Restoration
The Transport Trust, the umbrella organisation for heritage transport preservation in the UK, had been concerned about electric train preservation in Britain and wanted to raise the profile the issue and to deal with the issues of financial support and covered accommodation. Under its patronage, a campaign to return the Brighton Belle to mainline service was launched by the 5BEL Trust in 2009. This charitable trust had by early 2009 acquired four cars out of the five needed and had set in place agreements to cover refurbishment of the cars. Restoration of the first driving car, Car 88, began at Pullman restoration specialists Rampart of Derby in February 2009.
Once the complete 5BEL set is restored to full operating condition, it will return to mainline operation. Despite the high cost of restoration (close to £2 million) the programme is seen as an investment for future generations. Progress with the restoration of the Brighton Belle to mainline use will depend in part on the level of public donations. The Trust expects to have the train operational in 2013 - the first time that a complete train will have been restored in Britain.
Read more about this topic: Brighton Belle
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)