Tag: 3621

Hello and welcome to a sunny weekend update from Quorn; we’ve continued with getting tank 1919 ready for paint and completed a small repair to part of the brake rigging on the Lowfit.

Lowfit wagon B452718 is due to go to Rothley at some point for underframe repairs, in the meantime we need to progress other jobs which include a repair to a broken part of the brake rigging. One of the twin operating arms has a fractured spacer and a missing spacer. To make the repair easier, on Saturday the arm was removed from the wagon.

The spacer attachment areas were cleaned up and a new spacer cut from a piece of tubing.

The arm assembly was then clamped together and welded up.

The rigging arm was then treated to a coat of red oxide primer, followed by a coat of gloss black.

Dan continued with his work on the A-Type container, cleaning up more of the metalwork and applying red-oxide primer.

The main focus for the weekend has been needle gunning, sanding and scraping of tank 1919 to progress closer to being able to apply paint.

Where bare metal was revealed, red oxide primer was applied and when dry the north end headstock panel had grey undercoat.

On Sunday the sanding and scraping continued on tank 1919, also a couple of areas on tanks 3621 and 3606 were attended to.

Again any bare metal areas on all 3 tanks were treated to some red oxide primer.

The repaired brake rigging arm was re-fitted to the Lowfit after straightening the locating pins.

The sticker glue residue was removed from the west side of tank 1919.

Next week with most of the team away, we’ll be taking a break from reporting any activity until we’re back for the Bank Holiday bumper weekend at the end of the month.

Cheers for now, Dave

Hello everyone and welcome to another update from Quorn. It’s been an action packed weekend, so we’ll jump right on in there.

Saturday started with Charlie applying a gloss coat to the last splash guard for 3621. this was left basking in the sun while we looked at B779978 and B780282 to replace their door top frames, now that they were back in the yard. One of the machined pieces of wood was taken up and the hole positions marked ready for drilling along with the recess for the locking bar. Part of our roof edge was removed between the doors to allow the new ‘noggin’ to fit properly. The pieces of wood were then taken up to the GUV for drilling on the pillar drill by Ernie with Harry and new recruit Jamie supporting, and I machined the recess with the morticer.

After the pieces of wood were machined, each of them got a coat of primer, undercoat and gloss to help them last for as long as possible. I am hopeful that they will out live maybe even me! Nick set up a new outside workbench on the end of the Fish van, which came in useful for priming the pieces of wood.

Mark and Oliver took a look at the steps up to the tool van, making some repairs to the first and second steps. They certainly feel a lot more solid to walk on now, and should save any accidents. Oliver himself performed the grand opening.

The rest of the gang set about removing the stickers from 1919 to get it ready for paint prep. It also got another wash due to the amount of green algae that had settled on it. We’ve put that down to the rough texture of the brake dust making a perfect surface to settle on.

Dan took some time to apply primer to the bare metal work on the container, while Nick and Charlie refitted the freshly painted splash guard.

On Monday, Charlie, Nick, Jamie and I looked at fitting the four painted ‘noggins’ to the two vans. Thankfully all went on without major issues, which means these vans could run in traffic, albeit with a huge ASDA logo on each roof. We now simply await more roof paint for these vans to finalise the work.

Charlie and Jamie carried on washing 1919, concentrating on the end of the barrel and headstocks. This was however interrupted by reports of a sizable fire adjacent to the down lieby, next to the rest of the box vans. Between the station team and ourselves and a passing train the fire was got under control and the vans protected.

As I’m sure I’ve said before here, I think its time to go back to work for a rest! Next week we’re planning to start sanding some of the tanks for painting and I’m sure there will be a lot more besides that. Thanks for reading, and see you next time! Cheers, Ross

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s update from Quorn. With the south yard looking a little bit like Abbey Lane sidings with amount of Esso tank wagons around, the gang have pressed on with preparations on both 3606 and 3621.

Ernie removed the last two splash guard plates from 3621, which opened up the area around the wheels for cleaning down and hoovering. Nick set about straightening these with his most favourite tool to get them flat after the rust build up had bowed them at each end. Two of them require a weld repair due to corrosion.

Harry, Charlie and new starter Dan continued the laborious job of cleaning and de-scaling the end pockets and the chassis of the Esso tank. While they did this, Ernie and I removed the heating coil end plug from the wagon to clean out the threads and refit it.

Nick and I moved onto re-assembling the vacuum cylinder ready for re-fitting to 3606, which involved removing the nuts from the studs and re-fitting the studs into the dome.

The chassis preparation was continued on Sunday by Tom, Mark, Oliver, Harry, Charlie, Nick, Bradley and Ernie, with the weather thankfully a little drier than yesterday. It appears at some point Charlie got a little distracted by a spot on the Fish van body…

Dan, Mark and Charlie also managed to get some areas of both chassis primed or gloss coated

With the weather starting to look up, we’ll soon be moving onto surface preparation of the barrel on both 3621 and 3606, which means paint isn’t too far away. Now just the small matter of getting some more Esso plates…

The weekend of the 5th & 6th April is the railway’s Reunification Gala weekend, where we’ll have the Test Car open to visitors after a shunt around this week to allow opening up easier. If you plan on coming down, do pop in and visit us. Thanks for reading, and see you next weekend!

Hello every one and welcome to another update from Quorn. This week we are finally able to reveal what we’ve been teasing for a little while, what is actually happening to CEGB 48521. The tank train also had the wash and brush up finished, and a work continued generally on the tanks we have in at the moment. Onto the reveal then…

With thanks to our friends at the National Wagon Preservation Group, we were tipped off about a frame less tank barrel at a transport yard near Retford. The barrel arrived on Monday 9th March, and was dropped into place on the CEGB 48521 that’s just arrived from Foxfield. After a bit of careful nudging, the outlet flange was able to be bolted up to the discharge pipe of the chassis, locating the tank in the correct place. Despite being one barrel from Hurst Nelson and the chassis from Charles Roberts, the two fitted together well and await some parts to be made, and the barrel to be welded to the chassis. One of the pictures is courtesy of Jamie Swanson who kindly dropped in to assist.

Further thanks to Chris at NWPG, we now know the identity of both the chassis and the rest of the identity of the barrel. When the barrel is painted, it will continue to carry 3606 and the tank will used this identity going forward. The chassis used to carry 3797, so we shall make a small nod to its history in some way. It was found that there were no records for 3606 beyond 1975, so the barrel has been without wheels for at least 50 years!

We’ve now taken delivery of 6 hardwood door ‘noggins’ (top door frames) for the vans, which will help us finish the work on the 4 currently at Rothley. These will be stored until the vans make their way back to Quorn.

Dave and I concentrated on washing 3606 in the yard, making it a bit more respectable. We used some new chemicals which worked very well at getting the decades of built up grime off the tank. The paint has held up quite well considering it is likely to be is only coat!

While we did this, Nick, Ernie, Harry and Charlie fitted buffers to the north end of 3621 and dismantled a vacuum cylinder, getting it ready to fit to 3606.

A small shunt round in the morning moved 3606 into the dock, this was done by hand to reduce the risk of the barrel shifting at this early stage. Nick and Ernie made a start freeing the UIC screw couplings fitted to 3606.

Harry and new recruit Brad used the needle gun, hammer and chisels to descale the pockets adjacent to the buffers on 3621. We’ve not quite worked out why they’ve been designed as they are has they are quite the trap for water and other rubbish! Ernie also got stuck in on the action, removing two of the splash guards from 3621 and starting to chip away at the scale. Dan applied some primer to 3606, in one of the areas not got to before the barrel was fitted.

Oliver, Tom, Charlie, Mark and I concentrated on the west side of the tanks, running down each one with and cleaning all the grime off them. The new snowfoam from Jennychem worked very well at loosening the accumulated dirt, so it was a very worthwhile purchase!

That wraps up what has been a quite exciting week! We’ve now got a lot of cleaning down and preparation to do to get the tanks ready, but they are going to look fantastic! Join us again next weekend for another installment, thanks for reading!

Hello and welcome to our weekly update from the team at Quorn.

This week we are pleased to announce a new arrival to our fleet and we are nearing completion of the vacuum through piping on both of the TTAs.

So here is our new arrival; 35T TSV Tank wagon number 3621, built in 1958 by Hurst Nelson in Wakefield for Esso, initially registered to BR Scottish Region (registration number 808). In the 1980s it was sold to the CEGB, renumbered 48527; then subsequently entered preservation in 1990. It has been acquired from the Foxfield Railway where it had been used as a water carrier; arriving at Quorn on 14 Feb 2025.

There is some work to do on the tank to get it operational, including freeing off the seized brakes, replacing the missing Vacuum brake cylinder and the faulty buffers; and removing the non original water pump and pipework.
The aim will then be to restore it back into its original Esso livery and for it to join the other Esso tanks in the train.

Saturday and with Nick, Ross, Ernie, Harry, Charlie and myself on-site, we concentrated on finishing off making and assembling the remaining sections of vacuum pipe for TTA tank 1919.

Once assembled the north and south end sections of vacuum pipe were threaded under the wagon and clamped into place.

This allowed us to then accurately measure the centre straight section of pipe, cut, thread and fit in place with the two temporary clamps. The final joint being an in-line coupler.

Although some of the clamps are still temporary and final more substantial ones made; with the completion of the pipes we got out the vacuum test rig to see if the two wagons would hold vacuum.
Before we connected the rig compressed air from Edward was blown through the new pipework on both wagons to ensure they were clear and free from any debris.

With the vacuum rig connected to both wagons the new pipework was checked for leakage using the standard vacuum test gauges, and stood up very well.
We then decided to do a full check of the air brake system on both wagons. Air from Edward was fed via the regulator, air valves and gauges on the test rig allowing us to control brakes on both wagons. The brakes operated as they should and using Test Car 2s air test gauge and stopwatch the application and release times of the air brakes were confirmed to be within specification.

We finished the day on Saturday taking a look at the seized brakes on tank 3621 in the yard. Initial findings were that the majority of the brake rigging is not seized, just very gunked up.

Sunday saw more hands on-site with Nick, Ross, Ernie, Charlie, Mark, Tom, Dan, Oliver, James and myself at Quorn.
It was great to be able to help Ernie celebrate his 82nd Birthday, and enjoy some cake too.

Happy Birthday Ernie !

Ernie and myself continued with vacuum pipe bracket manufacturing for tank 1919, cutting strips of steel plate then heating and bending to shape. Mounting bolt holes were then drilled.

Three new brackets were completed and fitted into place. The parts for the final two brackets were also made and are ready for welding up next week.

The rest of the team concentrated on tank 3621. Whilst the wagon was in the yard and easily accessible for the Volvo, the opportunity was taken to fit the vacuum brake cylinder that we had refurbished a few weeks ago ready. A replacement outer trunnion bracket was sourced and new nuts, washers & bolts.

The wagon was then moved down the yard to our working area; the water pump, filling pipe and associated fittings & valves were all removed.

More work was also done cleaning up and freeing off the brake rigging and couplings.

Ross had to attend to a damaged sill cover from his car, making a new end piece and repairing some of the broken clips; whilst Charlie re-wired a 110v transformer for Ross to check before it was tested.

That wraps up a busy weekend for the team; our new arrival looking very much at home stabled with the TTAs.

Join us again next week, all the best, Dave