The consequences of the failure of the RYPN to lead the field in online rail preservation discussions are readily apparent.

How much longer are we going to tolerate this forum running on auto pilot?

The Brits are kicking our asses when it comes to rail preservation communication. They have books, multiple print and online periodicals and excellent Youtube videos (Chris Eden Green anyone?) We in the US have no rail preservation publications, struggle to maintain a forum and practically force people to use the absolute worst social media platform ever devised for in depth discussions. I'll admit that I post more over there as well, mainly because it take three times as long to post to RYPN as it does to Facebook and that mainly has to do with the ridiculously small size of images allowed on RYPN. On Facebook I can upload any photo that I have and the site reduces it automatically. But to post to RYPN I must first open my photos with MS Paint, reduce the size, save as a new file then upload to RYPN, hoping that I reduced the size enough to be accepted. Really in 2018 we can't figure out a solution to that?

IF WE ARE NOT GROWING WE ARE DYING AND RYPN IS DYING.

I again offer my services in whatever way possible to help this forum become something greater. Do we need a nonprofit entity to take custodianship of the forum and funnel contributions through? We can make that happen. Do we need someone to lead the way in fundraising? We can make that happen. Do we need a cheerleader to drive content to the forum? We can make that happen.

But we have to WANT to make that happen.

I think the reason(s) why the Brits are “kicking our a$$es” is because railway preservation is a different ballgame in the UK.

Because its just a lot of hot air.

Ta-dum.

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At one time I had suggested that RyPN should be under the portfolio and management of ARM/TRAIN/ATRRM/HERITAGE RAIL where Aaron Isaacs already maintains a blog and online newsletter.

Wesley

Agreed. There's a lot of cultural difference to be taken into consideration. We seem as a society right now to be reveling and celebrating in our failures, and railways have lost a lot of popularity in the past 50 years in the general public's imagination.

If you are seriously interested in the technical aspects of steam, a yahoo group for steam tech is out there - and some serious topics are discussed, among them blast nozzles - less foam, more filling, but not the average US railfan's cup of Cola.

Blast nozzles? Go to The Netherlands and talk to Dr Koopmans, not here. He literally wrote the book on them.

Stop.

Stop right there.

You know better than this.

They do have a National Heritage Lottery Fund. True. But rail projects have to compete for that money along with seemingly every darned old building, castle, battlefield, church, pile of rocks, etc. in Britain. When they do get money, yes, it's nice, but it's on the order of winning on a game show--you still have to come up with matching monies, there are strings attached, etc.

And MOST of Britain's currently extant rail preservation projects long predated the existence of the HLF, which only started in 1994. And, as with grants in the U.S., HLF grants tend to go to the well-prepared, the well-organized, the already-successful-on-other-ways, the ones with proven track records, and the ones with good grant application writers, not (necessarily) the "new start-ups." In effect, HLF is a reward for a job already well-done, not the seed for preservation to start as so many American rail preservationists, with obvious jealousy, seem to think (wrongly) it is.

This would be similar to my saying that "The United States has a thriving rail preservation program because the government gives them ISTEA/TEA-21/TIGER/state rail development grants."

No. Just............. no. That would be a grave insult to all the hard-working volunteers, generous donors, and historians that make rail preservation happen in the absence of such government largess.

I seem to recall that the Strasburg RR got money from the Commonwealth of Pa. for development of their freight yard through the Pa. Rail Freight Assistance program--$1 million in 2010 and another $1.1 million in 2013. How would you feel if i ascribed the Strasburg's success as a business to "state money"??? Probably pretty insulted. And for good reason.

Wait, who is using Twitter for rail preservation discussions?

It would be nice to be able to load content a bit more easily but the necessity to resize photos, which is a relatively straightforward inconvenience, is not killing RYPN or US rail preservation. The thread layout and search ability (words and authors) make RYPN far superior for the discussion of ideas and concepts and for research than something like Facebook. About a year ago (2-6-17) wilkinsd posted his topic "RYPN as a Useful Forum is Dying (A Rambling Rant)". Since then it has attracted 14378 views and 106 replies, the most recent being on 3-6-18. This does not indicate a dying forum but one that has a lot of people interested in seeing it grow to its full potential.

As for exhaust nozzle discussions, a search on "exhaust nozzle" gives 8 pages of forum posts. I'm sure someone with a better knack for keyword searching could get even more.

The main reason is that railroading is still viewed as a primary form of transportation across the UK, whereas in the USA everyone as a car, and trains are viewed as inconvenient and outmoded. This is even more evident once you get outside of the dense metropolitan areas. Thus the general public can relate and appreciate the railroads better in the UK.

Mass Transit is starting to pick up steam in the USA recently as the current generation leaving High School are looking more towards mass transit than personal vehicles when compared to surveys taken in previous decades. Hopefully this will help the historical side in the near future.

Rich C.

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Heritage railroading requires lots of $$$ AND a place to run. The money is not an issue either here or there for the restoration part of the equation. A place to run is the difference. Since even "abandoned" lines in this country are still owned by their railroads (because they might again turn a dollar) versus publicly owned in Britain. Here it requires nearly impossible negotiations with the owning railroad to lease or otherwise use these lines. And the heritage operator can get kicked off if the owner decides it makes sense to run his own trains over it.
In the UK, if you want to run your restored equipment on a "disused" line you have to ask the government. And you get a line that might be viable as a heritage operation. Your expenses are lower because the owner is not grubbing to get every dollar possible out of an otherwise unused asset.

I won't get into the "RYPN is dying" debate, but I will say that what the Brits are doing is truly amazing. I recently subscribed to the digital version of Steam Railway Magazine. The amount of info in just a single issue of that magazine will truly impress you! The number of project going on and the number of heritage railways is something to marvel at, especially considering the relatively small area they have to work in.

Exhaust Nozzles. I have built posably more than anyone active. There was a good few years ago a thread on here about a nozzle for an engine which needed help. This engine was transformed from a no hoper to one that every one wants a go on. I stopped posting when the debate started to decended into misinformed irainious statements. Now I just keep quiet and develop things like my picture below.

So do you want to talk about exhaust nozzles or the differences between preservation here in the USA vs. UK? Here's what I know about both;

Exhaust Nozzles;
On the topic of exhaust nozzles, my one piece of contribution to this subject is that everything we know here in the USA per the master mechanics recommendations do not scale down well. When I built my live steam locomotive I followed their recommendations down to all the right proportions. The only way I could steam up was with a vacuum motor over the stack and from that point on it was a race till I ran out of steam. I finally tossed all the insight of those formulas aside, experimented with longer and longer blast pipes further and further up the petticoat pipe and today I can ride around with the safeties popping all the time if I wanted to. Same thing came with the blower nozzle location. I had engineered the perfect blower to maximize surface area and yadda yadda yadda and it didn't work worth a damn! Then a fellow live steamer reached in disconnected the delivery tube from my blower and pointed it straight up the stack. We experimented with some compressed air bent it in a few different locations and today that little thing pointed up the stack does wonders. I can fire up with about 10-20psi air slowly blowing up the stack in about 20-30mins. I have a 12" diameter smoke box so this isn't a small locomotive but none the less that is my contribution to the discussion of blast nozzles.

UK Preservation
Now back to your original topic about preservation in the UK. I too wondered about that till I got there and I always thought it had to do with growing up in a land of castles. Seriously in the USA we are all about property rights, want to build a new basketball stadium tear down that old beautiful monument to another era and build the damn stadium it is your own God given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (aka profit) as a US citizen. In the UK however I think it is a little different, you see when you live in a land of castles I think it teaches you that there are some beautiful monuments of the past that are there that your forefathers built and they stayed there because their children, their children's children, and their children and so on down the generations all took care of them for you to enjoy and now you need to do your part making sure it is there for the future generations. That is why I think you also have a national lottery system focused on preservation.

This really struck home when I read a plaque I think near maybe the Flying Scottsman, Malard, or one of the famous locomotives over there being restored at the NRM in York. The plaque told of the previous owner who bought the locomotive and that he never saw himself as an owner but rather a temporary caretaker. By his logic the locomotive would be around for hundred more years for future generations to enjoy, he only had maybe 20-30yrs left with it. All he could do was care for it in that brief moment in time. How common is that thought process in the USA when it comes to preservation? I wish Dick Jensen, maybe the guy with the BLE 643 and many others saw themselves that way!

Now I know other countries like say Germany have their own castles too but there is another thing about steam preservation in the UK. I think when they do it they are also trying to preserve their history and story as the birth place of the industrial revolution. I think there is a lot of nationalism tied up with preserving the story of a time when the UK proudly domniated the world in science industry and technology, or a time when their nation greatly stood up against evil and defeated Hitler (albeit with a little help from one of their former colonies :)) On the other hand when you look at a country like Germany is the 1940's really a story of history worth proudly/romantically celebrating?

So that is my thoughts on why it is so much bigger over there.

The other part of this not frequently talked about on this site is the overall steam culture they maintain over there is second to none in the world. I didn't make it to the Great Dorset steam fair but I did make it to one of their local steam rallys while over there and it was pretty spectacular. The fair we went to would have been huge by USA standards but compared to Great Dorset was like a town fair trying to compete with a state fair. Guys over there restoring all sorts of old steam traction engines like a father and son over here would work on a 1960's Mustang. I have to think that that talent pool feeds into their railway museums.

I have always wondered why we don't have more of that community over here, and my theory is most of the good stuff here disappeared in the scrap drives during WWII. On the other hand during WWII in the UK you were always afraid of the refineries and petrol (gasoline) stores getting bombed by the Germans, steam offered you a source of Nazi resistant power that stuck on thru the rebuilding era to finally be celebrated.

More so than the railroad side of things I was really jealous of the steam traction preservation community over there and wish we had more of that over here. Steam traction is in my mind a lot more fun and a whole lot more practical than railways as you can have tons of fun riding around on your steam engine with out having to waste tons of time doing track work! Hell if I had to do it all over again my live steam locomotive would be a big old traction engine model with a mower deck mounted below, just so I could be the only guy mowing his lawn with a steam engine! The is a hell of a lot more track around here to drive a steam tractor on than their is a live steam locomotive.

Anyhow those are my thoughts,

Adam