Behind the scenes

Museums are about things, stuff, objects, artefacts whatever you want to call them. The collections store in Haddington has somewhere in the region of 25,000 objects in it, from the everyday (a griddle pan), to the unusual (a stone anchor), from the beautiful (an Edwardian wedding dress) to the utilitarian (a piece tin). How on earth do we know where everything is? What it comes down to is have you ever thought about what happens when something is given to a museum? It isn’t just a case of find some space on a shelf and leave it there, to be forgotten about and gather dust. Objects are identified, numbered, named (not as simple as you might think – is it a spade or a shovel?), cleaned, measured, stored and recorded on a database. Sometimes there is even the opportunity to do some research on the object. But this all takes time, energy and enthusiasm. We benefit from the help of volunteers like Hazel (pictured) in the store, who has been involved with the Museums for a number of years. Over the next months and years we will be looking for more volunteers in the museum store, so watch this space!

As a postscript to this blog we were shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden death of another invaluable volunteer, archaeologist, keen supporter of East Lothian’s heritage, and friend, Norma Buckingham last week. Norma had helped in the store, with exhibitions, research, opening nights – just about anything. Her glamour, humour and good spirits will be sadly missed.

This will be an unusually short post for me, but it is an important update. After one abortive attempt (with the volunteers of Prestongrange Railway Society present, and pics on Flickr) the volunteers of SRPS have removed the cab and tank (hence the appalling pun) from locomotive number 6 and she is now ready for inspection. There are some photos on the SRPS steam section website up to the time of removal, with more to be added. Unforunately I wasn’t there to see the big reveal, as my contact details had gone astray, however, it is very satisfying to know that we are almost done. Thank you to the volunteers of the SRPS steam section. A more meaty post will follow, but perhaps not for a while as there are lots of other things going on, and I need to tie up the admin of the project to this stage.  

I am running out of bad puns with the word ‘loco’ in to use in the titles of these posts, which is a relief.

This posting is by way of an update about Locomotive number 6, which for the sake of brevity I am now just going to call ‘6′. Towards the end of last year I visited 6 at Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway. She (I think locos are spoken about in the feminine, like ships, but I may be wrong) has been moved inside the sheds and is currently resting in very good company. She is in the same shed as the Morayshire (a working loco that belongs to the National Museums of Scotland) and (more interestingly) Thomas the Tank Engine and his little green buddy Percy. It is enough to make a 3 year old green with envy. Clearly I have spent too much time reading the Thomas stories, as during a tour of the shed I actually knew what a Giesel funnel is, thanks to the story of Peter Sam.

Anyway, 6 is now being worked on. There are a series of tubes that run the full length of the boiler, one end in the firebox (literally where the fire is) and the other at the front of the loco. The plates where the tubes finish look like rusty Swiss cheese. There are pictures of this on Flickr. To get the boiler into a fit state for the boiler inspector to view it all the tubes have to be taken out. To do this the beading (welding) around the edge of the end of each pipe has to be removed and then pressure applied to one end of the tube, which will then come out. Apparently this will be a couple of days work. The tubes are probably going to need to be replaced to get 6 ready to steam again, but this isn’t unexpected. 

Then we got to the exciting bit, which involved wearing overalls and going into the pit underneath the loco and into the firebox! The ash pan (catches the ash from the fire, like a domestic fireplace only bigger) has been taken out and Brian Thompson (one of the directors of the steam section of SRPS, and our contact and guide on this project) took me into the firebox. This was a cube (with no floor) with the tube plate at one side, the cab to the back of us, and the tank (where the water goes) over the top. Unfortunately I managed to leave the lens cap on for this bit, so there is no film (so embarrassed) of this, which is a shame as it was pretty interesting. To be where the fire ought to be in a steam loco was quite an odd experience. These are powerful engines (even 6, which is small by steam loco standards), and there I was with my head in the business end. The firebox was aesthetically quite attractive (in an odd way) with the regular patterns of nuts and tubes, and the reddy brown rust on the metal. It was almost eerie to be inside something that at one time would have been very, very hot and noisy, and is now silent and being examined in almost forensic detail. In some respects this really convinced me that this is the right thing to do (re-steaming). Although the engineering is interesting (and I surprise myself when I type this, as I didn’t think I would be this interested) the engine is effectively dead at the moment, all we can do is imagine it. I don’t think I am anthropomorphosising a lump of metal, but I would like to see her steam again!

I wonder if there is some way we could recreate the experience of working with the locos one day, and not just driving them, perhaps seeing inside the guts of a loco would help us start communicating some of the engineering behind their operation and maintenance. Afterall at a mine like Prestongrange (6 didn’t actually work there, but others did) much of the day to day maintenance of things like steam locos and other equipment would have been done by skilled people on site. There is more to coal mines than simply coal.

The plan from this point is to remove the tubes and continue to strip down the boiler. Then the loco gets taken apart for inspection, and we really need to see that bit (and get it on film). This all needs to be completed by the end of Feb 2007, to enable us to claim the grant from the Scottish Museums Council, without which the work would not have gone ahead. Then, we really need to look at costing the real work - getting 6 steaming again…

So No.6 has gone to Bo’ness. Makes a change from Port Meirion, I suppose.

With apologies for the poor pun, and long posting.

Steam locomotives are evocative reminders of our industrial past. Big, noisy and smelly they have a really wide ranging appeal, my 3 year old loves them, and so does my (nearly) 90 year old Grandad. This appeal is greatly enhanced when they work, or better still you can ride on them. Until 2002 visitors to Prestongrange Museum could do just this on a short section of track, all as a result of the labours of the Prestongrange Railway Society. However, steam locos (never ever call it a train!) need a boiler inspection every 10 years, and invariably need some maintenance as well. This means that the boiler has to be lifted off the base of the loco for a boiler inspector from an insurance company to assess it, and advise on what needs to be done to get the boiler back into some kind of working order. At Prestongrange we lack many of the resources to do this - the equipment (a crane for example), the space, the manpower (we rely on a small long suffering band of dedicated volunteers) and of course money. 2002 saw the certificate on number 6 finally expire, and no steam locos have operated since then.

We know that visitors would like to see a loco operating again, and indeed many would come specifically for this (the figures demonstrate this), but how do we go about it, and should we? Museum curators are the butt of much mockery due to our seemingly odd habits of treating everyday objects with solemn and obsessive care (and our tendencies to wear tweed and corduroy). But this much maligned behaviour is based on common sense. If we treat the objects we are charged with the care of well, then they will be there for future generations to enjoy and learn from.

What has this got to do with steam locos? Well, since number 6 is part of the museum collection, shouldn’t we be wrapping it painstakingly in acid free tissue paper after discreetly numbering it, and then carefully pacing it on a shelf for no-one to touch, see or generally interfere with for the forseeable future, rather than using it and repairing it? No. Museums and curatorship is about much more than just preserving an object. When we choose to take an object into the collection it isn’t just the object we are preserving, it is the web of information, emotion and stories associated with that object too. Things in museum collections were made by, used by, loved, hated, played with and looked after by real people. The collection and interpretation of this information is very important in making these things make sense. In relation to the steam loco, we have lots of hard facts but the machine had a job to do, someone drove it and people maintained it. It would be impossible to recreate the sights, sounds and smells of a huge industrial complex like that at Prestongrange, but by operating a steam loco we can give some impression of the world as it once was, and crucially that impression is one made real by noise, sound, smell and sensation, not just flat text, and is all the more memorable for that.

By working towards the resteaming of number 6 we are focussing on a goal of accessability to the collections, even if in the long term the actual operation of the loco will wear out many of its working parts. This is a common dilemma for industrial curators - at what point do we stop conserving something and start restoring it? If we continually replace, repair and mend a machine does it stop being the object it once was? Very few parts of the Flying Scotsman (if any?) are those that it was originally made with, but that doesn’t stop it being one of the most popular (and iconic) museum exhibits in the country, perhaps in the world. Another aspect we need to consider is how is the work done? Ideally in the same way it would have been done when the loco was in operation - in our case up until the ealry 1980s. This way we go some way towards the preservation and recording of the engineering skills (many of which would die out otherwise) needed to maintain something like this.

So to get back to my story, we decided to apply for some grant aid from the Scottish Museums Council to start the long process of bringing number 6 back up to standard for steaming, and were awarded some money earlier this year.

The actual process of finding somewhere to do the work was laborious, and made even more so by a number of factors, not least that there aren’t many places we could turn to for the job, as it is something of a specialist market. Also in common with other public bodies East Lothian Council has a policy of transparent procurement proceedures for purchases over a certain value whereby a number of comparitive quotes need to be obtained. So this took uo some considerable time. However, in the end we decided to go with the first group we had approached, the Scottish Railway Preservation Society at Bo’ness, who run the Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway. Working with SRPS offers many advantages for us. They are local, they are a heritage orgainisation and (the clincher) they like us, viewed this as a partnership opportunity, with mutual benefits (as a training project for their new volunteers, and as a development opportunity for ELC staff and PRS volunteers). So FINALLY last Thursday things got moving at Prestongrange Museum.

It was a lovely sunny (but very cold) day and various ELC staff and volunteers and a PRS volunteer met a low loader and drivers from Allelys Heavy Haulage at Prestongrange at 8:30am. Getting the loco from the track to the lorry proved to be a challenge (met with gusto by everyone present) and eventually the loco was on its way to Bo’ness to be unloaded. It has been a complex job to get us to this stage, and whilst Thursday was very satisfying personally, as someone who has invested a huge amount of time and energy in this project, I know that there is plenty more to come.

There are some photos on flickr just search for Prestongrange, and there will also be a video on YouTube soon too.