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Hi Morris63 In fact the van started life as a 20t wooden bodied mineral wagon. But it was rebuilt with the van body and a steam boiler inside, with a fuel oil tank at one end and a water tank at the other. This was used to pre heat coaches when they were all heated by steam from the locomotive. When diesels came along, many had to have small boilers to heat the coaches! The coaches were then slowly converted to electrical heating. Here is an earlier picture of the van with its doors on.
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A great workday at the beginning of April saw seven of the team hard at work. Fortunately the C & W staff had put three of our wagons together on number 1 road. B279721/733 was still in the shed where Tim and Gary were welding all day to very good effect. They continued seam welding of the floor sheets, patching the bottom of the uprights and putting the lower panels on the South end. It still needed the lower SW side repair panel and the lower end door panel to be welded in place but it was very nearly complete. Agusta was able to prep and undercoat the North sides. Outside the Shed, B 279711 had its West side needle-gunned and primered by George (On holiday from Uni). On the inside, Rob was busy tidying up the top edges of the underframe and Tom was prepping the East outside. A third wagon, B555696 had its pad exams done by Agusta and Tom, after being shown the process by myself. (This may still need a hole in the through pipe to be repaired?). Thus everybody was busy and all could see what they, and everybody else, had achieved. It is many years since we had so many of our team all on site for a workday.
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Apr 11, 2024 18:28:35 GMT
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Yesterday saw five of us busy on two of our wagons. Tim and Gary welded all the remaining patches and seams on B 279721/733, then set too and worked in tandem to secure the large lower sheet on the end door. This welding should be finished and the wagon painted before the end of April, then it will be renumbered as B114733. Meanwhile Tom and Rob continued preparing the underframe of B 279711. Rain hampered their work somewhat, but the frame is now ready for primer and underseal. The floor was measured and new steel sheets are to be ordered by the Rothley C & W staff. This may be a relatively quick wagon to refloor and it is to be renumbered as B266560
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Out of interest, why the renumbering? Have you discovered previous identities, or getting numbers more appropriate for the region perhaps?
Great work all round.
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Apr 12, 2024 11:53:29 GMT
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Hi Morris When we first got the wagons in 1992/3 we could not identify most of them so we used an un-issued set of numbers B 2797xx in the order of arrival. However after a lot of detective work by Phil Heatherington and John Buckland, quite a lot of wagons have now been identified and these are given their original numbers when they get repainted.
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Apr 18, 2024 10:05:34 GMT
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Last Edit: Apr 18, 2024 10:06:25 GMT by flyingphil
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What a great way to start the day! There is a new GCR Reunification video which shows that the old embankment North of Loughborough will not be rebuilt but instead replaced with a new viaduct with pillars on piles and precast deck sections. This viaduct makes so much sense! The GCR went on viaducts through Leicester and elsewhere and is a classic image. It also explains why the engine shed will need to be relocated. To have a single track around the shed and a long section of double track North of the shed (To allow a full length train to wait entry to Loughborough) would mean a double track embankment almost up to Precis-spark. The extra height needed to cross Railway terrace would mean a significantly taller and wider embankment....lots of lorry loads of material! Using piles and standard bridge decks for the long single track viaduct from the Sewer outflow to the MML bridge will be a lot faster to build, and far less intrusive in terms of lorry movements during construction. It also means though that it becomes one construction project rather than three phases but I suspect because of the modular construction, a smaller workforce could be used?
CAUTION WIBN Alert! It would also be good if the single track bridge across the sewer outflow had steel lattice parapets ( as per the new Quorn bridges and canal bridge) ....also the viaduct could have blue brick arch facades along the East side where it runs past Precis-spark. This was done on the new MML bridge abutments. If you really had some spare cash, then a non-structural "Bowstring Girder" would be nice across Railway terrace!
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Apr 25, 2024 16:12:44 GMT
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Number #733 is finished with its new wagon plates (but it still needs its white stripes and numbers) we also did more work on the wagons in the yard.
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