Preservation
In September 1994, the Irish Traction Group purchased the three locomotives from NIR and moved them south to their restoration base at Carrick-on-Suir. Although Nos 2 and 3 were moved to Lisburn on 11 September 1994 to be reunited with No. 1, paperwork issues with Iarnród Éireann regarding the transport of the engines from Lisburn to Carrick-on-Suir meant that the locomotives did not move until 7 January 1995 to Inchicore Works at Dublin, where they spent a week parked outside the running shed at Dublin Heuston. The move was completed on 14 January when the locomotives were towed from Dublin to Carrick-on-Suir.
When they moved to Carrick-on-Suir by rail they formed the last recorded un-braked train in Ireland and were regarded as an "Engineers Special". Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the ITG to prevent the locomotives from being vandalised while at Carrick-on-Suir, they were repeatedly attacked during their ten years of outside storage. This has prompted the ITG in recent times to construct large metal covers to protect any engines stored out of doors at Carrick-on-Suir, both from vandals and deterioration caused by the Irish weather.
During this period, it became clear that the ITG could not restore even one of the locomotives to running condition. The major cost was to replace the engine, torque converter and final drive, with prices in the area of £70,000 sterling to replace these components. Several engineering companies also queried whether the locomotives would be made available for sale, though the cost of replacing the engines and related drive components meant that these inquiries did not amount to much more than that.
Read more about this topic: NIR 1 Class
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)