The latest major restoration project to reach its fruition is British Railways 12 ton box van B784254. This humble vehicle was out-shopped from the shed last week and is the first "Gold overhaul" to be concluded since Covid-19 joined us all.
Box vans are almost as old as the railways themselves, which were of course originally designed to carry freight rather than passengers. Whilst early freight stock was uncovered, it was not long before covered boxes with no windows and a simple set of opening doors were introduced. These grew slightly in size and payload as the railways developed, however the general concept of a 4-wheeled box van for goods has always remained one of the least changed items of railway rolling stock. It would be the 1980's, well over 100 years since the 4-wheel box van was introduced, before the basic design fell out of favour, superseded by longer bogied versions capable of greater loads.
B784254 was one of the later 4-wheel box vans when built in 1962 at British Railways' Wolverton Works. It followed the standard (for that time) pattern and will be familiar to most enthusiasts. Thousands of 12 ton box vans were built with many of them having detail differences depending on their era and the proposed goods to be carried. B784254 is known as a "van wide" because it has larger than standard sliding doors, useful for the mechanical loading of palletised goods, which was growing significantly by the early 1960's, modernisation not favouring the labour intensive loading of loose goods by hand. However despite the more modern style of doors and the latest design of "oleo" pneumatic buffers, B784254 was nevertheless still quite an outdated design. The body was made from predominantly from wood, the axleboxes were still of the plain bearing/oil type and the brakes were vacuum only. By 1962 all of these features were fast being replaced with steel bodies, roller bearings and air braking respectively.
B784254 therefore led a successful life but would inevitably be replaced by more modern vehicles. It was such a generic and unremarkable wagon that its exact history is not known: it is assumed it traveled the UK carrying whatever goods were required of it, no doubt spending long periods stood in sidings along the way.
B784254's previous preservation history is also not that well documented. We are able to pick up the story when the vehicle was privately owned by Chris Broadhurst (incidentally one of the leading lights of the group responsible for preserving NNR based Class 37 D6732) who located B784254 at the Mid Norfolk Railway where it held spare parts for a Class 20 locomotive he was involved in, D8069. Sadly Chris passed away far too soon and after some years B784254 was purchased by Paul Mobbs, owner of the Class 03 locomotives at the NNR. A large reason of purchasing B784254 for Paul was to restore the van and return it to service in East Anglia in Chris' memory.
In 2018 Paul gained agreement to move B784254 to the NNR on the understanding it was restored in a suitable condition to add to the demonstration freight set, which has been without a BR 12 ton box van for many years. With the help of a few others including family members(!) the van was quite quickly transformed with a brand new roof replacing the collapsed in original to make the vehicle watertight again. Various woodwork and steelwork repairs were also done to the body to bring it back up to an operational standard. Despite the van's poor condition much of the floor and body were in remarkably good condition. The underframe was also contract grit-blasted and repainted but needed little other work, again to the generally good condition of the mechanics below.
Sadly at this point, with the van 90% completed, Paul's own health took a turn for the worse at around the same time the Covid-19 pandemic struck the UK. B784254 was temporarily stored but it was clear to onlookers that it was so close to completion it would be tragic to leave the van at that stage.
In 2021, with the NNR starting to reawaken, but full-blown coach overhauls still delayed until times became more stable, a predominantly volunteer led effort was offered to Paul to see the van pushed through its last 10% to completion, as documented in recent months on this Blog. Much of the hard work had been done in the 2018/19 period, with final coats of paint and assembly of parts Paul had prepared for fitting being the order of the day. The van was also varnished as it had faded quite badly over the 2 years since it had been initially done. The final jobs in the last week was the fitting of a securing chain for the door which was missing, filling the new oiler pads inside the axleboxes with fresh oil, and the completion of official brake tests and a fitness to run exam.
B784254 has now exited the shed and is in the yard awaiting collection by the Operations Department. All being well, the first time the van can be seen "in anger" will be during this month's Mixed Traction Gala where B784254 is joining Class 31 D5631 in debuting after overhaul. We hope to see you there!
London North Eastern Railway 1950 Brake Corridor Third E1866 (GOLD)
Elsewhere in the workshop, work has been progressing nicely on the Thompson coach, with the ends receiving gloss black paint.
British Railways 1959 Brake Corridor Composite E21224 (GOLD)
The magic moment came when the lino contractors declared their work completed, allowing us to return to the vehicle with vigor!
The main tasks this week have been to install many of the heavier items into the interior in order to provide the "laden weight" to set the running ride height of the body using the bogies' adjustment. One of the heaviest items are the seating so much of this has been lifted into the coach and refitted.
All of the second class seating is now in with the first class in progress, the latter causing some extra grief due to the large armrests as the sides of the compartments not fitting correctly. Before the seat bases were fitted, the black mesh heater grills were first carefully placed and screwed down onto the new flooring.
Other heavy items have included all of the interior sliding doors, restored and varnished (or painted) some time ago. These have now all been hung on their runners throughout the coach and are now just awaiting the "furniture" such as the handles etc adding to finish them off. In just a few short days so much has been returned to the vehicle.
Inside the guards compartment, equipment which lives on the floor is being refitted. The sawdust bin is now back in place, as is the guard's desk, which was quite a squeeze due to the re-siting of the air brake pipes through the floor in a non-original configuration. Much time consuming adaptation of pipe brackets etc was required to achieve the snug fit...
The seat for the guard has also been reassembled and prepared, but hasn't quite been fitted yet as the paint on it was still drying. Lastly, a start has been made on fitting the silver electric heater covers along the corridor. The two vacuum cylinders are currently in the process of being prepared for reactivation so we can get the bogies and brakes back together for testing.
The high level of progress is set to continue over the coming weeks, as we should now have no delays in getting E21224 prepared for its own launch into traffic this summer.
British Railways 1960 Brush Type 2 D5631
Still no photographs allowed due to the press embargo, but the repainting continues well. The freshly glossed bodysides have had the first of two white bands applied, just below the windows. Once these were completed, several more coats of yellow were applied to the cab end warning panels, which completed the main painting work. This was followed by the sign-writing of the numbers on each of the four cab corners, and the application of the "British Railways" varnish-fix transfers to the bodysides.
With the upper section complete, a coat of varnish was then applied to seal it all in, after which the loco was moved out of the staging area to allow the same process to be repeated for the lower sections (the loco has "skirts" which drop down around the bufferbeams). So far a final coat of green gloss has been applied to these lower sections and it is now ready for the second,lower, white line to be applied.
On the inside of the loco, all of the white bars which sit behind the windows have all been repainted and now refitted into place. The engine room window glass has also had a quick clean as the white bars were showing them up!
British Railways (SR Design) 1948 25 Ton Brakevan 55167 (SILVER)
The sanding and filling of the bodysides has gone well, the team at Holt should be in a position to apply primer to the van next week. The whole areas has been dusted and hoovered ready for painting.
Some priming was able to be done but supplies require replenishing I'm informed!
The repair timber has reached its top coat stage other than several long lengths which, unfortunately, would not fit together i.e. the tongue would not fit the groove. A start has been made on cutting the Mortise and Tenon for both veranda's, which has proven to be quite a long job.
After a great deal of head scratching it was decided increase the size of the groove, this was done with great success and all now fits perfectly!
Maintenance
The sets at Sheringham, continue to be maintained and preparations and examinations for the forthcoming Mixed Traction Gala are in full swing. The Quad-Art set was in service for a few days this week to allow the main set (predominantly suburban vehicles) to have a mid season A exam carried out.
Other maintenance tasks have been the addition of some lock-able tool lockers to two of the goods brake vans, and the creation of some electrical linking-leads in readiness for a mass renewal of several banks of batteries to various vehicles in the fleet, which we have recently purchased batteries for.
