Category: Updates

  • 18/10/26 – Doors, Floors and some oily schmoo

    18/10/26 – Doors, Floors and some oily schmoo

    Hello all, and thank you for joining us for another update. This week we’ve been able to finish the Shock High, made a start at clearing the Tube down and got the doors finished on B763305.

    When Dave inspected the Shock High, he picked up that the underkeep bolts on the West side had no split pins in the bolts. Ernie and Charlie undid the bolts, removed the spring washers and put split pins in the holes which makes this wagon ready to release.

    Nick and I went to finish off the doors on B763305. First job was the make them so they can be opened. The door chain rail has been replaced in the van’s life and it needed some adjustment to be able to lift it to clear the new doors. Part of this involved re-fixing the roof sheet between the door chain rail and it’s metal capping strip as we’ve done with more recent vans.

    Ernie then finished off re-tapping a vacuum cylinder piston where the top cap had rusted and broken and sheared one of the bolts.

    I measured up the back of the doors for their diagonal bracing. While not strictly necessary with us building the door from plywood, it completes the look of door externally. Dave and I cut them and then fitted them with some help from Charlie. Ernie and Nick then went down and painted the door into the traditional bauxite gloss.

    Dan Baldwin went to B854782 and did some signwriting on one of the panels we’d replaced earlier in the year.

    Team Baldwin and Dan deployed to the LNER Tube, needle gunning,scraping, cleaning and priming the tops of the solebars. Ernie was also on the needle gun, cleaning up the areas where plates were mounted on 1802.

    Dave and I struck up the Test Car after fixing the radiator back down, attempting a air brake test after we swapped the distributor back onto the coach last week. The brakes worked more as expected, however the compressor in the coach was struggling to over come the leaking air brake cylinder. We also hadn’t swapped back the choke plate between the distributor and the spare so Dave did that while I started to remove the leaking cylinder.

    With the cylinder off the coach and clamped to one of the orange trolleys, we stripped down the cylinder to see why it was blowing by. The manuals say to use some threaded bar to prevent the cap of the cylinder being fired across the work site The inside of the cylinder was liberally coated with oily/greasy schmoo. The seal has clearly been sat in it as it has swelled up, which explains the lack of movement and why I fell down when I removed it. The level of contamination is a concern for the rest of the coaches air system, so we’ll likely have to remove the other cylinder and flush out the air system, including back flushing the gauges in the coach. We’ll have to try and find a replacement seal for the brake cylinder and get that rebuilt

    That probably marks the end for that pair of overalls, or at the very least that’d upset my washing machine tremendously! That wraps up our weekend, thanks for reading. Join us again next week to find out what we get up to!

  • 11/10/26 – Shock Completion

    11/10/26 – Shock Completion

    This week the team at Quorn have finished the restoration of the Shoc-High and made a start on the LNER Tube wagon.

    Saturday started with Charlie finishing off lining the builders plate on the Shoc-High, and the East side paint symbol, whilst I applied the last of the bodyside stripes; quick drying undercoat first followed by gloss white.

    Nick and Thomas adjusted the brakes on the Shoc-High, where necessary removing and cleaning up linkage pins to ensure smooth and even operation; all parts of the linkage were then oiled-up.

    Charlie started up the vacuum brake rig, and with Ross’s help the brakes were successfully tested.

    Ross and Charlie then did a small maintenance job on the Volvo, adjusting the drive belts; I joined Ross to swap the distributor back to the original one on Test Car 2 which is part of the fault chasing challenge we have with the air brake system.

    Nick and Thomas progressed the sticker removal from tank 1802.

    The tank barrel end plate which had been removed previously was straightened and the number stickers removed.

    Ross and myself fitted the last six bodyside/end bolts to the Shoc-High, then painted them with Bauxite.

    Ross, Charlie and myself then got stuck into the very rotten floor removal from the LNER Tube E301588. The floor planks in these wagons are held in place by solebar top metal strip plates; the bolts attaching these were badly corroded so all had to be cut and punched out.

    By the end of Saturday afternoon the whole floor had been removed; some of this will no doubt go to help with the Bonfire on the 5th Nov; however a considerable amount fell into pieces and was just swept into a pile.

    On Sunday Ross and myself varnished the body of the Shoc-High wagon, protecting the solebar ends, then starting with the door edges, completing the bodysides then the ends.

    Charlie and myself cleared out the south end toilet in the mess coach with a view to using the sink for hand washing. A plywood shelf was cut and installed over the top of the toilet as this will not be used. At some point we will complete the plumbing from the coach’s main water tank.

    Ernie continued with his machining and assembly of the door locking bar parts for the Palshoc van.

    Nick, Mark, Tom, Oliver, Charlie and Thomas made their way down the yard to the van train to replace the rotten doors on 12T Van B763305 with those we’d prepared a few of weeks ago. The old doors were removed, some of the bolts needing a little help from the grinder.

    The door furniture parts were cleaned up then given a coat of primer.

    The new doors were trial fitted and measurements taken for fitting the door furniture.

    The door top noggin had to be adjusted slightly, and with the doors removed the apertures were routed and chiselled out to accept the door furniture parts.

    The first new door was then fitted, drilling the hinge bolt holes and bolting up.

    With the second door hung, we fitted the door locking bar so the van could be secured. The final door diagonal timbers, bolts, door furniture and door holdback catches will be a job for next weekend.

    Charlie and myself attended to a vacuum pipe clamp bolt replacement on the south end of the Shoc-High. The swan-neck is now secure.

    After our final inspection of the Shoc-High wagon we are happy to report that the restoration is essentially complete, with only a couple of missing split pins to be attended to before the wagon is released to the Carriage & Wagon department for operational acceptance inspection. We look forward to seeing the wagon in operation once it makes its way back into the mixed goods rake.

    Join us again next week, all the best, Dave

  • 04/10/26 – Painting a picture

    04/10/26 – Painting a picture

    Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s update from Quorn. This week we’ve been getting the Shock High closer to completion with lots of details added, and yet more adhesive has been removed from 1802.

    Dave got cracking with the signwriting on the west side of B724570, getting all details but the vacuum release star and the D plate applied.

    Carl and Charlie went inside the wagon, coating the back of the wood work with a coat of grey paint to hopefully keep the worst of the weather off it.

    I took another look at the cooling system on Edward with a new pressure test kit. First off it wouldn’t pressurise, after a new O-rig fitted in the oil cap he would get to just over 5 psi then quickly leak off, with a trickle of water from the top left corner of the radiator cores. Yet another Perkins with a leaky rad! I ended up putting half of the K-seal bottle in the Test Car’s generator and half in Edward. Charlie ran up Edward, while I got the Test Car started. Both ran up fine and the leaks seal once they’d got warm.

    Nick went to look at the roofs on both of the Vanwides in the van train, both of which need a new roof sheet in the near future. On Sunday, Nick carried on with removing the stickers and hopefully their adhesive.

    Mark and Oliver put a second coat of grey paint on the inside of the Shoc high, and then touched up the bauxite. Tom and Daniel got the black out and touched in the underframe.

    Dan started marking out the Shock stripes on each side, and got 5 painted in both undercoat and gloss.

    Dave did the number, capacity and telgraph code on the east side of the wagon and I got my brushes out to apply the tare mass, wheelbase and XP rating also on the east side. Charlie also started to have a go, picking out both D plate and then both vacuum release stars.

    Having finished my signwriting, I drew up a piece of the wood needed to put the side sheets back in the Palshocvan and then removed the south end number panel from the ladder section of 1802.

    Dave and Oliver joined Nick in the de-stickering of 1802 while I adjusted the handbrake on the Volvo loading shovel.

    That wraps us up this week, thank you for reading. Join us next week where we’ll hopefully be varnishing the Shock high. See you then!

  • 27/09/26 – More Bauxite

    27/09/26 – More Bauxite

    Hello and welcome to two-weeks news from the team at Quorn. We’ve made good progress with the Shoc-high B724570, and finished off the Bauxite application to the tool van 854097.

    Last weekend the striped ends of the tool van were sanded, cleaned down and undercoated; once this was dry the gloss Bauxite was applied to these areas.

    The final door frame parts were cut for the new 12T van doors for B763305. The doors were then assembled, primed and undercoated.

    The exposed metal frame on the Palshoc was prepared and then red-oxide primed.

    Charlie looked at making a towbar for the generator, Ernie carried on with the fabrication of parts for the Palshoc door bars, and maybe we shouldn’t ask what mischievousness Hector got up to in the yard!

    During the week Tank 3689 was shunted out of the workshop at Rothley (where it had been on display during the beer festival), and coupled with the other six Esso tanks; all 7 together for the first time.

    This weekend we have continued with the gloss Bauxite application to the inner ends and door areas of the Shoc-high.

    The outer ends were marked out for the shoc stripes, which were then taped.

    Undercoat was applied which dried really quickly.

    Followed by some white gloss.

    A few areas of the inner headstock had some black applied.

    Some replacement floor planks were prepared.

    Part of the Shoc-high floor was taken up to even up the plank spacing and remove one rotten board. The replacement planks were then fitted.

    A couple of repairs were done to two donated lamps.

    A vehicle cover sheet that was previously used at Rothley had become available as it had some damaged areas so not longer fit for use on a coach. It was laid out in the yard and an assessment found that the undamaged part was enough to allow five van roof sheets to be cut from it. These were stored away safely for future use.

    Thanks for reading, join us again next week as we progress the Shoc-high wagon nearer to completion.

  • 13/09/26 – Before and After

    13/09/26 – Before and After

    Hi, this week the team at Quorn have again been busy working on many wagons; the restoration of our 7th 35T Esso tank is completed, we progress with the Shoc-High, the Tool Van, and start making some replacement van doors.

    Saturday and continuing with the work started last week on the Tool Van, Mark and Oliver got the Bauxite gloss paint out and completed all four sides of the van.

    This gives us our first before and after picture in this update.

    Tom, Ernie and Charlie took a look at the section of corroded plate-work on the Shock-High B724570, marking out and cutting the section out. A new piece of plate was then cut to suit, the mounting holes drilled and it was checked for fit.

    The plate was then trimmed as necessary for a good fit, the back red-oxide painted and bolted up; Charlie then welded the plate in-place.

    Ross and myself measured up the East side doors that need replacing on 12T Van B763305, these are the original planked doors that have seen better days. Our plan is to replace them with our tried and tested design of plywood doors, routed to represent the planked originals. Two sheets of ply were cut to size, moving our work inside the Palshoc van that was conveniently nearby to shelter out of the intermittent rain showers.

    Ross did some fitting checks with the latest version of his prototype profile measuring device, looking again on at the Salmon, Sturgeon and Lowmac wagons.

    Having made a decision to tidy up the area near the tool van we needed the use of the Volvo loader, however this failed to fire into life so needed a bit of investigation; there is an electrical gremlin somewhere and the batteries need a good charge.

    Sunday, and after grinding back the welds on the Shoc-High plate-work, a little more weld was needed to a small area. The plate was then ground neat and red-oxide applied. After this had dried, Nick applied a coat of Bauxite to the new plate and also round the East side door frame.

    This gives us our second before and after.

    Having charged the Volvo batteries overnight we managed to get the loader started and the tidying up completed, including our spare wagon wheelsets being safely stored in the Steel-High wagon that is coupled to Test Car 2.

    Charlie took a look at a loose connection with Hector’s hooter, and fixed it.

    Ross and myself took the final two Esso barrel plates that had been varnished a couple of weeks ago down to Rothley where we found tank 3689 in the yard.

    The plates were fitted to both sides of the tank; just needing a small amount of fettling to a couple of the brackets to get the bolts to line-up.

    The tank will be proudly on display at Rothley during next week’s GCR Beer, Cider & Gin Festival.

    This work completes the restoration of Esso 35T tank 3689 that arrived from Shillingstone in October 2025, and gives us our third before and after picture.

    Returning to Quorn, Ross and myself cut the backing pieces for the 12T van doors, and routed the plank representation into the two van door sheets.

    Thanks for reading, join us again next week, all the best, Dave

  • 06/09/26 – Many wagons on the go

    06/09/26 – Many wagons on the go

    Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us for this week’s update. This weekend is the Diesel gala so the yard was quite busy with cars meaning we kept our efforts to the south yard on the Shock High, the Palshocvan and the even the tool van!

    Carl and Charlie kicked off with the undercoat, heading down the yard to undercoat the east side door on B777171, then coming back up o undercoat the west side of the Shock High. The then went back up the yard with some bauxite gloss to paint the west side of B777171.

    As the bauxite was out, Daniel and Nick painted the east side of B724570 while Dave did both ends.

    Ernie finished off drilling the bolt out on the piston I’d set up last week before moving onto the manufacture of door locking bar parts from the Palshocvan.

    The painting team moved onto black for the underframe of the Shock High, getting both sides and one end covered.

    Ernie gainfully amused himself on more lamp bits for Nick, manufacturing a new hook for one. With the Freightliner FFA-G wagons still in the yard, I checked my profile measurer on their wheelsets to make sure the the mechanical design works. Still some more to do on this.

    In the sunlight on Sunday morning,we saw that the black container paint hadn’t covered the best, so Dave pottered around with the black doing a second coat around the underframe on the Shock High.

    Dan, Tom Oliver and Mark concentrated on the tool van, giving it a scrape, sand then a coat of undercoat for bauxite.

    I started taking a look at the Palshoc, trying to work out how to remove the side. It seems that it was designed to be easy to assemble though the intervening years haven’t been kind meaning to remove the side retaining wood (as intended), it seems we’d need to remove the door track! I removed the bottom retaining wood and then all three panels, with help from Charlie.

    Charlie also discovered how much work it is to de-rivet something, as we had to remove one of the trim strips to remvoe the rust from behind it. This will be replaced with a countersunk bolt.

    Dave moved onto glossing the west side of the shock high, joined by Nick.

    The last job for the weekend was to fill two holes in the dock surface that keep becoming trip hazards for the team, Charlie doing the honours with the mixing and pouring.

    That wraps us up this week, join us next week for some more wagon antics!

  • 31/08/26 – Long Services

    31/08/26 – Long Services

    Hello and welcome to an August Bank Holiday weekend update from Quorn as we make progress despite the showers. We’ve also had a couple of celebrations; Ernie and Ross received their GCR Long Service Awards from Malcolm Holmes during the very enjoyable Summer Party evening at Ruddington; Ernie achieving 50 years, and Ross 16 years.
    Oliver shared his belated 17th Birthday cake for earlier in the month.

    Nick had dug out an 18″ vac cylinder that had been stored for many years. It needed quite a bit of crowbar persuasion to extract the piston rod, split off the dome and get the piston out. Inside it was clear that it had seen some water ingress over the years.

    Charlie jet washed the cylinder dome whilst Ross, Nick and myself extracted the piston rod gland, which needed a little heat to un-seize the nuts and studs.

    Ernie made a start drawing up and machining some of the door furniture parts that are needed to repair / replace items for Palshoc van B855568.

    I finished off the signwriting on the last of the four Esso barrel plates for tanks 3854 and 3689.

    Ross varnished two of the Esso plates, making use of the space in the kitchen area on Test Car 2.

    Mark, Tom, Oliver, Dan and myself continued work on Shoc-High B724570, completing the needle gunning of the north body end, then starting on the underframe.

    In between the showers work continued on the underframe, the bare metal areas were dried off and some Red Oxide was applied.

    On Sunday Nick, Ross, Charlie and myself took the two Esso plates that had been varnished down to Swithland sidings and fitted them to tank 3854. A touch of blue was applied to the bolt heads.

    This now completes the restoration of tank 3854, here’s the before and after (August 2025 and August 2026).

    Back at Quorn we continued with stud removal, brass bush removal, hole tapping and cleaning up of the vac cylinder. Unusually the brass bush had a thin rubber gasket fitted to its underside which we’ve not encountered before on other cylinders.

    I applied a coat of varnish to the last two Esso plates in readiness for fitting to tank 3689 at some point.

    Ross and I took a look at the Lobo Scaffolding to assess what parts we have. We also swapped two of the feet units and assembled the structure which confirms now what additional parts we need to complete two towers.

    Ross sanded the north end of Shock-High B724570 and Nick applied some red oxide primer to the cleaned up metal areas.

    Bank Holiday Monday, and Ernie started cutting down the locking bars for the Palshoc door. Whilst Ross removed the door furniture from the door panels, and measured up for new bearings on the door runners and the wooden panels.

    We’d left the vac cylinder piston rod nut retaining plate in a penetrating oil soak overnight; despite this the plate took some removing with one of the bolts giving up, so this will need drilling out and re-tapping at some point. Nick then continued cleaning up the piston.

    Mark, Tom, Dan, Oliver and Charlie continued on the Shoc-High with needle gunning, priming the underframe.

    They then carried on undercoating the east side body and both ends.

    Nick and Oliver put some primer on the west side wood .

    All-in-all a very enjoyable and productive weekend. Join us again next week for the Diesel Gala, all the best, Dave

  • 23/08/26 – Next vehicles are in, what have we got to work with?

    23/08/26 – Next vehicles are in, what have we got to work with?

    Hello everyone, and I start with apologies for last week. We weren’t able to get onto the hosting portal to write a post, so have made this one a bumper update.

    Four vehicles left Quorn for Swithland, these being 3689, 3854 B452718 and B507489. In their place we have received the Palshoc, Shock high and the LNER Tube for us to work on.

    Dave did some more work on the Esso Plates, getting the blue ring round and the red letters on another.

    Dan, Daniel, Nick and I started work on B777171, removing the rotten door and constructing a new door.

    Dan and Charlie took to removing the stickers from 1802.

    Ernie and Dave got the gloss paint out and painted all the undercoated panels down the van train.

    Dave and I started to look at B855568 to see what it needs for its restoration. With Ernie we also measured out for our tent and see what we need to do to fix it down

    Okay so onto this week!

    We’re waiting for some screws to be able to manufacture more doors for B763305, so we’ve opted to take a look at B724570, with Charlie and Ernie leading the charge on wire brushing and needle gunning the metal work. They also started sanding the wood work.

    Nick and I looked at the sealed door on B855568. The door bars were seized into position so we released them from the woodwork and lowered the door out of the hole and over onto some trestles for stripping down. Nick got the hot spanner out and un-seized the door bars. Some of the door bogies fell apart so these will need some parts ordering.

    I made some improvements to my profile measuring device and trialed in on some of the smallest wheels in fleet (these being the Salmon, the Sturgeon and the Lowmac) which it was able to clear.

    Charlie, Ernie and Mark carried on with the cleaning down and priming the metal and wood work. Nick and I went round and spot replaced planks on the shock high.

    That wraps us up here for the past two weeks, and thank you for your patience. We’ll get back on the vans next week as we are hoping that the screws will be sat waiting for us at Rothley. Join us next week to see what we get up to!

  • 09/08/2026 – More Sides

    09/08/2026 – More Sides

    Hello and welcome to this weeks news from Quorn as we continue with box van side panel replacements on B854782 and B777171.

    Firstly we should welcome Carl who came along on Saturday to see us with a view to volunteering in the future, hope you enjoyed your day.

    Saturday started with Nick and Carl clearing the stored boxes from inside the East side North end of B854782 to allow the rotten panel to be removed. Once the panel was out, the metalwork was cleaned up and a new ply sheet cut to size.

    The sheet was trial fitted and marked for the framework rivet cut-outs which were drilled. The panel was then primer painted by Carl.

    Ernie helped me with a couple of jobs on parts from my ever cantankerous old Triumph which needed fettling; the oil sum pan was straightened, and a new jacking support plate made & welded into place under the front crossmember.

    Ross is developing his own design of Tyre Profile Measurement device; which has progressed to the first stage of manufacturing and trial fitting of the magnetic frame for attaching to a wheelset.

    Ernie applied some undercoat to the west side van door that was made and fitted last week on B854782.

    Nick, Charlie, Carl myself fitted the side panel into B854782, and Charlie fitted the door hold-back catch. I then painted the panel with undercoat.

    In other news, we all admired a very smart 1961 Morris Minor visiting the yard at Quorn; Ross rode a rather old bicycle, and Charlie took a selfie.

    On Sunday we moved down the yard to B777171 which was stabled next to the buffer stops. Both panels on the west side south end were to be replaced; the first job for Ernie, Ross, Mark and myself being to remove the old bolts; half of which came undone, however the other half needed the help of a grinder, hammer and chisel.

    Two new sheets of ply were cut to size by Ross, Charlie and myself, and primer painted by Eireni & Ross.

    Nick and Mark cleaned up the exposed metal framework on B777171, then applied some red-oxide primer.

    Once dry the panels were lifted into the van and sealant applied to the frame. Working inside what was becoming a very warm van in the afternoon sun, Nick carefully located the panels into place, then Ross & I drilled the holes and bolted the panels in.

    Any excess sealant was scraped away and the door furniture was then fitted by Charlie & Nick.

    Thanks for reading, join us again next week, all the best, Dave

  • 02/08/26 – Many hands replace sides

    02/08/26 – Many hands replace sides

    Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s update from Quorn. We’ve been working on the vans this weekend, progressing with the replacement of the rotten sides identified on the theatrical vans which had been loosened off last week.

    We got set up around the goods shed and removed the last few bolts holding the sides from B852838, B854782 and B786181. Three new ply sheets were retrieved from the Palshocvan and taken to the dock to be cut to size.

    The measurements were checked for each van, with both Shocvans using the same size sheet and the standard van using a taller sheet. Oliver and I cut the sheets down to the correct height and width using the circular saw under the careful supervision of the resident House Martin.

    While Oliver and I cut the new panels, the metalwork of the van was scraped and prepared back then primed with red oxide primer, inside and outside the van.

    Each panel was dry fitted to check it for size and then painted into primer and left get touch dry. We started in fitting the panel into B786181, first applying sealant to the metal work and then letting the panel in before drilling all the holes and getting the panel bolted up.

    The panels for the two shock vans needed some relief holes drilling for the rivets joining the corrugate end. The panels were fitted to the shock vans on Sunday morning, and then we moved our attentions to one of the doors on B854782 which had a rotten corner. We think this is the first of our ‘re-designed’ doors to have rotted and come up for replacement.

    We dismantled the existing door and got the required measurements to cut down another plywood sheet to make the door. We drilled the hinge bolting holes using the old sheet, then fitted it to the van and checked the operation of the door before giving it a coat of primer.

    Dave trimmed some of the side sheet bolts, then Ernie came and painted all three replacement panels into the deep red undercoat for the bauxite gloss. Dave also went back up to the workshop to clean out the thread on the door bolts

    Next week should be more of the same, with more van sides and doors to be replaced which is good as we’ve now found our rhythm with them again. Join us then and see what we get up to!