E21224 Returned to Service

London North Eastern Railway 1950 Brake Corridor Third E1866 (GOLD)

The recently installed sliding light units in the eight passenger windows are being tidied up with mastic cutting back and further cleaning to ensure their appearance and longevity in service.

London North Eastern Railway 1938 Brake Third Open E16631E (GOLD)

Some more mundane but nevertheless essential work is being pushed through at the moment. With the vehicle still on stands further frame painting and pipework has been progressed along with brake-gear linkages.

A miscellany of underframe and end parts are being cleaned and painted ready for refitting, this has also included the roof vents.

Finally, the semi dismantled bogies are being worked through and wasted parts identified for repair or in several cases replacement with spares. This will be aided by many of the parts sent from Weybourne.

British Railways 1961 Brake First Open (Kitchen) M14021 (GOLD)

The main focus has continued to be metalwork in the area around the guards compartment. The landward side, where the side corridor is located, is now fairly advanced at the lower end with lower sections of the inward opening door welded in place to the underframe and horizontal sections of framework at the bottom renewed. The current angle of attack is the adjacent passenger doorway which requires whole new door framework to be welded in.

The remainder of the solebar and Sheringham end bufferbeam have now been needle gunned and primed, which completes this initial part of the chassis clean up. The vehicle will be lifted before we progress any further on this front.

Many volunteers have been active inside the vehicle, focusing on the passenger saloon and the Holt end vestibule and former toilet. The toilet is being demolished and will be replaced with a curved “first Open” style toilet, which will house a storage space. All of the fittings and wall panels have now been stripped out of the toilet with the basin and pan a memory! It now looks rather stark in there and sadly much corrosion and rot has been found in the floor around this area. We plan to take down at least two of the walls to tackle the floor before rebuilding upwards.

Inside the passenger saloon, fittings that will be moved or are not required for the coach’s new open configuration have been stripped out. Extensive woodwork that used to run down the corridor, housing the heaters, has been removed and all of the passenger communication chains and bowls have been extracted. One of them will be refitted in due course but with the bowls in different locations. Severed sections of bulkhead that once formed the compartment side walls have also been extracted.

British Railways 1959 Brake Corridor Composite E21224 (REPAIR)

We quickly completed the works to 21224, finishing off the battery charger and window glass replacement in the toilet and guards compartment. The coach was then moved outside where repairs to the controlled emission toilet were completed and tested successfully. It was then tripped back to Sheringham to be returned to the “B set” for use throughout this summer.

British Railways 1959 Tourist Second Open M4843 (BRONZE)

The replacement in the workshop for 21224 is TSO 4843 which has been suffering from filler cracking, paint fade and coil spring cracks. Other than these ailments the coach is in good order and does not cause much trouble at all in service, so hopefully it will be a fairly straightforward mission for this one.

Early days yet, but so far an insecure step on the Sheringham end bogie has been replaced with another one, five worn armrests have been replaced with some better second hand examples upholstered in the same material, and some of the worst filler sections have been popped out ready to stabilise/replace. 

British Railways 1957 Class 101 Railcar Driving Trailer Composite Lavatory E56062 (SILVER)

The underframe and bufferbeam repainting has now been completed. The final tasks were the seaward side of the leading bogie being finished in black gloss and picking out all of the details and pipework on the front in the various colours, it now looks very bright!

After many weeks of struggle, all of the bodyside windows have now received a full replacement set of internal rubbers, so these are now ready to refit at the required time.

56062 has now been moved into the staging where the upper half painting has begun. Other priorities have meant progress has been slow but primer has been applied to much of the landward side.

Meanwhile the final parts of the cosmetic works to convert the vehicle into a Metro Cammell Lightweight vehicle have been produced, the waist height jumper cable sockets, and will be fitted shortly.

British Railways 1954 13 Ton Pipe Open B740918

Following a further period of the project having been stalled, it was decided to give it a boost and dismantle the brakegear to access the failed vacuum cylinder and swap it out for a newly overhauled example. This was done at the same time as M35148’s cylinder swap as we were already all set up for the process. The vehicle now sports its new cylinder and it is planned to reassemble the brakegear and adjust the brakes before we do a test to see if we can finally return the wagon to the vacuum fitted list.

British Railways (GWR Design) 1958 “Fruit D” W92097W (SILVER)

Brian Ashby has continued rubbing down and applying top coats where possible as, once again, the team have been thwarted by the weather!

It is impossible to paint the landward side without moving the wagon out from the museum awning. Brian is concentrating on the ends and the seaward side until the weather allows further progress. 

Others have been priming ironwork and refixing to the wagon, a slow process but they are getting there.

If the weather improves, they will attack the rest of the painting! If not, they will reassemble the M&GN horse dray and dismantle the now rather scruffy marquee in that area.

Workshop

In amongst all the other work, we have fitted in fabricating some new loco allocation boards for the public information sign up at Holt, and continue restoring furniture for the stations.

Maintenance

Now the season is in full swing repair tasks are taking up some time at Sheringham. We have also prepared suburban open 48001 for daily service in the B set as our delayed programme now means that TSO 4843 (mentioned above) will not be available for the main summer, so a high capacity vehicle is required to substitute.

The main A set brake, BSK(D) M35148, only recently outshopped, suffered a brake cylinder failure recently. The coach was quickly tripped to Weybourne where an overhauled example was fitted and tested. It has now been returned to Sheringham and is back in the train.