April News Part 2

 It was great to see trains running again this week, reminding us that the carrying of passengers in our vehicles is what our department is all about!

London North Eastern Railway 1950 Brake Corridor Third E1866 (GOLD)

Work on the interior wiring continues, with further boxing in of the forest of wires inside the guards compartment, which is now almost completed.

With such progress on the interior, along with a further relaxing of volunteer restrictions allowing us to bring back some more individuals who are waiting in the wings to return, the next larger task on E1866 has been started: preparation work and repairs to the exterior. This had previously been limited with the vehicle being accommodated outside, but with M&GN 129 now completed and E1866 permanently indoors, a proper start on the exterior can be made. An initial rub down (sand) of the existing paintwork along the bodysides has been undertaken, initially along the seaward side, revealing further work required.

One of the main areas of concern was the corrosion and lifting of the four angle strips which screw onto the four corners of the coach. Not an ideal design, but a feature of the Thompson exterior. These strips had presumably not been on for very long, the coach having had much restoration work under its previous ownership at Llangollen, so somewhat surprisingly they require doing again. The two at the saloon (Holt) end have so far been removed.

British Railways 1959 Brake Corridor Composite E21224 (GOLD)

This vehicle continues to move towards interior completion, with more glass cleaning work being undertaken to remove several years worth of workshop activity. The luggage van area has now become the first section to be declared ready for service, with all of the finishing touches added. The final task was the painting of the floor, after which we locked the doors to allow a prolonged period of people not stepping on it and give the paint chance to harden.

Moving down the vehicle, the guards area has seen a large amount of "bitty" work, with many items of mainly emergency equipment being prepared for it. We have recently withdrawn brake coach GE21103 from service, so the emergency equipment from this vehicle has been used for E21224. Additionally, previously mainline registered brake M81033, the ticket for which has now lapsed, has given up its "Network Rail only" equipment to E21224, which is a direct replacement for it (in terms of mainline operation). In combination, this gives us 90% of the equipment needed to fully furnish E21224. A lot of the items were not looking their best, so they have cleaned up and are currently in the process of being repainted.

A repair has also been undertaken to the air pipework that feeds the air brake gauge in the guards van which completes this area. The repaired pipes have now been painted black, and the emergency air brake valve painted red.

For the first time, we wish to have a Mark 1 service set brake with all of the emergency equipment properly stowed on clips and brackets. Before now, various items had been added in over the years and were just placed in various corners of the guards compartment with no official home. We have given all the items of equipment some thought and have also re-sited a few other items so that hopefully the full kit can be kept in a much more neat fashion. This has required many home-made brackets and straps and these have also joined the pile of items to be painted before fitting.

Inside the passenger areas, all of the transfers and signage has been fitted warning passengers about the alarm chains etc and showing the first class and non-smoking compartments. In addition, missing supports for some of the seats have been made from scratch as the originals had somehow got lost during the restoration.

We are now getting to a stage where we won't be able to progress the interior much further until the lino contractors have been in and laid the flooring, which will happen next month.

British Railways 1957 Mark 1 Tourist Second Open E4641 (BRONZE)

With Covid restrictions beginning to ease the time has now come to move on from having one NNR funded vehicle in for overhaul work increased to two, which will be further expanded again in due course back up to our original status of having three projects. E4641 has been waiting for a paintwork freshen up for almost two years now, having been unfortunately damaged by cleaning products. The opportunity is being taken to go one step further than patch painting the damaged areas, and apply a "top up" coat to the rest of the coach, hopefully restoring it to its 2016 shine which is when it had its Gold standard major overhaul. Whilst in it will receive any interior repairs required: however given its relatively recent overhaul and the fact it is our best TSO vehicle, we are not expecting to find much to have to improve.

It has yet to enter the shed, however the sunny weather has allowed the lower half of the bodysides (the red portion of the Crimson/Cream livery) to be lightly rubbed down in readiness for one coat of gloss. Doing this will mean the coach can go immediately into the staging area and no bending down was required for the first rubbing down!

It is expected for this coach to feature more in forthcoming updates.

British Railways (SR Design) 1948 25 Ton Brakevan 55167

Work continues on the wagons down at Holt (more of which below!) - I was reminded recently by one of the team down there that the state of some of the wagons is looking quite sad, so whilst they don't earn the railway any money, it is essential if they are not going to be lost that the volunteer teams are able to do their work to keep the wagons looking smart.

The SR brakevan continues to progress at a pace, with all of the remaining exterior paintwork, noticeably that on the ceiling of the verandahs, now heat-gunned off and sanded as required.

Further rotten wood from the verandah ends is now all removed with a cutting list being formed in order to replace all of the bits that have been removed! All the rust has been removed from metalwork and coated with rust inhibitor.

Hopefully next week should see the start of painting the cleaned up areas along with the roof repairs.

British Railways 1958 3 Ton AF Container AF65970B

The eye catching "Bird's Eye" container in the goods set never had its full sign-writing completed when it was launched into traffic back in March 2015. Whilst it had the all important bird on the side, there were various instructions underneath which there wasn't time to complete. The quiet nature of the closed railway finally allowed these missing items to be added. The container is rather green at present due to the effects of the weather, but with the relevant areas washed off the new lettering was able to be added. 

Maintenance

The final two vehicles from the main A set, Mark 1 BSK W35148 & Suburban CL E43041, were tripped back to Sheringham very soon after the last update, and took their place in the "A set" for the restarting of services on April 12th.

The next pair of vehicles to Weybourne are what will be the two spare vehicles for "B set" and "A set" for the main season. One was E4641 (already covered above) and the other was Corridor Second W25189, which is becoming a "boomerang coach" as it seems to be repeatedly coming back to Weybourne for issues to be resolved. W25189 was back this time for three or four reasons.

At one end the buckeye coupling was found to be worn, and this has now been changed for a good example removed off E4641 (which incidentally is having its good buckeyes removed so that others suitable for mainline running can be fitted instead).

At the same (Sheringham) end of the coach, the floor in the vestibule was found to be holed with some areas of lino either collapsed in the corner or bulging upwards. This is a symptom of historical water ingress from rotten steelwork which we repaired in 2019, however at the time we didn't do any work to the wooden floor or lino. The floor is currently receiving targeted repairs and we are trying to disturb as little as possible, rather like keyhole surgery!

At the opposite (Holt) end of the coach, the drawhook was also worn and has been dismantled and swapped out for one of our last good ones in stores.

Work remaining on W25189 involves examination of a possible wheel flat and the completion of the flooring repairs, after which it will be returned to Sheringham and will give up its place in the shed for E4641.

Elsewhere on the railway the Quad set & LNER Pigeon van were extracted out of Bridge Road sheds for a day fro door lock exams and lubrication underneath, to ready them for occasional use during the 2021 season. It has been decided the Quad set cannot do another intensive season similar to 2020 but will work on around a dozen days to allow other sets to be dropped out for a day or two during the high summer for exams to be done. The work went well with just one Quad door lock causing trouble and having to be removed for overhaul in the workshop.