritage railways, but also stakeholders,”explains Paddy, “so I also occasionally speak to people at Network Rail and the ORR. My primary thing is to make sure the relationship between the museum and the wider heritage world works. That includes museums as well.”
Prior to the creation of the Railway Partnerships Manager role, “we were very much probably involved in the heritage railways in the way that heritage railways had been. Things were very much gentlemanly agreements,” says Paddy. “Then we looked at how museum practice has developed, and we realised that we needed to make sure that everything was actually managed more effectively. “My role was to come in and to be, for want of a better word, a relationship manager. The person to who people can speak. They can phone me up, I can chat to them. I can translate between our departments because even in the museum
