Tag: 724570

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 17^th 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

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!

Hi all, welcome to a Railways at Work weekend update. Whilst some of the team supported the event, the rest continued with work on two of the tank wagons; and at Rothley the C&W department team have progressed repairs to the Lowfit and also the Steel High.

At Rothley the repair work on the wagon end sections of Steel High B724570 was well advanced. Thanks again to Jamie, Pat, Kyle, Rob, Noah and Steve.

Also the C&W team had welded new metal into the dragbox of the Lowfit B452718, (thanks to Pat for the photos)

On Friday preparations for the Railways at Work weekend involved getting the barrels and Brute Trolleys out of the van train at Quorn.

Over the weekend Mark, Tom, Ernie and Oliver continued to progress cleaning down and applying red-oxide primer to tank 3621.

Oliver had a birthday celebration; and of course there was cake involved….

Tank 3606 also received attention with some primer and undercoat applied to underframe areas.

The Railways at work is always an enjoyable weekend; here’s a selection of our pics.

and the Railways at Work team.

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

Hello everyone, and welcome to another update from Quorn. Now that I’ve come back from the frivolities of my wedding and from staffing HydroFLEX at the Greatest Gathering, I’ll give you a run down of what has happened for us this week.

At Rothley, good progress had been made by the C&W team on both the Lowfit with its previously poorly dragbox and the shock absorbing High Goods with its rotten corrugated end being replaced for some spare good material. Additionally, the Lowfit chassis has received more black paint and the chassis for the Palshocvan body had been needle gunned and primed, getting it ready for the body to go on. Thanks to Jamie, Pat, Kyle, Rob, Noah and Steve, we’re looking forward to having these back and getting them in traffic.

The week prior, the tank train had applicable vehicles receive a bearing exam and all vehicles had their brake rigging oiled.

On to this weekend then, and after my time away its nice to see the amount of progress that has been made. Before the trains started running, Charlie (with Nick as lookout) mowed the grass between Road 1 in the South Yard and the running line.

Dave got started on the east side Shell logo, getting it chalked up and completed in the morning.

Ernie and I got the Esso plate jig out and welded the plate brackets back on to 3621. We started on the west side, and the jig made the work really easy, though the height from the ground did add a complication. I modified the jig to allow a bit of access to the bottom ring from the top which made the east side lugs even easier. the west have been fulled welded, and then received a dose of wire brushing by Nick and painted with a coat of primer by James. I ran out of 3.2mm electrodes before finishing the west side, but we can catch that at a later date.

Dave got the west side Shell logo on 1919 and touch up the green on the BP logo. This is among the last jobs on this tank, though we will be varnishing each of the logos on this tank. That leaves us to complete our paperwork before handing it over to Jamie for its acceptance FTR. I measured the flange height and thicknesses, which were showing a nearly brand new P5 profile. Dave applied a wheel 1 arrow to the tank to assist us in future inspections.

3621 had its lid securing turnbuckles freed off and oiled courtesy of Charlie and Ernie, plus an extra pipe stub in the filler neck was removed and blanked and Nick got the scaffolding down to 3606 to scrape the the tar residue from around the filler neck and around the top of the barrel. This needs a bit more scraping and a bit of degreaser before we can paint it. I went round 3606 with the big ratchet to make sure that all the side support bolts were tight. I’ll be adding a blob of weld to each exterior bolt to ensure that they don’t come undone.

Ernie used an angle grinder to clean up the support remnants on 3606. Nick, Charlie and James took the washer tin over to 3854 to put new washers in the brake system where they were missing.

Lastly, Charlie and James gave the BEVs a clean and a charge before Railway at Work next weekend. Do come down to the railway next weekend to experience the sights, sounds and atmosphere of a by-gone era, showing how goods and passengers were moved around the network. We’ll be there helping to tell the story. Join us then!