Last blog before Christmas

Thursday at LMS

Another useful day at Locomotive Maintenance Services, where our own 76077 is having its frames repaired. 

While LMS engineers are doing the specialised work, GWSR volunteers are welcome to assist with the more mundane tasks, such as cleaning, painting and rubbing down. This will save the project money and help the donations go further.

 

 

Here's Andy rubbing down - isn't that spot where the worksplates go?

Only just visible is Ian at the back, with a much larger patch to do.

Although the driving wheels were shotblasted at Toddington those pockets for the counterweights are not yet clean, and it was our job to empty them out and tidy up the rest of the wheels for a topcoat of black.

This is one of the drivers. Four pockets are filled with lead here, and the two outer ones are nominally empty and particularly deep. At the bottom - ash, mud, oil, rust.....

This picture gives you an idea of the depth of a driving wheel pocket, and the damp at the bottom. You can't really get in with the needle gun. Nor even with a hand clutching a screwdriver. A fist was too big, you needed to put your hand through that gap at the top, then push down the screwdriver behind it, and then scrape around the bottom to loosen what was there (see above....)

This was the catch - large flakes of rust, and a damp pudding of detritus.

We had a debate about how to protect the pocket, after cleaning as much as possible. Primer, followed by WaxOyl, is probably the best solution.

We hope to resume volunteering on 76077 after the Christmas break. Once the wheels are clean, LMS intend to re-wheel the chassis in January.

Tuesday around the loco shed

It's a normal (Santa) running day, so lots of steam and atmosphere about.

 

 

 

Here's Dinmore Manor just reversing off the shed.

 

 

From behind a large cloud of steam a Great Western steam locomotive slowly emerges...

 But it's not Dinmore Manor, it's...

... Foremarke Hall. Taken a bit out of sequence, as this one was actually the first off shed. There are two locomotives running, providing 4 trains of happy Santa visitors.

Once the loco has done a run to Winchcombe and back everything has warmed up a bit, and there is less steam. This apparently mighty leap forward by Foremarke Hall is actually just a short hop from the token exchange with the box, and the end of the platform. If you stand in the right place, you get this shot of the loco accelerating (a bit).

Indoors there was, sadly, no fabricating today, but Neal was making a replacement pipe to take the compressed air from the loco shed to the machine shop (goods shed) across the unloading road, soon to be concreted in.

Here we see him with an amazing pipe cutting machine, one of the many wonderful pieces of equipment you can get when factories close down or replace their machine park.

Having cut the new galvanised pipe to length, Neal gave it a new thread, which he can be seen lubricating here.

 

The galvanised pipe was then wrapped in sticky Denso tape, which will give it an extra layer of protection against the damp it is likely to encounter below ground.

We also laid a new conduit for it, the brown plastic pipe here. Neal explained that when he originally laid the connection between the shed and the machine shop it was only a 'temporary' connection as the loco shed had no floor. Well, you know how long 'temporary' is. About 20 years in fact.

Outside, the Santa trains ran back and forth, and always drew an audience from the loco people whenever they set off with lots of hissing and happy, waving children in the misted up windows.

Photo thanks to Mike (an elf)

At Winchcombe the elves report an excellent season (apart from the fact that COVID has obliged us to run at half capacity) and we are receiving lots of favourable comments back from our customers. It's good to have something positive to report for the railway, and that a bit of money is coming in.

We had asked Santa on our Christmas list for locally named 4920 Dumbleton Hall to come to Toddington, but he explained sadly that while we have the experience, we didn't have the money to buy, and then restore such an expensive toy. So it's gone somewhere else. Oh well, we'll go for chocolates then.

Derek Palmer's 1963 slides.

Here is another treat from Derek's treasure trove of previously unseen slides. They're something for you to enjoy over the Christmas holidays, so don't look at them all at once!

6980 Llanrumney Hall leaving High Wycombe with a down train on 09 April 1963.

6980 was a modified Hall that entered traffic in 1947, and was withdrawn in 1965 after 18 years. It was scrapped by Cashmore's of Great Bridge. At the time of the picture the loco was shedded at Oxley and finished its service life at Banbury shed.

Llanrumney hall the building is located in the Cardiff suburbs and has Elizabethan origins, dating back to 1450. The building fell into disrepair in the 1980s but was refurbished by a local businessman in 2019, and is Grade 2* listed.

Replacing of the railway bridge over the B480 at Cowley to widen the road on 13 May 1963. 

Derek explains:

This is near the one time Morris Cowley Station, so named because of its proximity to the then BMC, formerly Morris, car works, latterly BMW. The station, on the line from Oxford to Princes Risborough, closed to passengers in January 1963 and the station sign had the ultimate humiliation of being used as a barrier to protect construction personnel. (See under the bridge!) 

The bridge is also next to the then Pressed Steel Company factory that made car bodies for a significant number of British car manufactures in its day. The person in the foreground of the picture is a Pressed Steel Company employee in charge of one of the factory gates. I worked at Pressed Steel (Fisher) for three years from 1965. At that time the production ranged from CKD (completely knocked down) Super Minx kit of parts oiled and crated up and sent abroad for assembly, to fully painted and trimmed MGB GTs. Also represented were Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Austin/Morris, and even Ford, where the Capri body was built (that curved bit of chrome round the rear side windows was always causing trouble). With such varied production, designing systems to fit the environment was something that was a feature of our work. Something that has for ever stuck in my mind from that time and has served me well throughout my career is what the boss would say when we showed him a proposal for a system. He would say “What about the YST”. That was his way of testing to see if we had covered every possible eventuality, however rare. 'YST' stood for Yellow Singapore Taxi, yellow because very few cars were painted yellow, Singapore because the body would have badge holes for a little used unique model name, and taxi because very few cars had bench seats. It was a fascinating time and I lament the fact that the country's manufacturing base is a now a fraction of what it was then.

 A Paddington to Worcester train passing Wolvercote on 13 May 1963. 

Unfortunately the number of the locomotive is not recorded, but it looks like a Hall. Steam has just been shut off, as a result the safety valve is feathering and the fireman has put the jack on to counteract the rise in pressure. It's a very homogenous maroon rake too.

 

 

Two views taken on 16 May 1963 of the trackbed of the Watlington branch at the site of the former bridge at Lewknor. The first looking north-east, and the second looking south-west.

Lewknor Bridge was a halt just before the terminus at Watlington. The line was built in 1872; a later proposal to extend it to meet the Wallingford branch was not proceeded with, as the branch was already loss making. Passenger services ceased in 1957, with a short stub to the Chinnor cement works remaining in place, and that became the nucleus of the Chinnor and Princes Risborough railway. The section from Chinnor to Watlington closed completely on 30.12.1960, so when Derek took the pictures the line had been closed for over two years already.

Then the end of the line at Watlington with what is left of the station on 16 May 1963. The Watlington branch was featured on an Argo Transacord 10in LP in the late 1950s and Derek still has a copy. Along with general recordings of trains on the line it includes recordings made on the the last day of passenger services on 29 June 1957.

According to Wikipedia remains of the station buildings continue to exist, heavily overgrown, on private land.

Flying Scotsman heading a southbound excursion from the Banbury direction passing Wolvercote Junction on 18 May 1963. 

 

Then on the same day travelling north with the returning excursion, Flying Scotsman is seen passing under the 'Red Bridge' just south of Hinksey.

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This will be the last Heritage Herald before Christmas, so this blog, and the crew of 76077, wish you all a:

(With thanks to the Toddington Standard people)

PS 76077 is on the right - the smoke is make believe, as we haven't got enough money for all of the restoration yet.

To support 76077, click here