23/02/25 – Preparing for a welcome guest

On Sunday there were plenty of members of the group on hand for the arduous task of oiling and inspecting the rake prior to our Flying Scotsman Photographic Charter this Friday – tickets still available!

The first job was to collect some empty beer bottles that had been saved for us by the bar staff to act as props in the 15 beer crates Stu had collected last week. With the help of the Pacer crew we got them onboard and dropped them off down the siding.

Once everyone was down the siding, the team split into two groups to get everything achieved. Some recent civils work to level the track in the siding had resulted in mounds of ash right where we needed to be working to open axle boxes, so Tim, Jason, Alan, Ed, and Annika set to work levelling the ground.

It was hard work, but after a couple of hours the entire north bank of the siding had been levelled making a nice flat working area.

Meanwhile, Paul, Mark, Colin, Stu and Josh started opening axle boxes for inspection, checking pads and looking for any issues, then topping up oil. Annika also assisted with removing those sometimes tricky split pins!

The axle boxes hadn’t been inspected since October last year, so it was important to do a thorough job. Whilst all the oiling was going on, Tim and Annika broke off to make some supporting frames for our newly purchased wagon tarpaulins. A few months ago our friend at the railway, Jim Rowden, passed away and kindly left us some money, so we decided to buy three wagon tarpaulins. This was mainly so that the rake looks right behind Flying Scotsman, but also to fulfil a long term aspiration of protecting our open wagons from the elements. We would like to publicly thank Jim Rowden and his family for this kind bequest.

Unfortunately, by the time we finished work and got the tarpaulins fitted it was dark, so a final picture wasn’t possible. We’ll get one for the next update!

As our follows will no doubt be aware, there is a celebrity guest at the railway at the moment, so there was no shortage of distractions whilst we were working. Some of the group managed to get some very good pictures of Flying Scotsman passing us.

Places are still available on our Photographic Charters for Flying Scotsman this Friday, but also Britannia in two weeks time. This is a unique opportunity to see Flying Scotsman on freight and the first time in just over 30 years that the A3 will be hauling wagons. The last time was at the NVR in 1994 when 60103 was disguised as classmates ‘Sandwich’ and ‘Flying Fox’.

DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SEE FLYING SCOTSMAN ON FREIGHT!