Eilish McGuinness speaks about Canadian Pacific

Transcript

00:00the Chief Executive of the National Heritage Lottery Fund.

00:09Good morning everyone. I have the best job

00:12in the world and this morning it is even more joyous than ever

00:16because it's so brilliant to be here and to see this beautiful

00:19and steam locomotive restored and restored for the future

00:23for everyone to enjoy because that's what we do at the Heritage Fund.

00:28We protect heritage to hand it on to future generations

00:32and this couldn't be a better example of that.

00:36It's the 200th year anniversary of the birth of Modern Railway so another

00:40reason to celebrate and we know that you know the

00:45Heritage Railway is so key to our heritage story and I think

00:51that's the really important thing. This obviously is a locomotive of great

00:55beauty, it's a locomotive of great sort of

00:58engineering skills and I have to pay tribute to everyone

01:01who's been involved in it but also it's a way of telling the

01:05story of the nation and it is such an

01:09incredible story. We've only heard bits of it but I know

01:12throughout the the operation of this train we'll hear

01:15more and more about it. We thank National Lottery players. I

01:20think if you were voting for a project this would definitely be

01:23voted to give National Lottery money to. I'm pretty certain about that

01:27and we are delighted that actually we have funded

01:30over 600 railway projects and with 105 million in grants over the

01:36last 30 years so it's a really incredible story. So a big

01:41tribute to the team here, to all the volunteers because that is so critical

01:45and we need to hand on those skills to future generations. It's a real

01:49commitment for us to continue to do that so that

01:51these trains can be operated the way that people remember and the

01:55way they can continue to tell the story of the UK.

01:58So congratulations everyone and I am absolutely thrilled to be here.