w896andy Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 (edited) There are some valuable lessons for us military vehicle people to learn from railway preservation. We have the same problems restoration wise but in the Railway world everything is much, much bigger yet they are way ahead. On the WSR at Minehead we have 3 large engines currently under heavy overhaul, all undercover and in workshops which can produce much in house, supported by specialists and suppliers that can build anything you wish and there are many other such centres around the UK including the Bluebell. One of the ones at Minehead is a King Class GWR express loco, it has just had new outside cylinders cast, these are around 3 tons each and the new ones have been made about 3 inches narrower than the originals whilst retaining the same power output. GWR locos were always a bit wider than everybody else’s and because this loco is going to be mainline run it needs to take a little diet width and height wise to be able to run on a modern Network Rail. These cylinders are as complex as say a Jeep engine block but 4 times the size, yet we haven’t yet managed to make new Jeep blocks as it’s ‘too difficult’. In the railway world its now common for new boilers, wheels, cylinders right up to complete new engines like Tornado (an express engine,4-6-2, 75ft long and around 150 tons) with around 5 other new build projects underway to fill ‘missing links’. Like us in the Military vehicle world it all started with keen nutcases….. sorry volunteers with no money and is now a whole industry part commercial, part volunteer. To put it into context regarding some of the new builds imagine building from scratch a Mighty Antar plus Trailer plus a Centurion to go on the back. Equip it with modern braking and drivers aids so it can keep up with modern traffic and then hide these inside so it all looks original and you would still be about 50 tons short. Never say never when you are stuck for an engineering fix, the answers are out there somewhere. Edited November 6, 2015 by w896andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted May 12, 2016 Author Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) I had the good fortune to be firing this good (old) lady the other day. Having been in traffic for a couple of weeks, she's taken on a good shine from the daily attention the brass-work has been getting from the crews. The Welsh coal we use is from an opencast pit, and is very dusty. Some of the lumps also turn to dust during their journey to us in Sussex, and its not uncommon for the dust to build up and become compacted in the bottom of the bunkers which reduces the coal capacity. My driver decided that we should play the "see if you can break up and burn all of the crud and dust in the bunker" game, which we did with some success. We started the day with about 2/3 of a bunker of coal and solid crud, and we only took on an additional 1 wheelbarrow full of coal for our 2nd (of 2) trips. We ended the day with about 1 barrow full of slack left in the bunker! It was only a light load of 1 carriage and 2 trips, so not an arduous duty. In fact it was more of a challenge to make steam as the Chatham engines like a good draw on the fire to get it going, and we were only pootling along in 1st valve so there wasn't much draw on the fire! Her sister locomotive (and WW1 ROD veteran) no 27 which is undergoing restoration at the moment is about to have a set of replacement cylinders cast using polystyrene patterns. http://wainrightsfinestsecr27.blogspot.co.uk/ Edited May 12, 2016 by Grasshopper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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