A Stick of Rock

In the old days - before I was 50 and the Forsythe Collection departed our house for the NRM - my wife and I were engaged quite regularly by the unsolicited and/or anonymous donation. Packets and on occasion boxes would arrive by mail or appear mysteriously on the doorstep. Some fascinating material arrived this way as did a lot of duplicates which now form our stock. It was always interesting to guess what desperation (with female family members?) led to the anonymous arrivals.

A few days ago and a different take on the same theme arrived. An unsolicited stick of NRM rock in a jiffybag. Certainly unsolicited but not anonymous. An NRM postcard and letter completed the package. These were from Sam Pointon who had gone to the trouble to personally write to us and send some rock. How nice.

In fact this is the outworking of one of the NRM's cleverest marketing ploys. About a year ago Andrew Scott's position was advertised consequent upon his imminent retirement. Sam wrote in to apply and the powers that be looked kindly on his initiative. He was appointed Director of Fun and since then has fronted several media calls.

There's a serious and justified aspect here. The vast majority of museums need to be fun. Not quite every one. It would be a bit out of taste at Dachau or the Ossuary of Verdun. But make no mistake railway museums should be fun. We have our own 10 year old daughter and we have just swopped Middle School. The old one was not fun enough. The new one opens its website with this quote "At Ovingham we try to make learning fun". The school's Head of ICT also runs a Dr Who club with working Dalek and got an entire class to preview the new Dr Who exhibition at Newcastle's Life Centre.

Congratulations then to both the NRM and Sam for working together to make the museum Fun. Even the apparently dry (not yet dusty I hope) shelves housing the Forsythe Collection hold some potential. British Railways and other operators knew about making the railway fun. There is a whole Railriders file in the Forsythe Collection. From earlier times there are handbills about trainspotting. Similar ephemera from the Ian Allan organisation is preserved in the collection. How sad it is that trainspotting is denigrated sometimes today. It was good fun and one of the songs in the Ballard of John Axon well encapsulated that.

If you are in the NRM this summer look out for fun. It might involve Harry Potter who has had a great impact on railway enthusiasm and model railways. I have my own Olton Hall masquerading as Hogwarts Castle. And there is something about Flying Owls in the Great Hall. Is that another A3?

Mallard at Shildon

Readers here will recognise I have a major and personal interest in NRM York, something like 100 metres of shelving. However York is 100 miles away and the Shildon Locomotion outstation is about 30. That's fortunate and the goings on at Shildon are interesting and worth following. The prospect therefore that Tornado would take Mallard to meet Joem in a family get together yesterday afternoon was very tempting. Fiona drove myself and Clare - after her Hexham swim - down to Shildon. The train had run slightly early and we arrived about 10 minutes after the real action. We were in enough time to see Tornado leave and hear a chorus of chime whistles. And we managed a picture of Mallard in her traveling condition. A lot of people were losing their cool trying to take photos as large numbers of people wanted their own personal picture up close with the great icon. The result was that a clear unhampered picture was almost impossible. That does not phase me. The people watching is just as enjoyable. Our picture managed to work because whenever a TV crew were nearby everyone had to clear off! I think the lady is Look North's Weathergirl Hannah Bayman about to do a live broadcast. The fact that the sun shone and that a huge crowd turned out will rightly make NRM management pleased. These railway engines are stars and they have all the pulling power of those who walk the red carpet. So I congratulate the NRM. They had publicised the journey in advance with movement times readily available. Elsewhere in my blog it is interesting to note a comment at http://forsytheonthenrm.blogspot.com/2010/05/nrm-and-loans.html#comments . We do raise in this blog matters which are worth comment and debate. It is not just myself who thinks this, I am being told that by folk with some influence. But that debate does not seem one that the NRM is rushing to engage in. That is a pity. When you change a major loan policy for 2 1/2 years or prepare to turn the Great Hall upside down, a mechanism for debating with your informed audience would seem useful.

Spare a thought

All sorts of things wind their way into the Forsythe household. Fiona went to a local watermill and came back with Towpath Talk Issue 56 May 2010. Readers of the blog might think we are timetable obsessives who have nothing else to do in life but worry about things on two rails. We believe in fighting the corner strongly for issues we take up but the reality for anyone who enters our house and eyes the shelves or follows our diaries is that we maintain a very diverse range of interests. In my life waterways and boats came first as I was brought up on the Norfolk Broads. So whilst I truly think that the National Railway Museum has to be kept up to the mark and has to fight strongly to get the best deal it can, I cannot avoid saying how fortunate that the tale of the national waterways museum is not that of the NRM. In history they stem from the same root. The nationalised British Transport Commission enabled both the railway and waterways elements of its operations in the 1960s to have museums. There was Clapham in London for land transport and Stoke Bruerne in Northamptonshire. Today Stoke Bruerne is one of three sister museums. The others are at Gloucester and Ellesmere Port. Their collections are easily of the order of the National Railway Museum. British Waterways remains the only nationalised operator still in being from the 1948 creations. Yet as this issue of Towpath Talk (and I think the recent TV series "Behind the scenes at the museum" which I missed) elaborates, the last few years have been totally torrid. Thankfully 2009 saw some optimism and visitors grew by 25%. But to only 70,000 across three sites. And no free admission. That is awful!

The core point is whilst railways, ships and coal mining all feature properly funded national museums, the three waterways museums despite being spun out of a state organisation have been cast adrift. This is completely unfair in the total context of what the waterways meant in British history and in our leading industrial revolution, nor does it do justice to the astonishing revival of the waterways network since the 1960s. And whilst all sorts of rescue plans have been hatched, exhibits of real importance have rotted and crumbled away.

The article argues that in a very bad situation, The Waterways Trust has achieved a great deal. It has not closed any museum, it is back on the up, it has no central grant, but has created a whole series of new and positive local relationships. It is receiving recognition from museum peers for its work. The future for public museums looking ahead is evidently going to be very tough and it is really sad that in the last few years of plenty, the neglect of the waterways museums was allowed to happen. I think someone could find a fascinating study in comparing and contrasting public policy and the National Railway Museum and the waterways museums taking as a start date 1948. Would it not be fascinating to be able to speak to Tony Hirst and Tom Rolt about this?

If someone undertaking that needed a little bit of worrying context examining the history of ISCA the International Sailing Craft Association and the Exeter Maritime Museum would be instructive. In that instance there was no reprieve and the collection has wandered around Britain subsequently. I think Eyemouth is the current home?

The Stirling Single and its Tender

This time it is the Railway Magazine's July 2010 fascinating feature about GNR tender 1002 which has caught my eye. What an epic tale! The Stirling Single GNR No. 1 preserved since 1907 is a true icon of Victorian locomotive design. By a quirk of fate it has spent all its preserved life attached to the wrong tender, not one it worked with in service. Now thanks to the dogged determination of several individuals, it looks set within the next year to be re-united to the correct tender. In the first place we must thank Messrs Boddy and Leech who back in the mid 1960s, realised the error, discovered a correct survivor and ensured its then preservation (the exact narrative of where it then went and who "owned" it could be expanded I don't doubt). Anyway, neglect in preservation then followed until the Gresley Society Chairman took up its cause. Malcolm Crawley evidently would not take no for an answer. He was in absolute command of the facts and of the intellectual requirement that something had to be done. So to the moral of the story. Never listen to a no from the NRM (and I know that too in the cause of publicity ephemera). Persevere, lobby, refuse to go quiet, and eventually as the article narrates so long as your argument is sound, U turns are possible. The tender has now gone to Locomotion Shildon for full restoration and for myself I have no doubts Andrew Coulls there will appreciate its importance and why its restoration and attachment to GNR No.1 will be a worthy moment in the annals of railway preservation.

NRM+ and loans

I found myself reading two passages of NRM "policy" recently and reflecting on how they worked together. In the NRM Review Spring 2010 p7 the new director Steve Davies writes about NRM+. This is the current flagship project to redesign the Great Hall "thematically".

I quote "Another element receiving major attention is that of what to do with the stock displaced by the NRM+ project. Partners are currently being sought.....". The following sentences make clear that a quite extensive loan operation will be required to rehouse elements of the collection displaced by the new displays.

The second statement appears in Railway Magazine July 2010 p6. One of the museum's registars Helen Batchelor: "In order to meet our deadlines (for NRM+), we will not be able to take forward any new loan requests for exhibitions or events until December 2012". At face value there is some tension. Possibly to be reconciled in making a difference between timespans. Whilst the museum is fixing new homes for a number of exhibits it will not support a programme of short term loans.

Some questions flow from these statements. On occasion in the past the museum's press statements have been at odds with themselves. Many large organisations operate a press regime where all statements to press by officers have to be approved first through the press office to ensure apparent tensions like this do not appear. I wonder just what the NRM policy is about museum officers speaking to the press?

A larger question perhaps relates to a stock comment about the museum. Its aspirations can exceed its abilities. In the same feature by Steve Davies "NRM+....will see the museum adopt a thematic approach............that will set the standard for museums around the world to emulate". No shortage of aspiration there. As our blog has previously suggested the Dutch national railway museum at Utrecht undertook a comprehensive redisplay in which the thematic approach was given its full head. In no way do I deny the case for doing this. However as the Dutch option shows, the result tends to be very expensive. My understanding is that the Dutch spent far more money than the NRM is likely to. One reason for the expense is the sheer size of locomotive exhibits and deploying them within themed displays.

I rather think I am of the opinion that undertaking a themed display within the Great Hall is to insert a fundamental tension. The Great Hall was a locomotive shed. It is a cathedral like structure and the large exhibits behave like icons or major art pieces. They are objects of worship. It will require some monumental design to manage to retain the atmosphere of the Great Hall and insert a comprehensively themed display. I am not saying it cannot be done just that this is a great challenge and likely to cost accordingly. One wonders whether there were other solutions to producing a themed display about Britain's railway history elsewhere on the York site?

Meanwhile whilst this is being resolved, what of the NRM's other work? As the opening quotes indicate, evidently an amount of normal service is being dispensed with. The problem here is posed by the question just when does the NRM offer normal service? There is always (and probably always will be) some special factor which distorts the situation. From relatively recent times I think of the creation of Search Engine or the re-roofing of the Great Hall. I know I have a bundle of correspondence with a variety of explanations that have been offered for why "x" cannot be done. They've included Britain's Olympic Bid and yes NRM+.

The real reason why the NRM at times simply struggles to do what most folk would think should be its bread and butter like loaning exhibits is that it does not employ the right number of specialist staff. And as this blog has shown previously that is because it is the national museum that does the most for the least. A verdict which I would not be completely proud of.

I don't doubt at all Steve Davies determination to up the NRM's game and he comes with a background of subject interest and achievement to suggest he can make a difference. But to succeed he is going to have to eliminate some structural conflicts buried deep within the NRM and these comments about future loans are possibly a window into those.

Rail Industry National Archive

Following hard on the heels of the COPAC News, previous post, came news of another substantial development at Search Engine. 15 years after privatisation got into gear, the rail industry and the museum have made an agreement about what happens to the resulting records. As a privatised industry, the National Archives (formerly PRO) have no interest in new railway records any longer. I will reproduce verbatim the press release that came here on the 6th April. It is quite a coup for the museum and its archivist Tim Procter. One uses the imagination to see how much Search Engine's workload will expand and its team with it. Meantime in the immediate future do not expect me to blog too much about my own engagement. Whilst the new director gets his feet under the table, arrangements are being reviewed and for the foreseeable I do not anticipate making regular visits to Search Engine.

"*/Establishment of a Rail Industry National Archive/*

A national archive is to be established for today’s rail industry following a ground breaking agreement between the Railway Heritage Committee (RHC) and the National Museum of Science & Industry (NMSI), parent body of the National Railway Museum. The new archive will enable public access to the records of train operators and other rail companies as well as their long term care and conservation.

As they are released by rail companies, records designated by the RHC will be transferred to the care of the National Railway Museum. They will be made available for research in /Search Engine/ at the Museum in York and at the Science Museum Libraries and Archives in London and at Wroughton, near Swindon. Material which needs to remain commercially confidential for a period will be preserved in deep storage in the Museum’s new purpose-built archive repository.

The agreement between RHC and NMSI was triggered by concerns that, as companies such as GNER and Railtrack ceased to operate, their surviving records would become fragmented and inaccessible, and the story of a vibrant period of railway history would be lost.

By providing document transfer facilities between /Search Engine /and other NMSI sites, it will also become much easier for people from all over the UK to access these important archives.

Railway Heritage Committee Chairman Peter Ovenstone said:

“Railways were Britain’s gift to the world, and we have world class museums where locomotives and other railway artefacts are preserved. This can now be matched by the comprehensive preservation of and access to the records of today’s rapidly changing railway, thanks to the cooperation and foresight of NMSI.”

National Railway Museum Director, Steve Davies MBE said:

“/Search Engine/, our railway archive based at York, is already a popular and valuable resource for historians and academics into the history of Britain’s railway down to 1997. The Rail Industry National Archive will ensure that the records continue unbroken into the period of privatisation – a unique and continuous record of the changes in business and society that the railway brought to Britain.”

The National Archives at Kew keep records from the British Rail era and before, but this changed on privatisation as their role is to keep public records, not those from today’s private sector.

Records and plans relating to the railway lines, buildings and structures of the current network will continue to be kept at Network Rail’s base in York, where most are still required as working documents".

COPAC

I read that the library holdings of the NRM are now accessible through COPAC. This is a big step forward and certain of my own books surface (though not all Tempus books of mine that the museum should have, I am sure I have seen From Tilbury to Tyneside there?). It is evident that the COPAC linkage will only include the straightforward material. 20,000 books are mentioned, our own collection parted with more than 120,000 items. I can think of light years of cataloguing still to do (not just with the Forsythe Collection by any means) before all of what could be classed a library material within the NRM collections appears through COPAC. A thorough reading of the blog here will offer a few leads.