No volunteering now for a week, three weeks to go. All is well, thanks to a generous offer from a blog reader to share his 1960s photographs - of which more below - a nice warm log burner and a case of wine.
No volunteering then, except for essential maintenance. This then excluded work on the Broadway canopy, the Usk hut and platform and - the PWay. The latter was rather surprising.
No work then, except a little behind the scenes. The foundry we were using for cast iron heritage items has rather sadly closed its doors, and we are currently talking to a new one. We have an internal requirement for fence posts for P2 at Broadway to get a relationship going, but it would be useful to know if there are any other people interested in GWR gate posts, platform lamp posts, or the GWR style Beware of Trains sign - see illustrations below. There are many replica Beware of Trains signs on the market, mostly Midland, but none as far as we know in the correct GWR style.
We don't have any idea of costs yet, so just an expression of interest would be useful.
You can send this to breva2011 (at) hotmail.co.uk.
Progress with Standard 76077
If you become a shareholder you get a nice magazine, and the latest one has just come out, with news of progress.
As you may know the frames are currently being worked on at LMS in Loughborough, and they have just completed the reassembly of the pony truck. Although the loco is not that old a number of largish parts have had to be made for it, including a new pony truck pivot stretcher and a new rear dragbox, to replace a rather corroded original. This area always gets the worst of the water and sulphur from the cab above, as we have seen with 2874 and indeed on 4253. A new tender is also part of the plans, and a few bits for that have already been sourced.
Being the last of the four 76XXX at Barry our locomotive was pretty much stripped when it arrived at Toddington. A lot of parts were acquired by the initial owner (who is still in today's rejuvenated owner group) and the company has now launched a drive to acquire those parts that he hadn't yet managed to source. This is by a system of sponsorship of individual parts. Looking at the website with the list, the initiative is working quite well except for one vital part: the reversing gearbox. There are none out in the market, we're just going to have to build a new one. This is perfectly possible, we have the drawings and patterns exist for several of the castings. But there is a cost nonetheless £10.500.
The scheme for the gearbox is to split the cost into 75 manageable parts of £140.
If you want to help, this is the application form link:
https://standard76077.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Sponsor-application-form-v2.pdf
The full list of bits that are/were available for sponsoring is here:
https://standard76077.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FULL-Phase-1-list-101120.pdf
Can we bump up the number of shares to higher than 14?
Western Region Steam
You may recall the lovely colour pictures of Buckingham and Verney Junction in the last blog. These were taken by enthusiast Derek Palmer, who grew up at Oxford and took many pictures in the region there in the 1960s. Derek offered them for use on the blog, and revealed that there were in fact many more. Intrigued by the quality of the Buckingham and Verney Junction pictures, we asked if we could see the others, edit them in Photoshop to remove blemishes and adjust the colour deterioration over time. After showing them on the blog, we could then post them in a special album on the Flickr site.
Deal done!
Here are the first ones. We are going to kick off with some seasonal snowy ones, taken in that remarkably cold winter of 1963. All four were taken on January 5th.
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| 4914 Cranmore Hall on a southbound freight at Kennington Junction |
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| A Castle (7009 Athelney Castle ? ) on a northbound Paddington to Worcester train. |
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Prairie tank 6111 on a train from Princes Risborough, with the token being handed to the signalman. |
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| 6969 Wraysbury Hall on a southbound freight. |
Derek says:
These were all taken at Kennington Junction south of Oxford where the line to Princes Risborough branches off the main line to Didcot. The date is 5 January 1963, the year that we had that very cold winter. So cold that the Thames froze over in Oxford. I lived in Oxford and was a student at the time so it was in the holidays. I rode my bike to Kennington. Oxford was renowned for the number of cyclists, and not only the students. There were two car factories at Cowley employing 10,000 people each. The day shifts were arranged to finish fifteen minutes apart. For half an hour there would be a constant torrent of cyclists up to five abreast pouring down the hill from Cowley towards Oxford, so woe betide anyone who was trying to go in the opposite direction.
As for the pictures these were on the first film of colour slides that I took with my new camera, an Agfa Super Silette. I think it cost me £30 and was bought perhaps with Christmas present money. I should have bought a light meter too. I've still got the camera but haven't used it for ages since the shutter sticks. It's a pity that I left it for forty years before I scanned these and unfortunately the quality has deteriorated.
Aren't they fantastic! We believe them to be unpublished too.
Don't forget though that the copyright remains with Derek Palmer, so if you want to use a picture get in touch first (email address above).
Lockdown Quiz time
Snuggled down in your armchair with a mug of tea, a biscuit and a pencil? Then here is the next lockdown quiz.
It's a simple one, kindly provided by PWayer Robert and drafted in a simple way so that it's not too much of a challenge after a heavy Christmas dinner with your mates.
It's called: INITIALLY, 20 QUESTIONS (we suspect a joke here)
What is the name of the following railways?
1. LNWR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
2. LB&SCR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
3. GNR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
4. WHR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
5. GER ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
6. ELR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
7. M&CR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
8. LSWR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
9. OW&WR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
10. L&YR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
11. GCR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
12. NYMR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
13. HR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
14. LT&SR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
15. SVR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
16. RH&DR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
17. NSR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
18. MS&LR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
19. GNoSR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
20. TVR ………….……….………………………………………………………………………………
Sadly there is no prize except the knowledge that if you get them all right, you are a fountain of knowledge, and able to bore at length at parties.
Answers next week! And more of Derek's colour pictures.
And don't forget to consider helping with 76077's reversing gearbox!
Ah! Those pictures from 1963 - I remember that cold winter well! And look at those telegraph wires - absolutely puts the scene into the correct era. For a short time I lived next to the Carlisle to Settle line in early 1970 and they still had miles of open wires like this. I got friendly with the local signalman - the box was only about 50 yards away, controlling a level crossing. Many of the overhead lines were redundant, but still in place and they had to have an alarm on them because they got stolen too often. (They used to just pass a current down the line and detect if it got interrupted.) It would be nice if GWSR could put a few telegraph poles along the line, even if the "wires" were plastic line. I'd even accept some pseudo ceramic insulators! Dream on Peter - thinking of days spent trainspotting at Tyseley when a kid...
ReplyDeleteI note that you could be looking for a foundry. When I was in the Loco dept. we had a new chimney cast for Hunslet " King George " by Cedric Foundries in Chard in Somerset. When I visited them they were also doing work for the West Somerset railway. They may be worth a look.
ReplyDeleteSpelling Cerdic Foundries, predictive text playing games
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dave.
DeleteGood to have a backup name.