Re: Dorrigo 19th Century Treasures

["John Kerley" <deaftech@ozemail.com.au>]

I find the slagging off of railway preservationists by those who want to
play trains extremely tiresome.  I have only visited Dorrigo once, a few
years ago during the height of the "troubles" and not long after a vitriolic
beat up of one side by the ABC's erstwhile tawdry tabloid "consumer affairs"
programme, "The Investigators". It is the one ABC cut that I approve of!

After all the bad press, I was very pleasantly surprised to see how
extensive the collection was and especially how well preserved it was,
through the use of copious amounts of grease etc.

I have been involved in, and getting my hands dirty in, the railway
preservation movement for nearly forty-three years.  When we started out we
believed, rather naively, that we would have the first eight miles of our
railway reopened in two or three years and the remaining six or so a couple
of years later.  In fact it took nearly 41 years to achieve our mission of
restoring the whole railway.  The point here is that "Rome was not built in
a day" or that railway preservation and restoration takes a long time, but
that you will get there in the end.

 Please note the order of the words "preservation" and "restoration".  If
you do not preserve in the first place, you will have nothing to restore.
On our railway we still have several locos and numerous items of rolling
stock, which were saved in the fifties and sixties, awaiting restoration.
Indeed one carriage returned to service this year after a forty year wait.

Another example of the need to preserve first was the Barry scrapyard in
Britain (Wales to be precise).  For years after the initial "good" locos had
been salvaged, there were many who said "scrap the remaining hulks - they
will never be able to be restored".  Some of those in the clamour were
existing restorationists and preserved railways who mistakenly thought that
this would reduce competition.  Fortunately the scrap yard owner ignored
these philistines and eventually all the locos from Barry were saved, thus
giving Britain an unparalleled collection of steam locomotives.  Also
fortunately, the older preserved railways woke up to the fact that new
preserved railways actually add to their market.  Having travelled on one
railway, the punters say "I liked that, lets travel on another railway."
The opposition is other leisure activities, not other railways.

I believe future generations will thank the foresight of the Dorrigo
preservationists for persevering against overwhelming odds to maintain the
unique collection that they have acquired.

Cheers,

John Kerley