Engineering notes

The cylinder machining at Tees Components Ltd. is moving towards completion.

In Manchester Stephenson Engineering have commenced manufacturing the brake shaft. The photo shows the shaft being forged. This will be followed by forging the arms with forked ends and welding them to the shaft.

The pony truck wheels have been cast at The Boro’ Foundry Ltd. and will be machined preparatory to moving to South Devon Railway Engineering for fitting of tyres and axles. Pattern making for the front pony truck framework is underway at Boss Patterns in Coventry whilst the Standard class 2 project at the Bluebell Railway are looking after the pattern making for the rear pony truck framework.

At Bridgnorth now that we have a set of new coil springs the buffers are being assembled and fitted.

The axleboxes have finally vacated the slotting machine so now it is the turn of the crown brasses before they can be fitted to the axleboxes. Machining of the keeps continues. Machining of the adjustment links for the main driving wheel springs continues.

Publicity

Look out for forthcoming articles in Steam Railway (January) and Steam Days (March). Steam Railway is, we hope, going to publish a piece about well-known SVR (and ELR) driver and Trust member Frank Cronin’s attempt to buy 82034 from store at Patricroft in the late 1960’s; while Steam Days is featuring a full-length article by member Alan Clothier, who worked in the Swindon Design Office beween 1949 and 1953 and was responsible for some of the design features of the 82XXX class. Among these were the angled spectacle plate glasses in the cab, which effectively cut down the problem of reflected glare from the fire when the engines were working at night.

Both magazines will contain a boiler appeal insert leaflet of a new design. At least as far as the colour scheme goes, this departs quite radically from the green theme of previous leaflets. A printer’s proof is seen here - hope you like it. And don’t worry, our printer has been alerted to the “typo” in the second paragraph!

Keep your fingers crossed that the leaflet will do its job and bring in a decent amount of support for 82045’s boiler. At the time of writing, the Boiler Appeal had passed £133,000 - not bad since March - virtually half way to our target and meaning that it should perhaps now be renamed the Firebox Appeal, since the boiler itself is accounted for. Thank you so much to all of you who have contributed up to now to bring about this fantastic result: we have more than held our own in the face of fierce competition in the hobby press for new build project funding.

Meanwhile, artist Stephen Millership has virtually completed a lovely poster for display on the SVR and sale to the public by the Trust. Entitled Raising the Standard - an inspired suggestion from member Iain Jack which works on several levels at once and is so much better than anything I came up with myself - the scene features 82045 crossing Oldbury Viaduct at the head of a rake of blood and custard carriages, bound for Kidderminster and with the distinctive skyline of Bridgnorth in the background. The poster will be featured in the December updates and will be on sale from Barbara in the New Year, and we hope that it will raise our profile still more on the SVR.

82XXX Class Archive

One of our members, Tony Cousins, has offered to develop an archive of recorded sightings, photographs etc of any member of the 82XXX class anywhere on the BR network.

If you have old records, photos or a personal library containing published pictures of an 82XXX in BR days, please drop a line to Tony giving as much information as possible i.e. number, date, location, duty, source of information and name of photographer either by email to anthony.cousins@virgin.net or by email to 26 Hillfield Road, Bilton, Rugby CV22 7EW.

Tony’s own research has already pulled up the odd gem such as 82026 double heading 76049 on a Blackpool-Newcastle passenger train in September 1956. Can you add to that?