Hello and welcome to this week’s update. The Test Car has a new home and is prepared for the April event openings. The re-formed Mixed Goods returns to Quorn and we attend to a few repairs and maintenance items in readiness for the forthcoming Goods Experience Days.
During the week the operations team carried out a large number of shunt movements that included extracting the Creosote tank and returning the tank train to Swithland along with a number of other wagons. The Creosote tank, being an engineers wagon, was transferred into the mixed goods formation along with the two Catfish and a vacuum braked Dogfish.
Test Car 2 was also turned and re-positioned with the steel high ADE280364 at the buffer stop end of Road No.1. This will make the coach much more visible & accessible to visitors, and also make it much easier for us to manage visitor access when we open the coach on event days.
The four box vans that still need some work to finish off the roof repairs were positioned in the yard and the mixed goods arrived into Quorn on Saturday morning.
We wasted no time attending to the damaged vacuum brake pipes at both ends of the Dogfish DB993412, replacing the missing vacuum release chord and oiling up the brake rigging
The power was connected up to the Test Car and we made a start on tidying and cleaning inside the coach. The deceleration meter mounting pad was also repaired and re-fitted to the steel high wagon.
The vacuum brake test rig was transported down the yard and a brake test was carried out on the Dogfish in the Mixed Goods. Loose axleboxes on Mineral B550356 were also attended to and new split pins fitted.
A cracked brake block on Catfish DB983393 was replaced. The replacement was swapped from DB983166 that’s currently handbrake only; this will be replaced in due course.
Work continued on the chassis of tank 3606, concentrating on the end pocket areas at the south end, with more rust removal using hammer & chisel and the air needle gun. This was followed up with some carefully applied red-oxide primer.
On Sunday it was great to see the re-formed Mixed Goods set in operation as part of the preparations and staff training for the forthcoming Goods Experience Days.
More information about these forthcoming Goods Experience Days can be found on the GCRs website here: – Goods Experience Days
There are also quite a few opportunities to visit the Quorn Wagon & Wagon team during April when we have Test Car 2 open to visitors at the following events:-
– Reunification Open Weekend – 5/6 April 2025
– Road Rail Steam – 19-21 April 2025
– Spring Diesel Gala – 25-27 April 2025
Find us at the south end of the station yard at Quorn, just past the turntable.
Pop in and see us for a guided tour of this unique piece of railway history, and find our how & why British Rail tested goods wagons. Keep and eye out for our Donations Lamp outside the Test Car; your support is very much appreciated.
For more info about these events, and more, please see the GCRs website – https://www.gcrailway.co.uk/whats-on/
Join us next week to see what we get up to during the Reunification Open Weekend; all the best, Dave
