September News Part 2

Great Eastern Railway 1899 4 Wheel Brake Third 853

The springs continue to be the main source of progress. Furthering the good work described last week, three out of the four leaf springs are now fitted to the vehicle, with the fourth not far behind at all. Other mechanical work has included the positioning of the first bracket which will accommodate the handbrake column, and the completion of the continuous drawgear bar (basically a coupling which stretches right along the vehicle and joins the coupling at the other end, reducing stress on the underframe itself). This bar is now ready for fitting.

British Railways 1959 Brake Corridor Composite E21224

A test section of roof has been scraped back to bare metal to see how hard this job will be, which depends on what sort of paint has been applied by the carriage's previous owners. The first small section has come off encouragingly quickly, so we are hopeful that the rest of the roof is the same when we come to complete the rest of the job during this coming winter.

British Railways 1959 Tourist Second Open M4843

This coach has seen the greatest amount of progression this week. All of the windows which require removal are now out, including the aluminium frames, so that the corroded steel-work beneath can now be accessed.

A start has been made of stripping the old paint off these frames so that they can be refitted once repairs to the body are completed. As part of this work, two windows which had small cracks in them have been replaced.

The two corridor connections mentioned last week are now fully dismantled as far as we can before craning them off, this is again so that the steelwork behind can be accessed for its repairs.

Whilst we are doing minimal work to the interior, the six aluminium "wood effect" door panels were in a poor visual state so will be replaced with varnished wood examples in a similar manner to how we did E4641 last year. These have now been cut out and are being fitted individually to each door before varnishing.

British Railways 1960 Covered Carriage Truck E94464

The work on this vehicle has been on the seaward side welding repairs. There were approximately a dozen of these and they are nearly all completed (only one left to finish off).

The roof corners also need welding up as they had also corroded, but the rest of the roof is in good condition.

Southern Railway 1951 Parcels & Miscellaneous Van 1476

The repainting work on this van is now completed, after rapid progress on the other (seaward) side was made and the whole side painted into green gloss.

This now matches the public (landward) side, already completed. This now concludes the refurbishment work on the coach, which can now return to its duties as the Weybourne Station Model Railway.

Colman's 1908 Mustard Van 4807 & Hurst Nelson 1942 4 Wheel Tank 1982

No progress to report from Holt.

Wagon Spares

More cleaning and repainting on the wheelsets in a similar story to previous updates.