Author: rloades109

Hello everyone and welcome to another QWW update. For me, this weekend has been one of much signwriting, everyone else was concentrating on A6090.

Before that though, we continue to tidy up after Railways at Work, and with the van train back at Quorn, Nick and Charlie put the barrels back in the barrel van to protect them from the elements.

I made a start chalking up the Pipe for its signwriting, starting with the west side number panel. By the end of the day, the west side was complete barring a few words on the ‘Empty to’ wording.

Nick, Richard, Mark and Dan sequestered themselves under and around A6090 to begin the big scraped down of the underframe. We think the paint on the tank has been affected by being stored in a tunnel as it was coming off it large chunks.

I with coffee in hand got an early start on Sunday picking up where I left off. I taped off the box for the branding and let a distracted Dan have a go at painting it

I moved to the east side to make a start there, assisted again by Dan who had a ago at the B of the number panel. This just leaves me with the branding to apply on the east side and both D plates.

Nick and Richard continued to scrape the underframe of the tank, with most of what he scraped ending up in Nick’s boots.

The last job of the weekend was to have another crack at Hector’s wheel, which is now fixed, barring being inflated again, and maybe another lick of paint.

Thanks for reading, and see you again next week!

Good evening all, and welcome to another QWW update. This week despite the heat, we’ve fitted a vacuum throughpipe, tried to sort out a wheel and tyre for Hector and Andy is making more progress on the GUV.

Being the type of tank it is, A6090 was built unfitted. This is ordinarily fine, however most good trains at the GCR run with vacuum and without a throughpipe, this wagon is less likely to be used. Having recovered a complete throughpipe on his travels, Nick decided it would be put to use on the tank.

Nick assisted by Tom and Mark, first removed one swan-neck from the pipe. The pipe measured at nigh on 15ft, which made it too short initially for the underframe. Removing the swan-neck will allow us to extend the pipe, but more on that later.

The pipe was hung underneath the wagon in its approximate route down the inner solebars with large cable ties. Borrowing the magnetic mount drill from Rothley, Barry, Tom and I drilled holes in the underframe to accept the pipe clamps to hold the pipe to the wagon.

Jamie at Carriage and Wagon very kindly whipped us up a 2ft6in length of pipe to screw onto the rest of the throughpipe, leaving us to thread one end of it and assemble the complete pipe. (Thanks Jamie!)

Back under the wagon, the straight coupler was fitted using plenty of jointing compound, tightened up then the extension piece screwed into the coupler. The swan-neck was fitted, again with plenty of jointing compound.

This is when the heavens opened, so we made a quick effort to tidy everything up and hide! The rest of the day were to tidy up around the yard, and take Danny for a skip run.

Andy has spent a bit more time this weekend filling the GUV in the attempt to smarten it up, we’ll soon be progressing to a coat of paint for it livery yet to be decided.

Last week, Dave had spotted the Hector had a flat tyre and was leaning over in the garage. This week, I attempted to re-inflate it but to no avail. Barry and I separated the rim to discover a small hole in the inner tube. A spare was fitted but we struggled to get the locking ring back into the rims, so we admitted defeat this weekend and will have a rethink.

I think that is everything this week, next week we are hoping for slightly cooler weather so we can continue with the Pipe and get that over the line. There will also be a vacuum leak of test to do for A6090. Join us then and thank you for reading.

Hello everyone and welcome to another Quorn Wagon & Wagon update. This week we’ve painted the pipe into it’s gloss coat and have prepared for next weekend with the Test Car opening and progress other smaller jobs.

During the week, Nick and the lads primed and undercoated the east side doors and painted the underframe all round the wagon in black gloss, which looks really smart.

Come the weekend, Dave assisted by Thomas and Tom tidied the inside of the Test Car, even scraping the flaking paint from the generator compartment roof to then give it a fresh coat of white primer.

New volunteer Barry (welcome Barry!) gave the outside and quick hose down which also helped to smarten the coach up a bit.

Nick, Dan, Mark and Thomas continued painting the underframe of the Pipe, concentrating on the lower west side and the head stocks.

With the Pipe underframe finished, Nick and Mark went to look at tank A6090 to remove the last parts of the fuel dispensing system, which I ended up being roped into. The outfeed pipe on this wagon now looks more as it should, and there is one final job to do before the scrape and paint.

On sunday, the weather held us up putting the gloss on the Pipe, so Thomas painted the generator room door in Pearl Grey.

In the afternoon there was a gap in the clouds, so Nick and Thomas went for the bauxite for the Pipe. Each started with an end and then Nick got carried away and started down one side.

Monday was a much nicer day, so most people got stuck into the Pipe, though Dave and Barry did some odd jobs like pumping up the road vehicle tyres and re-shuffling them after Railways at Work.

After the last few bits of bauxite gloss was applied to the PipeNick moved onto details on the wagon, those being the usual swan-necks, hand brake ends and lamp brackets while the lads painted the inside of the wagon with some wood preserver as an experiment. Dave also got a chance to start the signwriting, applying the vacuum relase chord stars and assembling the templates for the bodyside writing.

The last job for the team was to repair some of our wooden steps ready for opening up the Test Car at the diesel gala.

Andy and Harry have started work on the GUV, as it’s been looking quite tired for some time now. I spent most of the weekend replacing the fluorescent tubes in the GUV with LED replacement units. 6 down, 4 to go! I also replaced the cracked beacon on Hector with a replacement

That about wraps things up for this bank holiday weekend. Next weekend is the Diesel gala, and as I’m sure I’ve mentioned the Test Car will be open to visitors in the yard so do come down and see us. We’ll be open from 10-4 Friday until Sunday. Thanks for reading!

Hello everyone! I’ll start off with a reminder about next weekend’s Railways at Work Gala, full details are on the GCR WebPage here. We’re all looking forward to it, and you’ll see some of us dressed up taking part in the action.

This week, we’ve done some odd jobs and put the last two planks in the Pipe. Tom, Dan, Oliver and Charlie along with Nick were on site on Tuesday carrying on with the Pipe, neddle gunning the east side and priming the metal work. They also found a broken brake block carrier on 3777 and oiled its brake rigging.

Nick went to fetch these from Harlows on Saturday morning, Dave started applying Kiki’s new identity, which can be seen in its entireity next weekend.

Thomas, Nick and I removed the 2 old planks from the East side, ready for the new planks to be dropped in and checked for size. Nick and Thomas also finished off the scraping of the underframe.

The plank was cut down in length and then run through our thicknesser to skim a few millimetres from the planks to remove some machining marks.

The planks were then dry fitted and drilled. The planks were removed and the painted into primer in the GUV.

The changable weather over the weekend has changed plans a little, so instead of fitting the planks first off, we took the opportunity to paint both new planks into undercoat.

Thomas paid some last attentions to 5209, picking out the red lettering on the bearing caps afterwhich he got the undercoat out and painted both ends of the Pipe.

At our event, Dave noticed that the hand brake rack on 3436 is slightly twisted on one side. This was improved with a tickle from the sledgehammer.

Our final act was to drop the 2 painted planks into the Pipe, which went well haing been pre-drilled and prepped.

That wraps up this weekend’s activities, if you can do pop down next weekend and see the event unfold, we’ll try and get some covert pictures through out the day too.

Cheers, Ross

After last weekends excitiment, this weekend has felt a bit slower and relaxed. Nick is away at summer camp, but that doesn’t mean progress is any less!

I started off with a last bit of tidying up after our open weekend with collecting a set of our steps left by the marquee. Dave, with grandson Oli to assist, removed the Deceleration meter bracket from the Bogie Bolster, B928135.

Joined by Mark and Dan, we then took a look at B740654 to see what further cleaning was required prior to paint. With a bit left to do on the North and East side, the Hydrovane was started and the needle guns deployed.

Along with the needle guns, I sanded off the east side and south end and started scraping paint of of the retained planks. Cut End preservative was applied to all cut plank ends on the wagon to help prolong their life. Dave drilled out one of the door reatrder pins for a split pin as it was noticed that one was missing.

The last job for the day was to remove the air driven pump from 3777 as this wagon will be reverted back to its Esso livery. The pump won’t be thrown away thoguh, I’m sure we can find a use for it.

Dave and I started applying wood primer to the ends and outward faces of the planks, the inner surfaces will have some clear preservative applied before the wagon returns to traffic.

All bare wood surfaces aside from the East side were painted in primer.

Next week will see the east side sanded and painted into primer (weather permitting), we might even start to apply some undercoat. See you then!

Hello everyone and welcome to the update after our open weekend. We had a good weekend despite the awful weather on Saturday. Thank you to everyone for the work put into make the event a success. It was great to see so many people visit us and to see the Test Car out and about the line behind the Heavy Tractor Group’s 37714.

Dave and Richard spent some time getting some props sorted for the looming Railways at Work gala and going along with the shunts for our event.

We also had a new arrival this week, a 3rd Esso tank wagon, 3777. Initial impressions of this are that it is quite solid, this got a wash and brush up on the Sunday when the weather allowed it.

To finish off this update, I’ll put up some pictures from the Open Weekend. Thank you again for all those who came to see our wagons and us. Next weekend should see some more work done on the Pipe wagon weather dependant, if not, I’m sure we’ll find something to do. Join us then!

Hello, and thank you for joining us for another update from Quorn. This week we’ve been progressing both the Pipe wagon and Kiki, plus some additional work by C&W on Test Car 2 in preparation for our upcoming open weekend.

As Test Car 2 is hoped to be running on at our event, we’ve got to make sure it has an annual exam and FTR, which will be its first annual exam. The guys at Rothley have been carrying out the exam and have lifted the coach to inspect the bogies. Thank you guys!

Back to Quorn and the weekend. The first job for Nick and I was to lift the A type container from the back of Nick’s lorry. This has been a long term resident next to the locomotive department’s mess room and has now become surplus. We’ve got a condition assessment to do, but more on this in future updates.

The container now safely on the floor, we moved onto continuing the floor in the Pipe. The now regular de-nailing, cutting and fitting went well, and barring a few reliefs to make in the end plank and the fixing down, the floor is completed.

Dave, Mark and Dan joined us on Sunday, and the team were able to split in two, with Nick, Dan and Mark finishing the Pipe fixing it down with the edge strips.

Dave and I continued the push on Kiki, Dave touching in the black and red paintwork and cleaning the lift up bed, with me re-wiring the hydraulic pump and tidying the main feed cabling.

With the wiring done, it was time for the big switch on, or in our case plug in…

Nothing went bang, so I’d call that a success! Thank you for reading, and join us again next weekend where we’ll be on the Pipe, or piping. See you!

Welcome to this week’s update and wasn’t it a hot weekend! We re-adjusted activites so the team didn’t melt. Our open weekend is 4 weeks away now, and we’ve started making prepartions for this by painting Kiki into a new livery. The Test Car has also gone to Rothley for an annual exam in preparation for our event

Oliver and I made a start on preparing so more planks for the Pipe, but after 2 we decided it was much too hot to continue.

Dave, Mark, Tom and Dan started stripping Kiki down to prepare the panels for paint using a mixture of scrapers, sanding and a trial of some spray on paint stripper from CTEC.

The team started applying paint to the tug and its removed panels, which I looked at the bed lifting gear which hasn’t worked since we’ve had Kiki. thankfully this was an empty hydraulic reservoir which was filled up.

I found some broken down insulation on the wires running to the pump so the hydraulic pump will be fully rewired. I also topped up the battery cells with deionised water.

It was just me on Sunday, so I re-coated all the panels on the tug and those removed. At the end of the day I re-assembled the panels on to the tug, so it is just waiting for detailing and the seat to be remade.

Hopefully its a bit cooler next week so we can get back on with the last planks in the floor of the Pipe. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Hello, and welcome to another Quorn wagon update. This week we’ve been starting a few smaller projects to tide us over until the next wagon arrives. We’ve got some during the week news to cover before I get to the weekend.

During the week, using the wheelset Nick took to Rothley on the lorry, the C&W team swapped the failed wheelst on the Coal Hopper, B425356. I’ll cover more work on this wagon later on.

Dave started the weekend with a touch of signwriting, finishing off the dock side of the tool van.

Nick and I relocated our other sign from our shed to the signposts next to the turntable. Charlie then painted the uncovered brown wood on the shed in black paint so this then matched the rest of the shed.

I then got stuck into a fact finding mission in the mess coach, ADB977107. For as long as we’ve been based at Quorn, we’ve used water carriers for our water. We’re now looking at re-commisioning part of the water system to be able to have a hand wash basin and the kitchen tap to be able to be used for cold water only. I started by removing some ceiling panels down the corridor and outside the toilets to have a look at what was already there.

Nick and Charlie went off to Rothley with the black paint to paint the replacement axleboxes and part of the Coal Hopper. Dave came to assist me in the coach, we found a long length of rubber hose used as a balance pipe between the first class water tank and the tank at the other end of the coach. This is a feature not normally found on Mk1s, and is a part of its converison to a mess coach. This got cut at a convenient point and bunged as it was found that the north end tank is unserviceable. While above the ceiling I also tidied a few loose lighting cables.

Sunday saw Nick go off to Rothley again to paint the yellow bearing end caps on the Coal Hopper axles. This now makes the vehicle fit to go back into traffic, having now passed its annual exam.

Armed with supplies from Screwfix, I stayed at Quorn to start some plumbing in the coach. Starting at the south end toilet, I plumbed up the cold water tap removing any redundant pipework, and adding a freeze drain to prevent any damage in the winter.

I then made a start on the kitchen sink pipe run, but had to stop short of connecting this up as we plan to put in a UV Sterilizer. Again, this has a freeze drain off point as well.

Mark, Dan and Nick finished their day by scraping some of the leftover spoil from the nook and crannies of the Grampus wagons.

Thanks for reading, we’ll be back again next week for more of the same, although hopefully the Pipe wagon will come in. See you then!