Tag: 87674

To begin, it gives us great pleasure to announce we have been nominated for not one but two Heritage Railway Association awards.  Test Car 2 has been shortlisted for the 2020 Morgan Award for Preservation and our website for the 2020 Communications Award.

We wish our fellow shortlisted groups luck and look forward to seeing those who attend the Dinner in February.

On to Saturday and we begin with an hour or so defrosting the Test Car and locks to gain access to the GUV and tool van. Once we had gained access the main focus turned to the van train cylinder overhauls.  Starting at the south end Nick, Matt, James and Will began on the first vehicles requiring work, these are E87674, B786348, and B763305. Each had the ancillary attachments, Release Valve piston rod and all split pins removed.

B786348 was rather stubborn so required a little of the hot spanner action.

With all the extras removed the Cylinders were dropped from B763305 and B786348

Nick, Dave, Jake and I continued the work started by the team on Saturday. We stripped down the 2 cylinders,  both different from each other. One cylinder is a ‘C-type’ and the other is the more regular ‘E-Type’. Each of them is no issue, but the ‘C-Type’ has a ball valve in the release valve and the ‘E-Type’ has the ball valve in the piston.

By 11 O’Clock using the railway’s loading shovel,  one cylinder was back under its van (B763305) and the other ready to be re-assembled. Once tea (and obligatory biscuits) had been consumed, the hung the other cylinder under the other van (B786348) again using the loading shovel, which has got quite good and imitating a Challenger 2 tank. Must get that silencer replaced…

With the two cylinders hung and reconnected, I set out to start the vacuum test set to begin testing the two completed vans. Unfortunately, I was defeated. Lister-Petter AC1s do not like the cold as it turns out. Options are being looked at to upgrade the test set to something easier to start, in all weathers.

With the test set not starting, we removed the vacuum cylinder from the fish van to overhaul that. This was completed in the falling light. Sadly we now don’t have a way to test the newly overhauled vans, so can’t prove the repairs.

Matt spent the day a touring signwriter, signwriting a Vanwide at Peak Rail in the Heritage Shunter’s Trust shed.

Next week, more overhauls are planned. That is of course unless the weather has other ideas!

Having returned from 1918 I have had to catch up this week,  the advantage of being on earlies.  So out with my templates and brushes, the signwriting has been applied as well as the chalkboard paint to E87674.

The black oval under the tare I have noticed during my research on a number of vehicles. We believe this denoted an alteration of the tare weight possible due to changing of wheel bearing type although we are speculating we do quite like this unusual livery detail so decided to add it.

Speaking of livery details I shall mention the little symbol under the tare,  this is an LMS practice that was adopted by BR.  There was a repeating sequence of 12 Symbols which represent the year the vehicle was painted, with thanks to Brian Hallett of RVP for the full details, we have continued the sequence with 2017 represented by a right-handed right angle triangle, 2018 is a filled in London Transport roundel.

So on to the next project…………………

This weekend we have continued working on the Fish Van. We are also a man down this weekend, as Matt has become a member of the Royal Flying Corps for a photo charter. This hasn’t impeded progress, however, there are fewer photos. The below picture shows how we left the vehicle at the end of last weekend.

Saturday started off with us sanding the south two panels in the picture above, along with the south end. Following this, the undercoat was cracked out to get the van finished off in undercoat. I cleaned the gun out and started thinning the gloss down in order to start spraying the East side and North end, whilst the new undercoat was drying.

As with last weekend, this also included the headstocks. This is just after the headstock had been painted into gloss. The details such as the drawhook, vacuum swan neck and buffer heads were painted later one once the Ice Blue paint had hardened off.

As the paint is only for the fish van, we tried to put as many coats of paint to use the paint up. By the end of Saturday, the Eastside had 2 coats of gloss and both ends and headstocks had been painted. To finish the day we scraped the underframe on the West side as it is accessible. Before we started painting on Sunday morning, we blew down the debris following scraping the underframe, then painted the 2nd coat of gloss on the Westside.  We shuffled the vans down so we could get to the East Side to scrape and paint it.

Once the underframe was painted the bufferheads and swan necks got painted, along with the lamp brackets and handbrake lever ends.

As the wheelsets are close to the end of the van, we painted up the brake cross shafts in black and refitted the couplings.

Next steps for this vehicle are the signwriting, unfortunately, no blue spot as the vehicle doesn’t have roller bearing wheelset. This will then be ready for traffic.

 

Following on from Matt’s report last week, B850498 has now been completed. The roof has been touched up following last Sunday’s rain. Here are 2 photos of it in “ex-works” condition. This vehicle has now been put into the van train, thus having its debut at Good Galore! (not bad for a grounded body!)

On to this weekend, which saw us preparing the Fish van for its new colour scheme, whilst the Spring Diesel Gala was taking place. The aluminium body sides and ironwork was sanded, scraped and wire brushed in order to remove old flaky paint and to return the surface of the aluminium to a stable state, suitable for painting over. Areas where the ironwork was pitted was treated with red oxide primer. Some minor repairs to the bottom door runners were also enacted. These had dropped below the bottom of the door so weren’t supporting the door, making them hard to open.

The results of the sanding can be seen in the below pictures, the leftmost picture showing the various items that have been sign written onto the panel, not limited to; BR double arrows from its time in BR blue as an SPV, a Blue Spot from its time as an Insul-Fish and yellow from its time attached to a ballast cleaner as the tool van.

Today, with the weather being changeable, we opted to start painting the van into its undercoat. It was nice to spray something other than Bauxite or Bauxite undercoat!

The eagle-eyed among you with notice that we have painted the headstocks and buffers in the body colour. this is an unusual, yet prototypical detail that is rarely seen in the preservation of these vehicles. Unfortunately, the rain started so the paint had to go away. Next weekend, it is hoped we can finish painting the west side and the south end.
In other news:

The Swithland Wagon Group have finished their restoration of our tank wagon, A6581. Tommy Lees, Keith Lloyd and David Wood have done a fantastic job with this wagon, and it looks great on the front road at Swithland Sidings. I for one am looking forward to seeing it and A6071 in the trains at Good Galore!

Lastly, we took delivery and put into store a rather exciting item! Hopefully, more shall be announced in the fullness of time.

Another wet weekend but this has not deterred us.  In all honesty, I started lettering Thursday to take advantage of the good mid-week weather.  Friday saw the west side completed with the east side compete on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday morning was dedicated to the shock stripes.  Measuring 4″ wide and 45″ in height from the bottom of the van body.  These were measured, masked and duly painted.

As seen above whilst I was adding the painted details Nick spent the day scraping hovering and painting the unseen areas of the chassis under the vehicle.  The last thing carried out Saturday was to add the Non-Common User plates painted over Christmas.

Sunday was quite a poor day weather wise but did allow us to paint the roof.

There are however a few remedial actions to be carried out on the roof because of the rain but this will be done in the coming week.  Thus we see the end to our Winter project 2018.  From Grounded Body in December 2017 to Diagram 1/207 Shockvan in April 2018.

We are not finished however as we now move over to Diagram 801 Number E87674 our insulated fish van.