William Parker is the founder of The Flour Mill, a workshop in Gloucestershire engaged principally in the repair and overhaul of steam locomotives, although it undertakes other railway-related activities. He had previously kept engineering alive at Swindon after British Rail Engineering closed. The oldest locomotive worked on to date is the National Railway Museum’s LSWR Beattie well-tank of 1874.

Since 2006, The Flour Mill is providing support and know-how for the restoration of the Sibiu to Agnita narrow gauge railway in Transylvania.

Tell us more about the history of the British mission for the revival of the narrow-gauge rolling stock in Romania, more precisely surrounding the Sibiu-Agnita Railway.

In 2006, I was asked by the Mihai Eminescu Trust (MET), which has done a great deal to maintain the traditional culture in parts of Saxon Transylvania, to see if would be possible to revive the Sibiu-Agnita narrow gauge railway (SAR), to stimulate the local economy. The Hârtibaciu valley, although beautiful, was economically depressed. I had been to Romania before, professionally, and had been to Sibiu, but knew nothing about Romanian railways. However, I do have a workshop repairing steam locomotives in England, and people knew that I had friends in Hungary and was often in Eastern Europe.
At a meeting in London I was introduced to Jessica Douglas-Home, who had created the MET, by Stephen Wiggs, head of the New Europe Railway Heritage Trust (NERHT), and agreed to go, and once I had been once, kept going back. I managed to find a young local enthusiast, Mihai Blotor, who was born & raised in Agnita and had been fascinated by the ‘mocăniță’, as the train is known, but had never actually travelled on it, as it took much longer to go to Sibiu by train than by bus or car.
He was very enthusiastic, and confident that he could find others who would be interested. So I helped him with money and resources, and over time it worked. I met David Allan, an enthusiast with great knowledge of the North Wales narrow-gauge railways who set up the UK friends of the SAR, SARUK. Many of the people who joined then are still coming once or twice a year to help.
Probably the best thing I did was buy a new Dacia MPV in 2011 for Mihai to use to take volunteers and equipment to and from the railway – it is still in use today with over 300.000 km! And of course more recently I brought my narrow gauge steam engine to run on the line, although it has to leave the EU after two years in August.

What are the satisfactions and, most importantly, the challenges of volunteering for the historical railways of Romania? Did the authorities, in any form, impose difficulties since inception?

I can’t speak for anyone else, only myself. I decided that I would try to revive the railway, and the best way to do it was to support Mihai and his fellow volunteers financially, as much as I could. Then other British people came and gave their time – it is a great opportunity to start from scratch as our forefathers did in Britain in the 1950s and 60s. We don’t really deal with the local authorities, but in Britain it took a long time before they realised how good these tourist railways are for the local economy once they are successful. Of course it is so much easier and quicker for them to be successful if they are helped by the local authorities, but that is difficult here because there is no history of reviving railways in Romania, and there are many different local authorities along the line of the railway, each with different mayors, different agendas.
There is no way the railway can be justified as public transport – it can only succeed as a tourist operation re-creating the past, which is demonstrably successful almost everywhere else in Europe. I’m not sure that the government authorities understand that.

The UK Friends of the Sibiu-Agnita Railway have purchased former CFR 0-8-0T No. 764.158. The steam locomotive was to be shipped to the UK in 2024, for a full overhaul at the Flour Mill Works at Bream, in Gloucestershire. What progress has been made on restoring No. 764.158 and when it will be used on the Sibiu-Agnita Railway?

It has not been shipped to the UK, it is still in Romania. No progress has been made on restoring it other than dismantling it, and I have no idea when it will be used again.
SARUK and I paid half each to buy 764.158 at auction. We dismantled it in Hosman before moving it to the former SAR depot in Sibiu, after the Friends of the Mocăniță were able to lease it. However there are no machine tools or facilities to do repairs in Sibiu – even the wheel lathe and turntable were stolen by previous tenants. There is now no workshop in Romania capable of overhauling a steam engine, whereas in England there are many, including my own. Even new steam engines are now being built!
Accordingly we decided to take 764.158 to England to repair it. However it is still in Sibiu because no one can make a decision whether or not it is National Patrimony and should be allowed to leave the country. Of course it isn’t National Patrimony, and in any case is going to come back, but it is hard to prove a negative. I can’t get involved in this – it has to be sorted out in Romania.

Romania has a fair share of historical rolling stock, rusting in depots while waiting to be overhauled. The majority of these are steam locomotives for the main lines. How is restoring a narrow-gauge steam locomotive different than a normal-gauge counterpart?

It isn’t different. It is exactly the same. The only difference is that since narrow-gauge engines are smaller doing the same job takes less time and effort, so they tend to be cheaper.

Do you have any future projects?

I would like to see the original locomotive from the line, 388.002, which has been rusting away in the open air in what is supposed to be a railway museum, but brings shame to Sibiu and to Romania, moved to safety inside the SAR depot across the track. We can protect it even if the state and local authorities won’t and one day it will be appreciated, just as it would be in the USA, the UK or most of Europe today.
Together with Radu Tompa, a volunteer, I have purchased the former pub next to the railway at Cornățel, which we are renovating as volunteer accommodation, and hope in future to develop with a café and shop generating income for the railway – there is still a lot to do but we have made progress already.
There is enough land behind the old pub to build a workshop and storage shed for rolling stock on the site of some old greenhouses. Of course this will need all kinds of approvals but I hope it will happen in my lifetime.
Meanwhile, because 764.158 didn’t arrive in England (my plan was to restore it in the two years that my engine was in Romania, but it never showed up) I have now taken a refugee narrow-gauge steam locomotive from the Ukraine to England, which will be restored first.

Acest material a fost realizat cu acordul și sprijinul lui William Parker.