Donor left fuming as museum loans loco to rival

ONE of Yorkshire’s leading museums has admitted loaning out a locomotive which was donated to the nation by a rail freight company to a rival train operator.

In the latest controversy to hit York’s National Railway Museum (NRM) in the space of a week, it has emerged the Class 47 locomotive, 47798 Prince William, has been loaned to the West Coast Railway (WCR) Company.

The move has sparked correspondence from the German-based logistics firm DB Schenker, which under its previous guise of EWS gave the diesel engine to the NRM eight years ago to join the national collection.

A letter from the company states the locomotive had been “gifted to the nation” and should not have been made available to “competitors to use on commercial operations”.

The NRM has confirmed a review will now be undertaken “as a matter of course” to establish if an internal investigation will be launched into the saga.

Senior NRM officials stressed there was no hire fee involved, and the locomotive, which was previously used to pull the Royal Train, had been loaned out after WCR stepped in to solve a last-minute emergency ahead of the Olympic Torch relay in Yorkshire.

Prince William had initially been selected to shadow the steam locomotive, Scots Guardsman, which carried the Olympic flame on its passage from the NRM to Thirsk in June. But a last-minute replacement had to be found after Prince William developed a fault and WCR provided another diesel locomotive, 37676 Loch Rannoch, to perform the duty.

A spokeswoman for the NRM said: “Our priority is the care of the National Collection and due to a number of recent faults caused by running the locomotive between our North and South Yard, it was felt the locomotive needed to be operated on longer distances.

“We asked for support from our regular operating partners West Coast Railways in achieving this aim. There was no hire fee involved – instead they have supplied an alternative mainline registered diesel for our use here in York.”

Prince William was moved across the Pennines to Carnforth in Lancashire on June 20 – the day the Olympic flame was carried between the NRM and Thirsk – and has since been used by WCR on 11 occasions up until the middle of August.

The locomotive is due back at the NRM next week, and the museum’s director, Steve Davies, has written to DB Schenker to inform the firm of the decision to loan out the engine and the reasoning behind it.

The fall-out of the loan of Prince William is another embarrassing episode for the NRM following revelations in the Yorkshire Post in the last week.

It emerged last Saturday the museum is facing a £200,000 deficit after its flagship summer event failed to live up to expectations.

The Railfest event saw 64,000 visitors come through the doors, but just 27,000 of those paid full price. The NRM argued, however, that its role is not purely to make profit, but to provide a service to the public.

A Yorkshire Post investigation also revealed on Wednesday that the husband of a high-profile curator at the NRM received in excess of £25,000 for work which included painting a train engine due to be named after his wife.

Adrian Ashby, the painter and decorator husband of Helen Ashby, who is head of knowledge and collections, received a contract to work on the restoration of Flying Scotsman for which no supporting paperwork could be found.

He was also paid £9,300 to make trips to Canada to work on the museum’s production of The Railway Children. A clutch of paintwork contracts was also provided without competition from other suppliers. The National Railway Museum insisted all its commercial relationships with Mr Ashby were legitimate.

An internal investigation was launched earlier this year after the NRM confirmed Flying Scotsman would not be ready for its Olympic Flame duties.

The world’s most famous steam engine had been due to pull the flame from York to Thirsk, but had to be replaced by Scots Guardsman due to the latest setback in its restoration, which has seen costs spiral from £750,000 to £2.6m.