Posted by Jock on June 23, 2006 at 19:06:25 from 86.135.22.154 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Count Louis (was Bure Valley Railway; where did they all go to school?) posted by RichardG on June 23, 2006 at 18:34:24:
Not according to the RHDR... Are you sure it wasn't "Count Louis" you were thinking of ?
Yer pays yer money, yer takes your choice, as my troublesome Norfolk pirate king is about to find out.
The current RH&DR management have almost erased Zborowski's role in planning the railway, yet I recall reading official RH&DR guidebooks in the 1960's that stated that the railway was jointly planned by Zborowski and Howey. The Higham Park website stes that The now famous Hythe and Dymchurch Narrow Gauge Miniature Railway was originally born at Higham and originally circled the landscape gardens. With his friend, Captain Howie, the Green Goddess engine would pull its carriages to such a speed that it would regularly topple off its track. The RHDR website would have you believe the Count ordered two pacific locomotives (Green Goddess and Northern Chief), to be designed by the leading model engineer of his day, Henry Greenly and built in Colchester by Davey, Paxman and Co. and which would run on the miniature express line the pair were determined to build.
Before they were delivered however, the Count was killed while racing at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix. Howey was left with two locos and the task of finding somewhere to run them. He commissioned Greenly to help him, and it was he that came up with the Romney Marsh.
I think that the Higham Park story is more probable (Zborowski was always crashing things) and the current RHD&R history a squalid piece of revisionism.
(Time and politics muddies our perception of the past. I started a railway preservation project in 1972, and the early history of our efforts as reported on the railway's official website is strangely different to what actually happened. Maybe something similar has happened on the RH&DR?)