Welcome 2874

Howard has forwarded me a couple of photos of Tim & Dave at work last Wednesday, who along with Howard finished off painting the containers that face the car park into a fetching shade of brown.  Hopefully now that they are finished, the local graffiti artists can be encouraged to find something better to do with their time than deface them.  Unless of course the graffiti artist concerned is Banksy, in which case we could sell the containers complete with graffiti for an extortionate sum of money.

Hard at work

Dave (left) & Tim, Howard was behind the camera

Paul Richardson has very kindly sent through the following photos of Kev pressure washing the 8F on Wednesday.  Judging by the cleanliness of everything, I expect these are 'after' rather than 'before' shots:

Somewhere under the 8F

Somewhere else under the 8F

A squeaky clean exterior of the 8F

 Not quite everything scrubbed up as well as it might have done though, Kev looked far from clean afterwards:

Kev... in need of a shower.

On to Saturday, plenty more things were going on.  The main piece of work once more was stripping down Foremarke Hall ready for going to Tyseley for her overhaul.

Her superheater elements had been removed on Wednesday

I started off by helping several people remove Foremarke Hall's backhead cladding.  We had been advised that it would come off in just a few parts.  John insisted that the section from the warming plate upwards for instance should be removable as a single piece.  Well, John was right, but it wasn't anywhere near as easy as he had made it sound. Eventually we managed to get the lot off:

Backhead cladding removed

Tim mentioned that Foremarke Hall didn't look anywhere near so good without her cladding.  Somebody else (name withheld to protect the guilty) said "Much like my wife".  Once again I had my handy journalist's tape recorder running to keep track of what was said.  I'm sure that a large well-stuffed brown envelope will be coming my way shortly to prevent the recording getting into the wrong hands. 

I spent much of the rest of the day pressure washing the items that were salvaged from Foremarke Hall as a large team of people bashed/gas axed/cursed carefully removed them.  A selection of the items are shown here:

Regulator assembly

Paul stripping the hydrostatic lubricator

Back head cladding

Ejector and other bits

Just to prove that it is possible to operate a pressure washer and take a photo:

Pressure washing the backhead cladding

You'll be pleased to know that I largely managed to keep myself clean too, unlike Kev on Wednesday.

Not quite everything went to plan though, the blower ring didn't want to separate from the chimney.  No end of cursing cajoling hitting with big hammers or heating would persuade the two to part company.  It will have to be left until Wednesday to be finished off:

Steve and Will at work on the blower ring in the smoke box

The anaconda wrestling team from last week were back in action again:

Ian, Paul and George with the anaconda

I got roped into this myself at one point.  What they were trying to do was get a replacement DMU connecting corridor cover onto the three wire formers that would give it its shape.  The wire formers had been generously lubricated with washing up liquid of all things to help the cover slide on.  Come the first day in service during a rain storm and the DMU carriages will be filled with soap suds and surprised passengers.

Ian shelters from the rain under the anaconda.

The big news, was the arrival on site of ex-GWR 28XX class, 2874.  Howard sent me these three photos of her arrival on Wednesday:

2874 arrives on a low-loader

Fireman's side cylinder

A 'worse for the wear' cab side

So what can I tell you about 2874? Well as for the history, she is a sister to our own 2807 but built slightly later, entering traffic on 30th November 1918, shortly after the end of World War One.  Upon nationalisation of the railways in 1948, she was shedded at Banbury (84C) and finished her days at Neath (87A) being withdrawn on 31st May 1963.  In July 1963, she was sent to the legendary Barry Island Scrapyard and managed to remain there until August 1987, when she became the 191st loco to be saved for preservation from there.  I visited Barry Island Scrapyard in May 1978 (yup, and I'm still only 21), although I didn't take any photos of her at that time, Peter Brabham did though just a few years later.  Note that in the photo that I linked to there, 2874 has no tender.  She left Barry in August 1987 as one of five locos purchased by Terry Rippingale for restoration at the Pontypool & Blaenavon Railway.  I have visited the P&BR a number of times over the years and have a few photos in my archives of her during that time:

A poor substitute for a brass cabside number and a small information panel

 Curiously the note on the side contradicts information elsewhere on the internet by claiming that she was withdrawn 19/05/63 and not 31/05/63.  Make of that what you will.

Note, she has now been paired up with a 3500 gallon tender

No buffers...

... and no motion either

As can readily be seen from the above photos, 2874 was never modified to have outside steam pipes, which is relatively uncommon amongst preserved ex-GWR locos, 4270 being one of the others.

No obvious restoration work took place on 2874 during her time at the Pontypool & Blaenavon Railway.  On the 3rd of April, 2008, she was moved again, this time to new owners, the West Somerset Railway.  This was a short lived ownership, and she was then bought by her current owners Dinmore Manor LTD and was moved to their private location on 16th December 2009.  Now that Dinmore Manor is nearing the end of her current rebuild, the owning group has shipped her to Toddington for restoration to commence in earnest.

Needless to say I grabbed a number of photos of her during the course of Saturday. 

2874 in her new home.  Note, no tender.

The fireman's side piston rod wasn't disconnected from the cross head with care

 Whilst the motion on the fireman's side was completely missing, the driver's side had fared marginally better:

Not just the whole piston rod, but the cross head too

She even had the mortal remains of one of her coupling rods

2874

Not many cab fittings in the cab.

 I asked Dan if he thought we'd be passed out as firemen before she steamed again.  He thought we'd probably be passed out as drivers by then.

Dan tries out the driver's side of the cab for size.

She still possesses her reverser

Inside the firebox, no grate or brick arch.

The eccentric rods have gone AWOL

I don't think that's a standard Swindon issue safety valve bonnet

Inside the smoke box, some items are missing or hacked about, such as the petticoat, blower, ejector and parts of the superheater.  A surprising large amount was left though:

So that's where the steam pipes were hiding!

 I had hoped to catch up with Mark Young (as he's a member of the Dinmore Manor group) and quiz him about what's happened to the tender, how many of the missing bits do they have in storage and how many more still need to be acquired etc.  Sadly he wasn't around on Saturday, but I'll hopefully catch up with him in the next week or two and get some answers.  Watch this space.  Meanwhile, the links to other GWSR related websites on the right hand side of this blog have been updated to include, not only the newly started blog for the Cheltenham Racecourse platform 2 construction, but several more relating to Dinmore Manor and of course 2874's own blog. 

Edit:  According to the news section of the main GWSR website, the missing tender is currently restored and paired with 9351 on the West Somerset Railway. 

Later edit:  A photo in GWR service has been unearthed here.