19/10/24 – A bit of oiling during a Tornado

Before getting into the update from this working session, a couple of weeks ago Tim gave a presentation at Peterborough Museum as part of the recent exhibition on the railways of Peterborough. His evening talk was in two parts, with a brief overview of wagon development, design, and usage, followed by an overview of the NVR wagon group and a bit about railway operations with an emphasis on heritage railways ‘doing it right’ when recreating history. The talk was very well received and appreciated by all who attended.

The next day Tim gave a condensed version of his talk at the NVR AGM, which was also very well received.

Also, during the week Tim managed to transport his scarab trailer to the NVR as a future exhibit once restored. The trailer was found at a local farm and purchased by Tim due to local connections. The trailer spent its working life at Peterborough East Station and still carries some of the BR lettering and numbering from those days. The front axle is actually the back end of a scarab tractor unit to allow the farmer to make use of the trailer, which will be removed for exhibition purposes.

Back to this weeks session….

The main aim was to get the rake oiled and inspected ready for our upcoming events. Steve set straight to work like a greyhound out of the traps and went down the north side opening axle boxes and syringing out any water.

Steve was then followed by Paul, Mark, and Alan, who topped up the oil and carried out visual checks of pads.

Meanwhile, Tim and Gareth attended to some fixings on Tim’s Conflat. It was found that some of the bolts holding the floor down were loose, so needed a bit of a tighten, with some lock nuts added for good measure.

At the other end of the rake, Stu and Josh added the final bit of metal to Stu’s Medfit. These were the metal strips that protect the top edges of the body sides. After a bit of paint on the newly fitted strips, the restoration of the Medfit is complete.

Every so often there was a green distraction passing the team working on the rake in the form of A1 Class No 60163 ‘Tornado’, so naturally there was a bit of stopping work to look!

At lunchtime Jason turned up just in time for a bit of lifting and shifting. Stu managed to borrow a van, with massive thanks to Simon at Teversham Motors near Cambridge Airport. This allowed Stu to bring up some thin tyres donated by Simon to act as period wagon loads once wrapped up. Stu also purchased two barrels and both him and Jason brought some more cardboard boxes. The issue was how to get this stuff to the siding, so with the consent of the signalman at Wansford we used a trolley to move the gear. With Tim acting as PICOW and responsible person, the team heading down to the siding and returned empty whilst Tornado was well out of the way at Peterborough.