Saturday 10th - A big shunt and some visible progress
Another Saturday, another major pre-season carriage shunt to start getting the rakes in the right order for the new season, now just 3 weeks away.
03 plus carriages went to...
and fro...
There and back again...
I'm reliably informed it all went more or less to plan, which is not always a given!
At one point the yard was positively littered with coaches, but it all came together in the end.
Onto the RBr then and it felt like good progress was made today. I started off putting another end section into undercoat.
At the back Alan went round welding up any identified pinprick holes and grinding them down, while Tony finished off the last of the initial sanding.
It was good to have Pam back after an absence of leave. She got going on the door edges.
Inside it was all go too with Dave fitting insulation now that welding had finished on the lower parts, while Phil carried on with the electrics and lights.
Paul captured me making a start with the filler. There's an awful lot of patches of metal to blend together, and I wanted to see what I could do with this first section.
End of the day and looking much better. Just another 110 ft of coach sides to go!
Maurice escaped the din of the paintshop with sanders blaring for a bit to treat the undersides of the SR/GW van floor before fitting.
Robert cut some timber to fit the hole he made last week.
Drilling holes to fit while Maurice finishes off painting the underframe.
Wednesday evening Greg had done the Malvern side
Whilst the rest of us were outside doing an axlebox exam on...
This GWR milk tank, which by Saturday had been shunted ready to be collected on a low loader. It's going on holiday for a bit to East Somerset Railway where they're putting together a small milk train for a series of photo charters this year. Always pleased to support such endeavours.
On the Jjack road I think it was TSO 5042. whatever it was, John checked the ride height...
Before lifting it up to adjust springs and things assisted by Andy.
Upstairs work continues apace on the DFR Mk2 seats
This is the last lot left to do.
Not a huge amount of work going on with the FK in the workshop today, just Ken soldiering on with the end, her trial fitting one of the tank filler pipes.
Great blog as always Alex.
ReplyDeleteI was just wondering with recently reading you have over 150 wagons stored on and about the railway, how do you decide which ones to restore? How many are restored already, either static or runners?
Are some just workhorses for permanent way rather than classed as preserved ?
Hope you don't mind me asking these questions as it would be nice to have an insite to the departments thinking ? Maybe a subject for a blog in itself.
Keep up the good work all of you in the department, great reading and seeing you efforts over the years.
Regards Dave.
Ha, I could write an essay on that! Certainly some are just in a class of operationally required, bogie flats, ballast wagons etc. That's a balance between P'way requirements and C&W capacity to maintain and repair.
DeleteAs for the the rest, we have an overarching vision of what we want to achieve; a pre-BR era goods train and a BR era freight train. For various reasons the practical limit for most of the time is the length of Toddington platform (6 coaches). We pick vehicles that we think are viable restorations that get us closer to our vision. That usually means the underframe and wheels have to be fairly sound, and then a mixture of major rebuilds and more straightforward jobs to make best use of resources.
At the moment we're mainly focusing on building up the pre-BR train, partly because when we started, there were more quick wins on that side, and partly because we have a lot of GWR goods engines. We've got a couple more major rebuilds and a couple more quick-ish turnarounds for that set in mind, and then we'll start focusing more on the BR set, maybe 12-18 months' time?
On the static side, it usually starts with us (or anyone) identifying a siding space that would be enhanced by having some restored wagons there, usually to displace other things. Inevitably these sidings are a bit awkward to shunt, so we don't want to "waste" a runnable wagon stuck there. We have a pretty good idea about the headline condition of most wagons around the place, so we try and find vehicles that could be patched up cosmetically or wouldn't take too much work to make look good, but for whatever reason running is not practical.
As for numbers, sometimes a bit difficult to define when something has ceased to be restored if we consider it now needs doing again! But since 2021, 20 different wagons have run, and a further 9 have been restored in one way or another, mostly for static use although a couple of those will hopefully run too. That doesn't include P'way stuff which probably accounts for another 6 vehicles or so.
Hope you found that vaguely interesting! :-)
Thanks for you quick reply Alex.
DeleteI found you answers very interesting and was nice to hear the departments thinking on what they are trying to achieve.
It's been great to watch the railway and department grow over the years, keep up the good work. Its great seeing, reading and travelling around on what you have all achieved.
Regards Dave.
Another great report.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the GWR milk tanker, it looks a little care worn to say the least. Does it get a face lift on its hols as you'd have to be a fare distance away to say it looked ok for a photo shoot!
If so are you privy to the livery?
Lastly, I see the water or milk tanker at Toddington is back together. Any chance of an update please.
Thanks Neil, I believe the plan is to give the tank a little bit of a spruce up but I'll leave it to the ESR guys to reveal all. I think we'll be at Toddington next Wednesday evening so I'll give an update after that, some good progress on bits has been made there.
DeleteJon Bribie Island Land of OZ `
ReplyDelete1205;58GMT or 15:58LT 12th - Interesting as Neil's comments were similar t mine when first viewed. Looking forward to that one too. Keep up the good work and BZ to all concerned - always something of interesting happening on the GWSr. :-)