An Illuminating Find!

Firstly, for those who are new to what we do at Kirkby Stephen East, North Eastern Railway stores van No.2 is an important part of the collection at KSE. It is owned by the Locomotive Conservation and Learning Trust (LCLT). The van was rescued by Beamish Museum in 1973. A decision was taken by Beamish Museum to de-accession the vehicle from its collection and dispose of it. This was in 2013. The van was offered to the LCLT. After inspection of the van the LCLT agreed to assume ownership. It was transported to KSE in 2014. It restoration, helped with funds from a National Lottery Heritage Fund award, began in late autumn 2018 and is now largely complete. Completion of some minor interior jobs is in hand. Externally there is a roof job to complete that will be tackled when scaffolding has been erected in the shed.

One feature of the van that had been proving difficult to deal with was the reproduction of the fitted sidelights. The van carried sidelights because in addition to the delivery of stores the van was the guard's vehicle in a stores train. The sidelights are shown on the general arrangement drawings but have very little detail; certainly not enough to permit their manufacture. Photos of the vans in NER days do exist, but again there is insufficient detail to enable drawings to be made. We had resigned ourselves to being unable to complete this part of the job. Luckily their absence did not spoil the appearance of the van.

Then a piece of good luck. Graham Ashwell and Roger Gregory are friends of Rob Murray from his Mid-Suffolk Light Railway volunteering days. Graham, Roger and Rob stay in touch and up-to-date with work on their respective preservation projects. Graham and Roger spotted a sidelight of the correct size and style for van 2 at a railwayana sale at a remarkably low price.

Needless to say, they bought it. One lamp is no use but it would be a pattern for a copy to be made. We learned from a Gloucester Warwickshire Railway blog post about a coppersmith based in Clitheroe who was likely to be able to make a copy of our sidelight. The absence of funds meant that we didn't immediately investigate what costs might be involved. That absence of funds has proved to bequite fortuitous because we have had more good luck...

Tim Warner of our signalling team drew the attention of Alex Tring to a goods brake van lamp for sale on Ebay. The same site had a sidelight on sale nearly identical to the one we had to hand. Even better was the absence of any bids for the item. Following an exchange of emails between Alex and Rob to decide how best to succeed resulted in a successful attempt and we now have the second sidelight for van 2! The sidelights need some work but are in generally in very good order.

The sidelight is quite simple in design. Essentially it is a metal box with one side open where it is fastened to the side of the vehicle. This opening is accessed from the inside of the stores van through an aperture. The aperture can be closed off with a small door fitted with a circular glazed opening. This arrangement enabled the stores train guard to check the burner. The burner is identical in appearance to those found in railway tail-lamps. Internally there are two sets of slots to house a piece of red glass. The red glass is inserted in the slots that are closer to the rear of the train enabling the van to show red tail lights.