14/02/21 – Support Vehicles

This week’s feature again starts with a small update: Matt returned to Mountsorrel to complete their LMS 12T van, mainly the east side door and the solebar ‘D’ Plates which completed the van.

The van was drawn outside by Mountsorrel’s resident Ruston, so the livery could be seen outside for the first time.

I have been continuing to make progress on the Slip Lamp for Test Car 2. All components have now arrived, so I can now focus on final mountings for all components and then wiring. As Matt said last week, we will have this on show as and when we can open the Test Car to the public again.

This week’s feature is a bit of a sideways step from the wagons, but is all about the road/site vehicles that support our endeavours restoring our wagons. The first to mention is our one-ton site dumper, Danny.

Not a lot is known for Danny’s history, but it was built by Winget around 1976. The dumper was registered in 1976 with the registration number PUT 666R. Danny is a Winget 3SE, and was in use by a local scout campsite before Nick became the owner. The powerplant is a Petter PH1, producing an enormous 9hp running to the front axle through a 3 speed manual transmission, a layout in common with many of the other site dumpers of the period. We use Danny for trumdling items around Quorn Yard and for the skip run when required. Danny can also pull a fleet of trailers we have, which added to Danny’s carrying ability.

We have begun to do some work on Danny, starting with having the steering box rebuilt. With the rebuilt box Danny was properly mobile again, so it was decided to paint Danny into a scheme representative of its current location. This started last year, but got postponed due to the decreasing temperatures.

The next vehicle is the Volvo BM L70 Loading Shovel, bought by the railway for the P’Way department to replace an even older Volvo Loading Shovel (still very muich missed from my point of view). The P’Way department now use a Telehandler, so we have sole use of the Volvo which we use to remove vacuum cylinders and generally lift and shift items around the yard.

There is a little work outstanding on the Volvo, mainly on the exhaust system. A new silencer is required and the relvant pipes to connect it to the turbo outlet. If anyone knows where we might get a suitable exhaust silencer for this, please do get in touch! Once the exhaust is done, we’d like to give it a spruce up.

Lastly, the one vehicle I would be remiss not to mention would be Nick’s daily driver, the humble Transit Van. Without the van, we’d not be able to move anything between the sites without the relative ease that we have or have the ability to collect wood from timber merchants and keep it dry or any other tasks like that. A very useful vehicle indeed.

When we are able to return to the railway, we will look to progress these vehicles alongside the rest of the wagon fleet.