Welcome to another update from Quorn (yes, actually Quorn!). Saturday had the full team bar James in attendance, though I arrived late and I had to collect some electrical supplies. The main objective of the day was to move the trailers about using the dolly that came with the flat trailer. Once a battery was changed on the Volvo, it started straight up and we were able to pick up the dolly and reverse it to the box trailer. An issue with the coupler height on the Volvo led us to making a solution that fixed to the forks. This made positioning the dolly easier with improved visibility but the 3 pivots in the consist made for some tricky maneuvering! The box trailer was moved into the yard and the flat trailer has been turned around.
I undertook the repairs to the Test Car electrical system. You may remember some months ago that the contactor for the Generator feed would not hold closed. We don’t have any reference to the design of the electrical switchgear which makes fault finding the system difficult. I’d not been able to find the fault, so we’d opted to change out the changeover system to a simple changeover switch. Thank to a colleague of Dave’s, Syd, we have a suitable switch which I have fitted and successfully tested. With some new switching arrangements we can now changeover the supply to the Coach. The compressor was struck up and we tested a newly acquired tyre blower.
Eddie and Harry continued prepping the Steel Highs and Tippler for paint. These are getting tantalisingly near, and only await slightly warmer weather.
On Sunday Matt, Jack, Dave and I donned our reenacting clothes, with a guest appearance from some friends of Matt and Jack, Jed and his wife. We’d dressed in 1950’s period uniforms and clothes, and used them along with Madge and the Van train to shoot some footage which is to be used in the advertisement video for the upcoming Goods Galore gala. Keep your eyes on the Railway’s social media for this video.
With the flat trailer now the other way round, Dave, Matt and I attended to a large dent in the trailer with a large sledgehammer. We got the worst of it out, and Matt and Dave fitted a new corner cap, as per the other side.
I took the opportunity to look over the ‘Wagon under Test’ lamp used when carrying out a slip test. I took the internal boards out to find the internal accelerometer and been removed and not in the most reversible manner. As I don’t know enough about the lamp, I’ve opted to remove the internals and replace it with a microcontroller and accelerometer that I can program to replicate the functionality. of the lamp. Eddie and Harry continued prepping the wagons, focusing on the internal surfaces of 280364. The interior of the wagons will be painted in bitumen paint.
Thanks for reading. Most of what we are doing recently is very weather dependant, so I can’t really predict what we’ll be doing. There’s plenty to do, so do join us and see what we get up to!
Quorn Wagon & Wagon 