4270

Firstly, my sincere apologies are due to Ian Carpenter.  He provided me with many of the photos shown here nearly a year ago and I've been waiting for a 'rainy day' to get around to uploading them.  Well that rainy day (accompanied with severe flooding) has arrived, so here they are.  I dealt with the period that 4270 spent in Barry Island Scrapyard in a previous blog post.  Here I intend to cover pictorially at least what has happened to her since departing Barry Island in July 1985.

Initially she went to the now defunct Swansea Valley Railway, arriving on the GWSR in 2003.  The following collection of photos of her during her time at Barry, or on the Swansea Valley Railway and were taken by Dave Roberts and are used with his kind permission:

In 2003, she arrived on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway:  The following photos were taken by Ian Carpenter charting the progress of her restoration:

Being inspected on the Swansea Valley Railway Feb 2003.

A youthful looking George peers out from the firebox.  Reports that he only ventured in there because somebody had thrown in a chocolate biscuit have been refuted! 

The ravages of salt laden air at Barry evident on the cross head, slide bars and piston rod

Leaving Swansea Valley Railway

In the car park at Toddington, with George & Ian

Taking her turn in the restoration queue

Work commencing, October 2003

George gets his leg over... the running plate.

Smoke box internals

George making sparks fly

In 2004, the cab and bunker were removed followed by lifting the boiler off of the frames and extracting the pony truck:

Cab and bunker removed

Removed bunker

Lifting the boiler

Removing the pony truck

In 2005,she was taken off of her driving wheels and work start on her boiler and drag box.

New firebox outer wrapper welded in.

Neil and George

2006 saw little work recorded in the photographic record.

2007:  The new con rod castings arrived, as well as further work on the frames:

Un-machine con rods

In 2008,she started going back together again:

Ian fitting a buffer

New ash pan

Andy works on the cab roof

I think that this is one of the side tanks. It may just have a leak or two

New side tanks and bunker largely in place.

Ian's photos dried up at this point, but it still makes a valuable record of the immense amount of work and time that is required to restore a Barry wreck to working order.  As a reward for reading this far, Howard kindly provided me with this photo of Tim apparently forgetting all his fireman training and shoveling coal in the wrong end.  In reality he was helping Jamie concrete up the surround to the steam pipes and blast pipe where they exit the firebox.

Tim shoveling in the wrong end

I've also got a couple of photos of Andy and his 'homework', which was to paint and polish the newly created long safety valve bonnet created for 4270:

Andy demonstrating that his car needs a safety valve bonnet too

Proudly displaying the fruits of his labours, fitted on the boiler.

As you can see, 4270 is somewhere in the final furlong of her restoration.  It is hoped that she will be operational in time for the "Back to Black" gala on 24th until 26th May.