Should all preservation society's merge?

I have been to many heratige railways large and small but I often find myself thinking 'would it not be more efficient to rather than have all these societies all running there own funding campaigns for them all to be part of one big railway preservation group'
This could mean that smaller railways could get the funding needed to extend and become much more viable.
Anyway it was just a thought wanted to see what others made of it

It would probably kill the smaller and less popular sites in the drive for efficiency.

The Heritage Railway Association is a representative body for all member railways of which there are quite a few. I would like to see the HRA developed, as I believe it could be used to develop advertising campaigns across the board and take advantage of economies of scale in procurement.

Individual railways could also work more closely together coordinating projects but at the same time there is a lot of politics.

Your probably right it was just a idea but some more cooperation and better organised fundraising could certainly be a major bonus for the heratige movement

There is already a great deal of co-operation going on between railway preservation groups either through the HRA or by direct contact with each other; just that it's not 'head-line' stuff so gets little attention paid to it except by those involved.

There have been a few major incidents (eg the flooding on the Seven Valley Railway) where other railways have chipped in with help which did get more publicity.

The HRA already do national publicity on behalf of their members; I'm uncertain by how much more that could be expanded and if it would be "Value for money" if they did.

A greater amalgamation of preservation groups is not very likely. Each group has its own particular interests, and is organised in its own particular way. Groups range from small ones entirely run by volunteers to the large players with paid staff plus volunteers. Distance between various groups would also reduce the effectiveness of amalgamation. Again one needs to ask the question about "Value for money"; I suspect the answer would be that it would be very marginal, and would cause more problems than it might solve.

Surely part of the appeal to the volunteers and passengers is the local nature of what they do. A big remote company would not be the same. From a history perspective they did not originate in one central rail company. Looking at the fares people are happy to pay for a slow and often short railway journey it seems value for money is not such an important factor.

There would be something to be said for cooperation on locomotive resources. It would mean that instead of rusting away awaiting attention on a very large line, an 0-6-0 could be sent to a small fledgling line where it would be the star of the show. Seriously when you look at some of the larger lines they often have a sort of mini scrapyard of unused rolling stock.

There are far to many 'egos' on the preservation scene, it would be a blood bath plus all the funds would go towards the bigger/grander schemes instead of spreading the wealth out to the smaller ones.

I quite agree it would be nice to see some of the unrestored engines taken to a place where they could be useful

Worth remembering that each "railway" is typically backed collection of smaller societies, each with a particular interest or objective.

Re locos and rolling stock "sitting about", it's often privately owned. Owners don't take to kindly to having it pointed out that their project isn't going anywhere, even if the reality is that it's going backwards. Not easy to force a course of action on someone. I can think of one Barry wreck that would have been running long since, if the owner had accepted an offer that was made to him. However, I can also understand why he chose not to. His loco, his choice.