Engineering notes

Israel Newton Ltd. have supplied a foundation ring for 82045's firebox.

The steam chest liners have been successfully fitted into the bores by shrinking them in liquid nitrogen and this has allowed final machining of the steam chest end covers where there is a precise gap between the inner edge of the cover and the edge of the liner in the bore. The loco has now been moved back to its previous location on No. 2 road inside the erecting shop.

Some further machining of the piston rods has taken place although this job is by no means complete.

Pins and bushes for the cross stretchers of the brake rigging are being supplied by DGC Engineering Ltd. of Bridgnorth and bushes for the brake block hangers have been supplied by Colin Broadhurst.

Repainting of various parts that have suffered somewhat from the locos sojurn out in all weathers continues.

Autumn Newsletter

By now, members will hopefully have received their Newsletters, either by email or as a hard copy. Barbara and Tony have had a few problems with emails being kicked back, so if you haven't received yours and you normally get it in the form of an email, please can you let them know your up-to-date email address as soon as possible.

I have about forty spare copies of the Newsletter, so if you'd like one, please get in touch with me (Chris).

Publicity

Look out for an article in one of the next two issues of SVR News, which will also contain an appeal leaflet for the Future Fund. With hindsight, always a wonderful thing, I think we launched this a bit prematurely on the occasion of the "Waterloo Sunset" special we ran in memory of our much-missed colleague Paul Anderson in 2017. Paul had been a fireman at Nine Elms and loved the 82XXX tanks. In the absence (so far!) of an 82 to head the train, motive power on the day was Taw Valley, a loco he worked on in his salad days at 70A.

The time is now right for us to give the Future Fund a proper kick-start, and the article is predicated on the need to ensure that 82045 is looked after financially for as long as possible after it enters service: in these uncertain times, I am convinced that we have to be as self-supporting as we possibly can, for as long as we can. I will be writing a piece about this in next month's updates.

AGM

The 2020 Annual General Meeting is to be held at Kidderminster Railway Museum on Saturday 4th April 2020, starting at 2.00 p.m.