Where There's Muck, There's Brass

The Thursday gang returned to No.2051 to finish sanding down the frames reading for re-panelling. Task complete!

One of the many aspects of the coach that make it such a remarkable find is that it is so complete with most of its brass fittings present. One of today’s tasks was the lifting of all the brass tread strips for each of the ten doors; not so much to clean them up (which we did, removing the thick bitumen) but mainly to get to the frame underneath.

Inevitably, some of the screws didn’t want to come out and so had to be drilled and dowelled. It’s boring but the team went home at the end of the day happy that the coach is just a little bit nearer to restored. The next week will focus on the minor frame repairs and removing the rock hard 140 year old putty from the window frames.

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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 deliver...

Keeping On The Boil

One of the many myths about the J21 (sorry, Class C) was that it needed a new boiler. It doesn’t, but the existing one has needed a lot of time, work and money to get ready for steaming. Great progress has been made with this and the image shows the left-hand side of the boiler and the general arrangement, with the assembly now prepared and ready for riveting. With the new backhead and foundation ring fitted, and the outer wrapper nearing completion, the boiler / firebox assembly is now coming together. Needless to say, concurrent with this final push to construct the locomotive there is a sprint to raise the last of the necessary funding to top up the huge generosity of the National Lottery Heritage Fund; without which this restoration could never have happened. Please join our 876 Club or indeed any of the support schemes tailored for every pocket.

Rolling Stock Roundup - NER Passenger Vehicles

As this is a fairly new blog, and some readers may not know about the goings-on at KSE, we've put together something to bring you all up to speed. As there's rather a lot, we'll start with the North Eastern Railway (NER) passenger vehicles: N.E.R 6-Wheelers Amongst the collection at KSE is a cohort of NER 6-wheeled coaches, that we hope will pair perfecrly with NER C class No.876: 131 One of several important vehicles for the NER microcosm at KSE is NER Passenger Brake No.131. Not only will it form part of the appropriate Timeless Trains passenger rake, it will also join Stores Van No.2 in a stores train. For this update, we see the main frame repairs, including the bottom rails, almost complete and, with the body now lowered down on to the chassis, correctly aligned and secured in place, attention has turned to installing the new floor. As can be seen in the attached photo, this stage of the work is also approaching completion an...

Transport at KSE

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