Tragic loss

Just spotted this on tonights news.

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This museum is a relatively new museum and used to hold some very rare and irreplaceable examples of British engineering. It was originally built by public subscription and was a very popular site for other meetings and shows.

Some of the bikes had been donated to the museum and hence the nation but many were still in private hands on long term show. It's tragic that something like this could happen and decimate the best unique collection of bikes in the UK.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Reply to
John Stevenson
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Reply to
John Southall

Heard that last evening on the 7 o'clock news as we were on the way home. My thought then was that it is going to be a huge blow to the motorcycle enthusiast in the UK and world-wide. A lot of stuff in there was unique as you say, and there will be a lot of private owners who will be looking at their insurance policies this morning.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

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Reply to
Peter A Forbes

Unfortunately insurance can't replace the lost machines. A sad tale which we should all learn from. Do we all have fire protection in our workshops etc? I have no doubt that the museum had a fire detection system but probably no automatic fire fighting equipment. Apart from the obvious sadness, I wonder what caused the fire. After all, most machines are made of metal which doesn't burn easily. Here we can all learn and keep flammable stuff like petrol, paint, oils, etc out of the workshop and in a place where they would not cause too much damage if a fire occurred. This is a standard precaution in industry which we would do well to adopt at home.

John

Reply to
John Manders

It is a couple of years since I visited it, but I remember it being a modern building with the bikes spread over quite a wide area

Surely there was a sprinkler system installed and fire extinguishers dotted about - I can't believe that such a modern building could be engulfed so fast.

Reply to
Squid

I used to go regularly when it was being built. From what I remember the roof contained a large quantity of timber, the trusses were close together and the roof was tall and wide. From the news this morning they are saying the fire spread through the roof very rapidly and extra fire crews were prevented from reaching the building quickly because of heavy traffic. The

500cc OHC AJS we restored and raced (on
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) was in the museum.

Paul

-- ____________________________________

Internal Fire, Museum of Power, Wales

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Reply to
Paul Evans

Spoke to my father this morning who lives in that area so caught it on the local news. The fire was reportedly started in some air conditioning filters which had been stacked up outside the building against the wall. The suspicion was that a cigarette set these on fire. The fire then spread into the building.

John

Reply to
John Manders

Hi John:

I was more thinking about people who had bikes on loan than the replacement side of it, but agree with what you replied with.

Our factory insurers are so picky about alarms and the like, plus we have fire extinguisher inspections annually etc etc., why did the museum not have all this in place ? I can't see the insurers putting them on cover if there wasn't sufficient equipment available, unless they carried that risk themselves?

Museums are difficult places to insure, probably a lot worse now than

30 years ago.

Kind regards,

Peter

Peter Forbes Prepair Ltd Luton, UK email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk home: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

Reply to
Prepair Ltd

One of those news stories that left me feeling physically sick, an experience which was repeated on seeing the picture accompanying the NTL world piece you posted.

Reply to
Nick Highfield

These are known as Glulam beams. It stands for glued laminated beams. They are extremely strong and reliable. I worked in a building which used these in it's construction. It was erected in the early 80's and they have given excellent service. We did have roof problems but never with these beams. If the roof is correctly designed, it should stand for years. That applies to any roof no matter what it's construction of course. I agree that there are some almighty and entirely foreseeable mess ups out there but if we never use new designs we would all still be running Lister D engines at home for real.

John

Reply to
John Manders

(Snip)

(Snip)

John,

Please remember that ALL age groups use this newsgroup which is a friendly family oriented group.

Your language is not suitable for this forum and does nothing to enhance your post. Your reasoned argument ( even though it has no engine content) is diminished by your thoughtless use of bad language.

Reply to
George Hendry

Sorry -- point taken.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Reply to
John Stevenson

I saw the latest pictures on the news today ( Wednesday ) and a lot of the bikes had been cooked, but they did not look as if they could not be rebuilt.

Lets hope that not to many of these historic bikes are truly lost.

Dunlop may be in for a very large order of historic pattern bike tyres... :-)

-- Jonathan

Barnes's theorem; for every foolproof device there is a fool greater than the proof.

To reply remove AT

Reply to
Jonathan Barnes

Yes, I saw the longer report and whilst it's going to be a lot of work, I'd imagine the great majority could be restored - one assumes they were adequately insured and that they will have a nice, new workshop to do it in!

Best to look on the bright side

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Reply to
J K Siddorn

Quote from site

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Many irreplaceable machines will have been damaged in the fire, but, where possible, they will be restored once again to their original showroom condition. To this end we shall be appealing for many scarce components and parts which will be needed. Details will be posted to this web site shortly.

The Museum has received countless messages of support and offers of assistance. We are grateful to everybody, and undertake to do our utmost to restore the greatest collection of British motorcycles back to its former glory.

Unquote

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Reply to
J K Siddorn

Glen Bewdley on the Vincent NG posted this.

"The way it happened, was as follows: The air conditioning units at one end of the building had next to them a skip containing old AC filters.

A carelessly discarded cigarette (this is where many people smoke during conference meeting breaks ignited the old filters, and the AC pulled the flames into and through the AC ductwork.

It was apparently a very fast moving fire, and perhaps it was lucky there were people there to wheel out what machines they could."

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Reply to
J K Siddorn

hello lads ,

i saw that on the irish news , tragic that such great bikes haev been lost in a few minutes of a fire -and all brilliantly restored too ,irraplaceable bikes.

just terrible ..

all the best ,

john dungan

Reply to
john dungan

BLOODY! George old chap you need to get out a bit more, run an engine if you have one, maybe a few ales. I am the first to support the non use of bad language and respect for others but the tone of your reply to take on one little BLOODY in Johns post is to me anyway way over the top. Chill out man

Kerry Morris Lithgow NSW Australia

Reply to
Kerry

I think you will find the 'F' word in there as well, Kerry, that was what George was complaining about. Nobody is puritanical enough to shout about bl**dy being used on the newsgroup I am sure :-))

Kind regards,

Peter

Peter Forbes Prepair Ltd Luton, UK email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk home: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

Reply to
Prepair Ltd

George I have been kindly corrected about the real offending word, even though I did read the original message from John some how I missed the word. Please accept my apologies for the tone of my post Back to lurking and to keep my mouth shut

Kerry

Reply to
Kerry

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