Strategic Needs and Priorities: Transport Heritage
This paper summarises research into the strategic needs and priorities for transport
heritage. It draws on research by the Transport Trust and discussions in the Industrial,
Maritime and Transport Group, convened by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The
paper was written to help inform thinking about future needs of the sector, both by HLF
in the run up to its next strategic plan, and by other organisations involved in caring for
transport heritage. It does not reflect the views of any one organisation. It sits beside
other work on needs done for the Historic Environment and Museums, Libraries and
Archives.
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The resource
Industrial, Maritime and Transport heritage (IMT) is a term that used commonly within
the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). However, it potentially embraces a huge range of
heritage, much of which falls into either the historic environment or the museums
sector. This paper therefore focuses on transport assets such as ships, trains, buses and
aeroplanes.
In terms of heritage assets, there are around:
 2,500 historic aircraft that are worthy of preservation, nearly all of which are in
major museums;
 4,000 buses and coaches in preservation; 45 per cent in recognised private (80 per
cent) or public (20 per cent) collections or museums;
 60 preserved railways, 30 railway museums and 60 other collections holding railway
material; 427 miles of track and 570 stations; 1,143 surviving steam engines (less
than 33 per cent in operation), 710 diesel locomotives (40 per cent are in working
order); 233 multiple units (motor and passenger car combined, mainly in working
order and used as backup to steam services on preserved lines); 20 electric units;
over 3,500 passenger carriages; over 2,000 freight vehicles; 20 cliff and funicular
railways (all in operation);
 1200 significant larger vessels and a large number of smaller vessels in public and
private collections. Of the 60 vessels in the National Register of Historic Vessels’
Core Collection, 20% are at risk, as are 10% of those on the Designated Vessels List.
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Significance
Although it can seem a specialist interest, transport heritage has wide support, being
very popular and attracting a proportionately high number of visitors from C2DE social
groups. The National Railway Museum is the most visited museum in England outside of
London, attracting 885,000 visitors in 2004/5. C2DEs make up 53% of the population:
40% of the visitors to the NRM are from those groups, compared with 25% to the IWM
Group, 13% to the British Museum and 9% to the National Gallery. It can also bring
benefits: preserved railways are a familiar and popular part of the UK historic landscape,
a usable asset and a living heritage, logging 9 million passenger journeys a year and an
annual turnover of £30 million, making them an important part of the leisure and
tourism industry and the local economies generally. A number of large vessels – such as
those at Chatham, Portsmouth, Hartlepool and Dundee – contribute character, identity
and a sense of place to major urban regeneration schemes. The conservation of these
items often requires traditional skills; it can also be complicated and as a result, projects
such as the SS Great Britain have generated innovative scientific research. Transport
heritage also makes a major contribution to museums – all four of the projects shortlisted for the 2005 Gulbenkian prize were transport or industrial museums, as was the
winner, the Big Pit Museum.
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Responsibilities
Ownership of transport assets is very varied: some are cared for within museums or as
part of heritage attractions (such as preserved railways). Transport heritage has a
strong tradition of volunteering, and many items are cared for by local trusts and
societies. An unknown quantity of smaller heritage assets is in private ownership (for
example, around 90 per cent of historic boats are in private ownership).
There is no national identified lead body for the transport sector as a whole. The only
area to have an officially recognised lead body is ships, where the Department of
Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) has very recently set up the National Historic Ships
Unit to provide leadership on historic ships, although this is not yet fully operational.
The Transport Trust, Heritage Afloat, the International Association of Transport
Museum and other umbrella groups within the sector provide fora in which
stakeholders meet to decide strategic priorities. Otherwise, responsibility falls either to
those museums that have collections (most of which belong to the Association of
Independent Museums), or to the many trusts, charitable organisations, local societies
and individuals that care for them.
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Funding
At present, large working transport, items are not eligible for grant aid from the major
national organisations (unless they are designated in some way such as a listed ship –
although English Heritage has formally moved away from funding ships). Public funding
comes through Government grant-in-aid to national collections (e.g. the Imperial War
Museum; the National Maritime Museum), through local authority grants for industrial
museums and visitor attractions, and indirectly through rural development and
regeneration schemes (European Regional Development and European Structural Funds,
Regional Development Agencies (RDA) and Landfill Tax Credits (LTC) funds, the Rural
Challenge Fund, and the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund).
HLF has become the UK’s single biggest public funder of industrial heritage, in default of
any other major funding source. Industrial, maritime and transport heritage was
identified as an early priority for HLF. The fund has awarded £458m to 732 industrial,
maritime and transport projects. Some of the wider funding has gone to infrastructure
and landscape projects, such as railways, canals, machinery (for example, the Anderton
Boatlift). In terms of transport items, HLF has funded 42 locomotives and 51 ships and
boats.
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Identified needs
HLF supported National Historic Ships Committee in its work on the needs of historic
vessels, and the Transport Trust to assess the needs of transport heritage items. Those
surveys identified the following needs:
 data and designation and grading systems: registers of relevant heritage assets,
prioritised and graded, to establish the nature, scale and importance of the resource
including mechanisms to chart and assess privately owned assets;
 workshops and covered accommodation facilities - keeping assets in the open air
adds greatly to their conservation and maintenance costs;
 work to conserve items at risk;
 conservation skills training;
 codes of good practice for owners and operators on the care and restoration of
transport assets;
 improved public access and education;
 archives to serve as a receiving point for papers, ephemera and small objects,
especially for privately held material that can easily be lost at the death of the owner.
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Issues for the Heritage Lottery Fund
A number of issues have emerged from HLF funding to transport heritage:
 transport assets can be difficult to sustain economically and in working condition;
in many cases, assets are being preserved beyond their original lifespan, in
conditions for which they were never designed; costs may be very high, and
technology unproven – both high risk factors for a funding organisation;
 where public enjoyment of an asset depends on its remaining in working order,
the need to replace parts and materials and comply with modern health and
safety standards can be in conflict with the benefits to knowledge and
conservation that derive from preserving the original materials and technology;
 HLF’s requirement that applicants meet access and learning requirements as well
as conservation needs can be challenging for a small, relatively focussed group of
enthusiasts;
 it is noteworthy that when the new ships advisory unit was set up in DCMS, no
additional funding was given for conservation, and government continue to make
it clear that they see HLF as the primary funder, even though many of the needs
of the sector are not priorities for HLF;
 Many historic transport items are in the hands of private owners however, HLF
funding cannot be used for private gain and the Fund gives priority to ‘not for
profit’ organisations.
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Future priorities
Common or emerging issues for the sector as a whole, including museums, national
organisations and the voluntary sector, include:
 to set out a vision of what the IM&T sector as a whole wants to achieve over the
next five to seven years;
 to prioritise and address the needs identified by the research and as outlined in
Section 4.0 above, including:
o the need for basic data on transport heritage, including knowledge about the
and condition of assets and archives;
o conservation of items at risk and the provision of covered workshop and
accommodation facilities;
o addressing the issues of conservation skills training in dialogue with
organisations such as HLF and Creative and Cultural Skills;
o providing a focus where private asset owners can come for help, information
and advice;
o the need to capitalise on the potential for transport heritage to create
imaginative new types of public access and education;
o addressing the issues of identifying and assessing privately held archive
material;
 exploring the role that transport assets can play in regeneration and local
distinctiveness, perhaps in discussion with Regional Development Agencies and
other strategic bodies;
 the strong potential of transport heritage projects to bring benefits to other
types of heritage – for example by finding appropriate uses for historic industrial
buildings such as sheds, wharves, boatyards and canal-side buildings.
Those projects which are eligible for HLF funding can contribute to these wider agendas
in many ways – for example, by incorporating strategic research into conservation
management planning, by addressing training and skills, through gathering data about
impact and benefit, and through ensuring that all aspects of the heritage – including
buildings and biodiversity – are addressed.
Other issues may need to be addressed through dialogue and closer working across the
sector.
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Other issues
Industrial heritage can be challenging, complex and expensive to conserve; nevertheless,
it is part of the unique character of the UK and provides wonderful opportunities for
access, learning and enjoyment for a whole range of people.
If heritage is to reflect the full diversity of the UK, it is important to ensure that a wide
range of heritage assets are protected or conserved; the physical remains of industries
such as ironworking or textile production which are reasonably well known and well
protected but there may be other industries such as plastic or paper-making, which
contribute much to the social history of Britain, where more needs to be done.
Another huge challenge is how best to protect industrial processes – the knowledge and
skills involved in traditional malting or the production of wrought iron, or in the care
and maintenance of older vehicles - is fast disappearing.
Conclusion
HLF has given strong support to this sector, and there is clear evidence for ongoing
demand. However, the issues of heritage in private ownership, lack of capacity to meet
access and learning criteria, and long-term sustainability and maintenance in this sector
are common to other types of heritage, and thinking on these issues may need to be
developed as part of the wider work needed for the future.
Reference: Transport Trust 2001. Transport Heritage – An Assessment of Needs and
Priorities. http://hlf.org.uk.
Chris Catling, with contributions from the Industrial, Maritime and Transport Group
convened by HLF.
November 2005.