June 2024 - Chairman’s Chat

By Neil Taylor

Dear Reader,

Following on from our special announcement regarding the trial fit of the boiler I would like to focus this “Chairman’s Chat” on the more mundane, but important, subject of the AGM. Members will get a full description of the meeting in the issued minutes. However, I think it is important to give all interested parties a flavour of the progress and challenges that the project faces.

82045 – The Journey

The meeting was, as ever, well attended and we had nearly 50 attendees which is a good percentage of the membership. It was pointed out that we did clash with the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway Steam Gala. It is difficult to avoid clashes, as most weekends in April and May are busy for the heritage sector. In retrospect, I think we should have avoided this particular clash. The introductory presentation focused on the journey of the build, mainly from 2010 to date. It really was a great exercise to develop this presentation. It was so impressive to articulate how a small team could build 80% of a locomotive in a relatively short time. This is a group with no large individual sponsor, no corporate assistance and no donor locomotives. It is 100% New Build and independently funded. The presentation is now available to be delivered to societies and associations and was tested this week at one such society. All we would ask is that societies respect that we will be asking for a donation towards the locomotive as an appropriate reward for sharing our story.

The conclusion of the presentation was an announcement that the boiler was about to be trial fitted into the frames. As we now know the trial fit did occur as scheduled on the 3rd June 2024.

The engineering review concentrated on the two big activities on the build this year; progress on the boiler and the creation of a full set of motion components. It is expected that the boiler will be completed by the end of the year and placed on test. The less certain challenge is to assemble the set of components for the motion. The good news is that almost all bar a couple of component parts have been placed with a contractor. All components are planned to be delivered by the end of the year and about 50% of the components have already arrived. The two sets of Coupling Rods are the next major components to be completed and we are going to view progress on their machining next week. The team at Bridgnorth have plenty to get on with, and critical activity continues on the vacuum pipework, cladding, locomotive cab flooring and much system bracketry.

There was much debate about how challenging it has become to procure items from the supply chain. Several of our historic suppliers have gone out of business. Many suppliers need to be coached about the products and the manufacturing method. Some materials are just not available in the UK and once we go outside the UK we are less confident about their provenance. To misquote an old phrase “They just don’t make them like this anymore”. Slowly but surely we are overcoming all of the issues that confront us. There are certainly fewer issues to resolve and we should be hopeful that we are on the “home stretch”.

In terms of fundraising we had a successful couple of Galas in January and April. The new appeal for donated Railwayana is also delivering good results and many items have already arrived. These items will go onto an auction website or be sold by a specialist Railwayana sales team. One other auction item for later in the year will be a painting depicting the BR standard “70000 Britania” alongside our locomotive. This imagines the first BR standard alongside what may well be the 1000th BR standard to steam, over 70 years after that first locomotive entered service. The picture here is a sketch that will be developed into the final painting in the coming months.

The other business of the day involved reports on finances and membership. Financially we are in good shape to complete the locomotive and we are holding firm at around 850 members. The fact that some members have passed on in the last 12 months is not lost on the Trustees. I know that we all want to see the locomotive enter service as soon as possible. The bottom line is that we are working as hard as we can to complete the locomotive, and it should not be more than a couple of years until completion.

Minehead 1964

Perhaps soon we can recreate the scene of these delightful pictures from our supporter Richard Cinderey.

The current West Somerset Railway has a couple of Hymeks, so we could re-create the scene very accurately some 60 years on! If only we could send them a class 3 tank.