Montrose said:
Hope you all enjoy it (Flying Scotsman)
It took nearly 6 million pounds ( of your - ie Public money) to restore.
The bill going higher and higher each time more and more faults were found by those - publicly funded engineers at the NRM at York.
Meanwhile....
Enthusiasts completed a new build ( ie built from scratch) Pacific Loco.
Oh.. their bill - well it was just 4 and half million pounds.i
That concentrates the mind somewhat, Eh ?
So enjoy it, the NRM wont be spending any more money on it again - ever !
Montrose this comes from the NRM , National Railway Museum,
"People have said that we could have better spent the money on other things. But life isn’t that simple. Exciting projects attract money that wouldn’t be there otherwise. The £2.3 million purchase price of the locomotive came from external funds with £1.8 million coming from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, £441k from public donations to the museum and £365k match funding from Virgin Group.
"Over £1.8 million of the cost of the £4.5million restoration cost came from external funders, public donations and the sale of Flying Scotsman merchandise. This includes a £275k grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. And because we are part of the bigger Science Museum Group, the Trustees of the group made extra resources available to the National Railway Museum for the restoration project: it hasn’t come from the normal annual budgets of the museum.
I think a rebuild is better than a New build, but, thats just myself, we see lots of retro cars being built, but how many retro caravans, lots of rebuilds though.