2023 roundup

Happy new year everyone! The end of another year in C&W, so time for a look back at everything we achieved in 2023. As ever, looking back it's always surprising quite how much we've done, and on the longer term projects proof that we have made progress, even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes!

So, starting off right at the beginning, CK 16221 Abigail-Charlotte was finally outshopped after a lengthy restoration. It joined the maroon set and has carried many happy passengers in its first season in preservation.

There's always loads to do during winter maintenance and 2023 was no exception. It's difficult to keep track of it all here as often things come in and out quickly, but BSO 9000 was brought in for a few weeks as it had several jobs to do on it including door and brake system repairs.

Of course the main project of the year has been the continuing saga of RBr 1675. The interior has seen a lot of progress on the woodwork.

The bogies were stripped down and overhauled.

The coach body was lifted to fit the overhauled bogies, which also allowed a good view of the substantial amount of metal replacement done.

It's been far from straightforward with lots of discussion on woodwork and doors...

Both ends have been completely renewed with vacuum pipework and comms cord equipment done, and both corridor connectors now on too.

The focus for the wagon team for the early part of the year was the medium level rebuild of the Mogo. This constituted replacing the plywood sides, ends and doors with new, and giving it a new canvas.

All done and shunted out ready to join the goods train...

In time for the steam gala where we had the full pre-nationalisation set out...

Along with a short BR set.

Santa's Grotto coach had been looking very faced in maroon for some time and was due a repaint. We took the opportunity to bring it into the paintshop and repaint into Crimson & Cream, a more festive livery in our opinion, and when returned to the bay platform it really brightened up this part of the station.

Another fading coach sat in the station at Winchcombe is the model railway coach housed in a former Royal Mail van. We had to do this repaint in situ and thus were very reliant on the weather playing ball - which it often didn't! As such this is something we need to come back to next year to finish off.

We also did a bit of a shunt to position some previously restored wagons on the Usk hut dock siding, which along with the aforementioned 2 coaches, really lifted this end of the station area.

Wagon work over the summer focused on a separate project to restore a few vehicles for static display in No.2 siding alongside the goods shed at Toddington to make the view from the carriage window more pleasing for the public. We identified two very old Great Western tank wagons as unsuitable to run, but would gain purpose by being done up for static use. Grit-blasting was the order of the day and they scrubbed up very well.

The first one was outshopped in black.

The other 2 vehicles identified were the two Tool Vans which were both looking very scruffy, and again would not have found a home in a running goods train, so found a purpose in life here.

After an enormous amount of mess was made in the paintshop sanding them both back to bare wood, No.4 was duly outshopped...

Followed by No.92 after new skylight frames were constructed and the roof repaired and recanvassed.

The second tank wagon came in right at the end of the year and it shouldn't be long before we can send all four wagons up to Toddington for display.

Upholstery started the year doing what they do best, charging way ahead of the rest of us by doing the seats for barely started restoration job TSO 4867.

However, they soon moved onto new ventures, to take advantage of some spare capacity, initially using up offcuts of spare moquette, and make the railway a bit of money, a range of railway moquette cushions was released.

These have been selling extremely well throughout the year, 129 in fact! You can buy your own by clicking here.

Another new commercial venture was doing work for other railways. Here a pile of reupholstered seats for a Mk1 on the Dean Forest. Towards the end of the year the team has gone straight onto a Mk2 for the DFR too, a new challenge.

Worthy of a mention is all the outdoor work done to tidy up some of our longer term siding residents such as the S&T coach, army RBr, and storage BGs. 

The other major project of the year has been FK 13326. Between the two end doors it is mostly a simple repaint, but at either end it's been a different story. Substantial top-hat section replacement has been evident at both ends.

Once again new pressed steel ends have been deployed.

Back to wagons, and the Wednesday evening gang spent a good proportion of the year on the chaired sleeper wagon. It is now cosmetically complete but is awaiting a wheelset swap and a new set of spring hanger eye-bolts after the disappointing discovery that several were well past their use-by date.

The other Wednesday evening project was the quick repaint of GWR starfish 30500. This was in the running rake but was looking a bit sad. 4 evenings later and it looked much more the part ready for the train's outing at the Autumn Showcase.

The dirty gang achieved some substantial maintenance works on some of our running coaches this year with some nifty rotating of coaches into and out of service. The primary purpose was to make some inroads into the steam heat leak list, and noticeable improvements were made with plenty of pipework repairs undertaken.

Whilst they were up on the air, each coach had its drawgear disassembled, inspected and reassembled with new tail-pin assemblies, ticking off several more coaches for these exams.

Finally, the last quarter saw NYMR SK 25488 in for a simple repaint. The existing livery of crimson and cream was retained, but it is looking much better for a fresh coat of paint.

We continue to enjoy a worldwide audience here on the blog, so whilst it's not possible to do a top ten viewed posts this year due to some back end changes, we can say we've had almost 200,000 views and nearly 300 comments this year. So a big thank you to everyone who takes the time to appreciate what we do, it makes writing it, and doing it, all worthwhile.

So, onwards to 2024, let's see what it brings...