Chairman’s Chat – May 2025
By Neil Taylor
Hi there followers of 82045,
The Greatest Gathering 2025
Well, it’s official – we are going to “The Greatest Gathering”. We have received a formal invite to TGG at Derby, part of the celebration of 200 years of passenger railways in Great Britain. It came as a wonderful surprise and a massive bonus for our small project to be invited to this prestigious event. I think it is probably unique that a locomotive in the middle of its build should be placed on display for the public to investigate and admire.
This is a great opportunity for the project to exploit its objectives to the full. Most of you will be aware of the 82045 trust as a project with the objective to build a class 3 tank engine. However, the charity has other objectives in its constitution:
- To advance the education of the public in relation to British Railways standard light passenger steam locomotives.
- To build, maintain, exhibit and operate locomotives of historic or scientific importance and in particular (but not limited to) a British Railways standard 2-6-2T class 3 steam locomotive. The Severn Valley Railway is the primary location for the construction and operation of locomotives.
- To encourage and facilitate knowledge of the construction and operation of British Railways standard steam locomotives.
This opportunity plays well into the hands of the first and third objectives of the trust. I will be trying to understand how we best help the public understand about the project and the final development of steam locomotion on British Railways in the 1950s. It goes without saying that this will also be an opportunity for fundraising and recruitment, with tickets already sold out and 30,000 people expected to attend over the three days – August 1-3, 2025.
The timing is also appropriate, as we now have a completed boiler and our partner organization, the Severn Valley Railway (SVR) would like to demonstrate its capabilities in the form of the completed boiler, as fitted to our locomotive. There clearly is a lot of preparation to do before we get to the exhibition and we will spend the next 2 months in a concerted effort to get the locomotive ready. There is a risk this is a small distraction from completing the locomotive, but a couple of weeks to get some great publicity is judged to be well worth the effort. It may actually nudge some items to completion ahead of schedule!
AGM
Just as a brief update, the trust held its Annual General Meeting on the 10th May 2025. As ever the meeting was well attended and presented the highlights of the last year to the membership. All motions were unanimously passed and the project and the trust deemed to be in good health.
If I were to add a little more, I think that the good news is that the project continues to make good progress on the build. For the first time in years the project spent more than it has as income, mostly on the completion of the boiler and the manufacture of motion components. It is likely that this will continue into 2026.
Membership numbers were maintained, which is great when many organizations have seen a significant reduction in membership and income. Financially the trust seems in good health and it was agreed that we need to raise between £200k and £300k in order to complete the locomotive and have the start of a running maintenance fund. It is now clear that the total cost of 82045 will be over £2m. However the context is that many current overhauls will be costing in the region of £750k to £1m, so this does not appear excessive.
I would like to re-iterate my thanks to all of those who support the project in any way, and encourage others to come forward to do their bit for the future of this particular heritage project.
A model Adventure
Many of you will already know of the recently released “Lionheart Trains” ‘O’ gauge models of the class 3 locomotives. These are a great addition to the world of modelling, and they have been received very well by the modelling fraternity. There is also a very good article in the May edition of “Heritage Railway” (Ed332 – pages 78-80) which talks about the class in general and the model variants in particular. The 82045 project even gets a mention in the article.
The picture of one of the new models in a familiar scenario... No prizes for guessing the station!
Southern 82xxx in action
I am always delighted to receive unseen images of our locomotive class from the pages of their history. I was recently sent the images here by one of our supporters, Malcom Garner. They capture some typical moments from the operation of our locomotive's predecessors.
Firstly 82018 approaching Guildford with the 12.05 Reading to Redhill on 25th Jan 1964. It was not usual to see the class heading a Redhill passenger service, so this is somewhat unique.
Secondly, we have a shot of both 82019 and bigger brother 80145 approaching Waterloo, both on empty stock duty on the 23rd Feb 1967. Sadly both have already lost their front number plates and they were only 6 months from the end of Southern Steam.
Please feel free to send in any other images that you have of the class in operation. You never know they may get included when we write the definitive book?!!