So recently I was in England and had the opportunity to visit some fine institutions. The Bluebell Railway, Didcot, Swanage and Statfold Barn so far as we're concerned here. And with everywhere I visited, something very poignant caught my attention. What I had seen and understood for years vastly undersold what I would end up seeing. Part of that is coming from the lens of what I’ve seen before visiting museums or other sites back here in the US. The other part? Well, let me get into it.

Right off the bat? The impressions that one gets of the institution. The same can be said of all of the museum or heritage sites I visited last week. The Bluebell, Didcot, Swanage, The Tank Museum, and Statfold Barn. Even the monuments like Big Ben and historical sites like the Tower of London. With how these places are portrayed through available media like books, magazine articles and videos, I at least was led to an impression that while these places would be impressive, when I saw these places with my own eyes? What I saw was far more impressive than my initial preconceptions led me to believe. The most obvious one with all of them was the scope of the operations. Part of that I think comes down to this ingrained cultural modesty I saw everywhere.

The first instance, which admittedly made me start thinking about this, was an encounter with some of the Bluebell’s carriage shop volunteers, two phenomenally talented individuals who have been working on the Stroudley four wheel coach restorations for some time. I was in the UK with my mother, and seeing her jaw nearly fall off out of the corner of my eye was certainly entertaining. We were talking about how exceptional the Bluebell was with these volunteers. That’s when one of the pair made probably the most impactful statement I’ve heard in the long time, something that if I’d hear anywhere in the US would probably be met with plenty of negatives to go with it. We just see the problems. Then both volunteers started breaking it down. It wasn’t about how great the Bluebell was. It’s how can they could continually do better and what can be improved. From our cultural position if anyone had a museum or heritage railway to the standard of the Bluebell we’d be puffing our chests on how great we are. But yet here are two volunteers who not only are incredibly modest, but aren’t distracted in the slightest by how exceptional the whole of the organization already is.

In fact, when I do have spare time (which has been far more lacking than I’d like for a good chunk of the last year) I volunteer at the American Heritage Museum, and because of that I’ve become accustomed to the environment there. You show pride in what your organization has accomplished and what it represents, that your organization has set a standard of excellence that you want to broadcast to the world. That was the total opposite of what I saw basically everywhere we went.

As the days went by, I did have more time to formulate my thoughts. We hit Didcot on Wednesday, and immediately it was the same type of feeling I had when we were at the Bluebell. My expectations were once again far below what I saw. But by the time I started talking with one of the volunteers I was able to articulate what I was thinking and WHY I was realizing all these places were so exceptional. The ear-to-ear grin I got admittedly caught me a bit off guard. I gather that most people don’t usually break down WHY they thought a museum was so exceptional, and knowing what I was looking at probably helped too. Then at Swanage, specifically with the Station Master at Norden Station. Then Statfold Barn. Every volunteer, every crew member. It didn’t matter where we went. Even the Tower of London with the Yeoman and the Tank Museum at Bovington. You could tell how proud they all were, but there wasn’t chest puffing. There wasn’t any “yeah, we’re better than those guys down the road”. In fact every volunteer was more apt to heap praise on OTHER organizations for what they’re good at, while being quite modest about their own exceptional accomplishments. And yet another perfect example being the Station Master at Norden heaping praise on the Threlkeld Quarry & Mining Museum, having been there recently herself while they also have their own small mining museum adjacent to Norden. And of course the praise being laid at the feet of the Bluebell and Didcot by the volunteers on the ground at the opposing sites.

But with all of this said, I think that the preservationists in the UK are doing something better than us. And simply put, that’s the marketing. Now part of that might now work here given the cultural differences, but there is something to exceeding the expectations of visitors. Part of that is how your market yourself. If a family walks in with certain expectations, but those expectations are greatly exceeded? Could that translate into repeat patronage? It certainly would translate into a positive word of mouth in such instances.

In 1997 I was lucky enough to take a family trip to Scotland and York England. We purchased a rail pass and rode many trains there. To be honest I had little interest in any RR's outside of the USA but what I saw there completely changed my mind.
I was able to enter some of the Signal Boxes there and witness the throwing of levers (that were beautifully polished); semaphore signals that were operated by cable or pipeline and lit with oil ! No, I'm not talking about museum RR's what I saw was operated by British Rails.
We rode the train to York and visited the National Railroad Museum ; what a fantastic place that is ! Locomotives, signals, lever frames, art work, everything. There was even a housekeeper dusting off the locomotives !!!
Needless to say I came home with a completely different mindset, and a better understanding of the early days of railroading in the USA.

I am a steam guy and like you I was blown away by what I found on my pilgrimage to England. One day I would love to go back. I'm curious what it's like now too, is during my last trip they were still able to mine and get coal in the country. I wonder how that's changed the game since then..

Unlike you my trip wasn't limited to just railways, but also traction engine rallies, pumping stations, stationary steam, Beamish, and live steam. On every level what I found in England was just phenomenal at a level that was hard to comprehend as an American.

I too thought long and hard about why things are so different here than there and I at least have come up with three main causes that I saw.

#1. I would call this castle culture. I think there's something unique about growing up amongst castles that Americans can't relate to. Kids in the UK grow up near castles that are thousands of years old. They realize, that they will be just but a very brief moment in the history of the castle. I saw this on a video of the flying Scotsman at the national railway museum in York. When they talked about the guy who purchased the locomotive he always saw himself not as an owner but a caretaker for future generations.

America his a society that values property ownership and pursuit of happiness above anything else. I recall as a kid watching a great historic pumping station filled with some of the most beautiful steam engines out there mostly cut up to make condominiums. I think the British society protects against such endeavors and seeks to preserve all the historic structures, and artifacts in their country a lot better than the US does so that future generations can see them.

This caretaker notion I think it's really lacking in our preservation world here in the USA. I had a very good friend and mentor who recently passed. He was alive and collecting stuff at the very end of Steam in the USA. His whole life revolved around steam and his tools that he used to restore and preserve steam locomotives. Yet when he passed away he didn't even bother to leave any provisions to ensure that all of his valued treasures which included piles of lubricators, injectors, new old stock tools such as staybolt taps, tube rollers, specialized tools and steam locomotive parts didn't wind up in a scrap yard somewhere. I was fortunate enough to help out with his estate but it seemed like his tools were there to bring him pleasure, but he never really grasped a greater role as a "caretaker" of his treasures. While the tools and the money he left behind could have gone to furthering his life's mission of preserving steam. Instead it all went to a greedy relative who he hadn't spoken with in 40 years.

#2. WWIi I think affected our two countries very differently. While the war did help slow the introduction of diesel locomotives to the US, it also led to massive scrap drives of all sorts of steam traction, stationary steam and other steam engines that were growing obsolete, that have been in vast quantities preserved in the UK.

On the other hand in England they had a very different problem. Unlike the US who needed to melt as much of that down to supply the war effort, the UK was always afraid of their oil refineries getting bombed out and needed to ship as much of their refined fuels to the front to support the war effort. Coal, was not needed as much on the battlefield to fuel the tanks and aircraft, but is also a lot easier to dig out of the ground and use as is. As a result they had steam trucks, traction engines, and all sorts of steam engines running over there that would have been considered obsolete and cut for scrap here in the US that all held on and were in peak use during the war. When the war ended, they had to rebuild their country and much of this stuff hung on a lot longer than it did over here in a country that wasn't bombed out and didn't have to rebuild its refining capability. After the war a lot of these steam buffs started rescuing and preserving this equipment on their own.

The crossover between the traction world, and railway world happens all the time over there. It's all the same people, and mainly the same skills. Here in the USA many of our preservation railroads have evolved to operate without steam people, yet over there they have a whole ecosystem of Steam people ready to choose from. I think that a healthy steam program draws in a lot more people than running a diesel. I can go see a diesel run any day anywhere but steam is something special.

Much like we have a very healthy hot rod and antique car culture here in the US they actually have an antique steam culture with all sorts of guys playing with really big steam engines privately. It's not uncommon for guys to buy steam traction engines and also small tank locomotives and restore them on their own. It's really cool to see. But then again they had so much more of this equipment lying around and it managed to survive well into the '70s when people realize that they really should save it. They also say that the Barry scrap yard helped their preservation industry enormously.

#3. This one may be a little bit more controversial, and I don't really mean it is a dig on the British. But history shows that they were the ones who kicked off the industrial revolution, and invented the modern steam engine. They created common law that would support the foundations of much of modern industry and civilization. The British built an entire empire that spanned the entire world. It was once said that the sun never set on the British empire.

While it's true that America was formed in a rebellion against the monarchy we essentially were in England 2.0, but owe much of our success to the groundbreaking technological and governmental advances to ideas that all began in England.

However at some point something happened. The UK went from an exceptional world leader, to essentially a has been nothing nation on the world stage. Especially when you tour a place like Beamish, or even the museum of science, in London I think it becomes apparent that the story of Steam in England is also a story of their heritage and former greatness that is deeply missed by a certain population over there. I think there's a lot of deep rooted nostalgia, and romance that their museums celebrate what was seen as a greater time for their country and their people.

I don't know if they will admit it but It feels like there's a lot of pain and sadness over what has been lost to the past in the UK. It's somewhat like looking at America's rust belt areas where we once had the world's greatest arsenal of democracy that took down the Nazis and was the envy of the world, and yet now are a lot of rusty empty buildings lost to China and globalization.

I think that there is a huge priority amongst a lot of native people there to make sure that future generations understand what the British contribution to the world was, and so much of that contribution revolves around Steam.

I wonder what others think of my observations but I will say that a trip to the UK is a must for anyone who likes railways or steam engines.

I find your comments about the crossover between steam railroading and steam traction to be interesting and based on what I've seen here in the U.S. this is something we need to work on.

I attend a few steam tractor shows every summer and the following for that hobby is large and seemingly growing. Crowds are large and the number individuals directly involved with owning steam engines is surprising given the expense and logistics of owning those machines. Many of these are family affairs and I've met many young people in their teens and 20's that have a wealth of steam technical knowledge. I think the reason for less crossover is that we are an own it culture. A machine that you can own yourself and work on in private is more appealing in the U.S. than working on something owned by someone else. Nevertheless, there seems to be a tremendous untapped talent pool and customer base out there.

I was there this May and June and here is the answer I found on the coal - it is coming from all around the world! One operation was using bagged coal from the United States, another had bulk coal from Poland, and another had coal from Kazakhstan. Several others simply mentioned Eastern Europe, but all said it was harder to obtain (the logistics is complicated for their needed volumes) and much more costly.

Bart

Some interesting facts about Great Britain: It is about the size of Wyoming with 67 million people. It has 200 steam centers and 2000 preserved steam locomotives.

In the 1960's the middle class had more money and leisure time to pursue their hobbies. With steam being phased out, raised the interest in steam. And there were many rail lines being abandoned in accordance with the Beeching plan. Things appear to have come together at just the right time. I've always wondered if they saw what happened in America, with most our steam locomotives being cut up long before our preservation movement got going? Though it is better than nothing, the steam stuffed and mounted and forgotten in parks, probably doesn't count as preservation.

Another thing I've noticed in reading British books and magazines, is that they seem to enjoy the technical details of steam much more than most of our railfans do.

What really impresses me is the completeness of many of the rail lines. The stations and towers still exist, the signs are there, the freight sheds still stand, the loco shops can be found, and the railroads look like they did decades ago. To me, that is the biggest difference. Since many of the rail lines were obtained straight out of regular service, the assets generally didn't disappear.

There are very few rail lines in the U.S. where all the assets remained. Having just one original depot can be a big thing here, but in Great Britain I've seen 10-mile-long heritage lines with as many as six fully restored and operating stations, with all the nuts and bolts.

Also, having attended a few of the special events, the willingness for groups to swap and share equipment is amazing. It is very common to visit one heritage railroad and find equipment from several others on temporary loan. They seem to swap stuff back and forth to keep things new at each other's operations.

Bart

I must agree with both of these comments. We got started later than we should have, I think some of us didn't have the money the Brits had. The result is anything like a really complete railroad is very rare, and the majority of them are narrow gauge roads (the former Sierra facilities in Jamestown, Ca., the Nevada Northern, the East Broad Top, and to an extent the Durango & Silverton and the Cumbres & Toltec in Colorado and New Mexico).

Beyond that such things really aren't there anymore. If you want to go back to that look, you often have to rebuild things from scratch, such as the Reading and Northern has done (and the road isn't too concerned with historical accuracy as much as getting functional and affordable buildings that recall the style of old), and another road in Pennsylvania (can't recall the name off the top of my head) which has had Central of New Jersey 113 running and has picked up a couple of Pacifics to add to the roster. . .and which is rebuilding some old cars in really authentic early 20th century style and new stations and other things to match.

How many of us can scrounge the resources for something like that? How many can do so to represent a main line railroad?

(Granted, main line railroading in Great Britain was of somewhat smaller scale than in the United States--the biggest engines were Pacifics that would be considered light versions here, comparable to the surviving Florida East Coast engines, but still, to do this here is much more challenging because so much has been lost.)

Another thread that has some ties with this one, and which might be of interest.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48271

I submit the fact many of the North American trolley museums share elements of British museum settings with relocated and restored structures, or period architecture. Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (below) and the planned Illinois Railway Museum Visitor Center are two examples among many that emulate British operations. On the commercial side, Strasburg does well with creating a sense of place.

~Wesley

Pittsburgh cars pass on the streetscape in front of the new Welcome Center at Pennsylvania Trolley Museum.

A couple of photos showing 1948 built Ipswich trolleybus #105 in operation at the East Anglia Transport Museum, Carlton Colville, UK, showing part of their recreated street scene.....


To highlight the loan of exhibits between Museums in the UK, the vehicle is actually owned and was fully restored to operating condition by the Ipswich Transport Museum, about 40 miles away from Carlton Colville, but, as we don't have an operating circuit of overhead wire for trolleybuses, the vehicle has been placed on loan to that museum for the last couple of years and this will continue through to the end of 2025.
We've also lent them a 1920's tar-pot (used for road repairs) which they have fully restored themselves and it is likely that the EATM will be putting a steamroller, formerly used in Ipswich, on loan to our museum in the coming months.

When I visited England and Scotland back in the mid teens, (2014 2015) I found that the intrest is in preserving not only individual historic railways, but also preserving railway heritage wholly as a nation. Many separate groups work together in keeping the history alive by sharing labor, knowledge, facilities, even locomotives (due to the loading size and highway clearances, locomotives can be easily trucked from one railway to another) to keep the public interested. Even to the point of getting the national British and Scottish railway systems involved, allowing some of these trains to operate on the mainlines of both of these countries. What better way to keep railway heritage alive, put it right out there for the general public to see and enjoy.

Talk about sending equipment to each other's museum lines. The Swanage Railway recently had a Bullied Pacific Gala, with EIGHT operating Bullied Pacifics in one day (the "Air Smoothed" ones are known as "Spam Cans", and they had two of those). And that was not every operable one in the country. Turns out there are four more operable ones. This would be like having 12 operable PRR K4s here! You could probably do it with Shays in the U. S., but certainly not rod engines.

We could do that with, as far as I know, only one class--Chesapeake & Ohio's Kanawhas (what would be called a Berkshire anywhere else).

Per Wikipedia:

2700--Alco, 1943, Dennison, Oh.
2705--Alco, 1943, Baltimore, Md.
2707--Alco, 1943, Union, Ill.
2716--Alco, 1943, Ravena, Ky. (undergoing restoration to operation)
2727--Alco, 1944(?), St. Louis, Mo. (All these Alcos were from one order, 2700-2744, part of which was delivered in 1944, but am not sure of the point of division)
2732--Alco, 1944(?), Richmond, Va.
2736--Alco, 1944(?), Green Bay, Wisc.
2755--Lima, 1947, Chief Logan State Park, W.Va.
2756--Lima, 1947, Newport News, Va.
2760--Alco, 1947, Lynchburg, Va.
2776--Alco, 1947, Washington Court House, Oh.
2789--Alco, 1947, North Judson, Ind. (last one built, and one of five with welded boilers)

If you want to include the engines from the Pere Marquette that were inherited by the C&O in the 1947 merger, then we have to add 1223 and 1225. Both were built by Lima in 1941, and of course the 1225 is operational.

Given the resources, you could really have something with all the C&O locomotives that survived. Other machines include

two Alleghenies (1601 and 1604, both from the first order at Lima in 1941),

a Greenbrier (Ross Rowland's beautiful 614),

a Hudson (490, rebuilt from an F-19 around 1947, with what is unfortunately one of the ugliest streamline cowlings you ever saw),

a 2-8-0 (Ex Hocking Valley 701, that last surviving HV engine, and famous for being the almost sole power for mixed trains with Pullmans running up the Hot Springs branch),

two Mallet 2-6-6-2s (1308 and 1309, 1949, the next to last and last steam locomotives from Baldwin for a domestic common carrier, with the 1309 undergoing repairs to return her to operation on the WMSR)

and a small, dainty 4-6-0 (No. 377, Baldwin 1901, inherited from the Cincinnati, Chicago & Louisville, which in turn had inherited it from the Cincinnati, Richmond & Muncie--whew!!) This last one and a twin sister, were kept around for service on a branch line that couldn't take anything bigger. When the branch was abandoned around 1949, the 377, a wooden combine that had been rebuilt from a coach that had come from the HV, a caboose that I think was also ex-HV, and an old hopper were preserved for exhibition service beginning around 952 I think.

Ah, if only we had the money, and a friendly CSX!!