Following on from Q1, work continued repainting the hoppers and preparing the running rake for our first Freight Driving Experience Day of 2022 in April. After a long evening oiling and checking the rake, we had a successful freight day using the railway’s resident Class 14 diesel 9529.

The hoppers had been taken out of traffic due to extensive corrosion of the floors leading to the possibility of chunks of floor falling off. As part of the refurbishment, several severely corroded floor sections were removed to make them safe to run again. The insides were also painted with black bitumen paint and by the time of the freight events in June they had been fully repainted, sign-written and passed fit to run in the freight rake once again.

With the hoppers back in traffic, attention was turned to a repaint of the Banana Van which was beginning to look a little tired.

In preparation for another day of freight activities, we had to oil and check the rake again.

Then there was the “big shunt” – this involved a complex series of operations designed to get the running rake all together in the civils siding at Wansford, the CONFLAT and the VANFITs/PALVAN already under restoration in to RailWord siding one (adjacent to the mess hut), various wagons destined for static display in to the far end of the bay siding at PNVR, and then the remaining wagons back in the bay siding.

Q2 wrapped up in style with our second Freight Driving Experience of 2022, steam hauled by resident SR BoB Class 34081 ’92 Squadron’, followed by an evening freight photo charter. This saw the largest freight rake for some time with the hoppers back in the rake. Both events ran successfully with everyone going home with a smile on their face and a lot of great photos and video of the freight in action and in a 50’s themed photo shoot with re-enactors.