Re: Pendennis Castle_MUA

[James Brook <ajmbrook@ozemail.com.au>]

chris@enet21.com.au wrote:

> The fact of the matter is Rio turns over billions of dollars a year, how much
> does it donate to rail preservation in Australia?

As I have said before, we have enough locos to look after. I would like you to
answer one simple question. How can you justify keeping a foreign loco here that
has no relevance to Australian history when we already have far too many steam
locomotives that are historically significant to Australia and not enough resources
to look after them all? If we keep the Pendennis Castle in Australia then it means
we have less resources available to look after our own locos. Railway preservation
in Australia doesn't have a never-ending supply of money and volunteer labour.

> instead it supports a uk
> group. (as it was given free to Ditcot I can't see why a australian
> organisation would have not grabbed it under the same conditions).

It is a UK loco so it is only fair that a UK preservation group gets it. I would
not be happy if Rio Tinto were about to ship an Australian loco off to the Didcot
Railway Museum.

> Maybe you guys mght get upset when Rio ultimately disposes of the other old
> locomotives they have up there. My understanding is they don't want anything up
> there which could expose them to another class action. And I suspect that they
> might take the gas axe to them if nobody wants them.

Those other diesels should go to an Australian preservation group. If the ARHS
museum in Perth had the resources then that would be the place for them.

--
- James Brook -

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