Great Central Railway General Matters

RBR 1962 should be released back into traffic this week as work is complete, according to GCR Carriage Facebook.

 

Well, not 'like' as such .... but many thanks for comprehensive reply. Is this a case of a change in regs involving too few qualified people to make happen by some cut-off date, or some fault (or general wear) on the line's own stock dictating the pace of work, so to speak?

 

Having quickly perused the new regs the major change has to do with fire safety. with the old system if a fire broke out in the kitchen somebody had to find the manual shut off valve for the gas supply and close it,the new system has an electronic cut off valve fitted in place of the manual one linked to a fire sensor. So if a fire breaks out the gas supply is automatically isolated, which seems an eminently more sensible system. No more groping around in a smoke filled kitchen trying to remember where the cut off lever is.
These new regs apply to all comerciale outlets using bottled gas for cooking or heating, so all those late night city center burger vans and all those layby greasy spoons will now have to comply and I'm guessing any HR that runs Mk 1 kitchen cars will have to bite the bullet and upgrade their bottled gas systems.

Colin

 

This would seem to be another example of all the "Hidden" work that has to be done to keep our Heritage Railways running. It is easy for us, on the outside, to say "Why don't they...." and "Why haven't they...." when they are actually very busy just keeping the show on the road!

 

As ever though, rules and regs are only as good as the checks and enforcement. Its a sensible policy but I'm curious how much a refit for a burger van is going to cost or if people just ignore it until a council man turns up and inspect.

 

Good point. And there was me just thinking of rail-mounted kitchens. Are loads of muck trucks going to go the same way as so many pubs?

 

Most of them probably won't be aware until they get an inspection.

 

The obvious thing for the ‘why don’t they’ brigade is to become a volunteer and become one of them

 

Many years ago when the first 2 101 DMU's were delivered to Quorn I was working on replacing a life expired door on one of the units when a passerby stopped to chat about the units and our plans for them. After explaining where they came from, Derby echers park, what they had been used for, Sandite units, we got on to what colour we would be painting them? BR green with speed whiskers I said. A look of horror spread over his face no, no, no, they would much better in Rail blue with yellow ends. Sorry but the membership of Renaissance Railcars, who had funded buying and transporting the units had unanimously decided they would be green.
After about 10 minutes of him explaining that blue was a much better colour, that people would not want to ride in such old fashion looking coaches, how blue would fit in much better with the rest of the GC and that there were far to many green
diesels on preserved railways. I suggested to him that we had in fact bought 4 units and if he would like to join RR and fund the repaint of the other 2 units we would be more than happy to have a set in Blue. his answer was along the lines of, he did not have the time or the money to help paint trains anyway he only liked to take photos of them not ride them or get his hands dirty. I had pointed out to him the donations box but that was ignored and he wandered off muttering to himself.
I often wonder if he ever returned to view our blue set when it was launched and tells him self "see I was right"

Colin

 

Now there's far too much blue ! Funnily enough my latest donation to a loco restoration was just prior to discovering its going to debut in blue. Actually l am not displeased as its going to be NCB Ashington blue not the dreary BR blue. I am all for a bit of variety.
PS l am normally a steam man too !

 

Too much black .... too much blue (tell that to anyone who's seen Caley Nos. 419 or 828!). Blimey, there's no pleasing you lot!

BR used several "blues", in reality not all of them called blue. The 'chromatic' employed on the 'Whizzos' was different to the 'Nanking' on the Blue Pullmans. The bog standard 'monastral blue' looked well when new (even on 4EPBs ... less so on 4CORs and not even vaguely on the 5BELs), but ruddy awful after a year or two fading and getting plastered with brake block dust.

I'm quite partial to BR Black (lined), when clean! I've seen 'Swindon Greens' either darkened by heat of washed out by the sun, neither very attractive. Having said that, one of the most memorable events in recent years was the MHR recreation of Southern steam in (carefully choreographed) filthy rundown condition so many of us remember. Odd, or what?

 

As someone who’s in charge of a venue that sells food, trust me, I don’t want anyone from the local council showing up telling me what I’ve got wrong.
Much as as I’m a bit of slob at home, I’m an absolute bugger for keeping things nice and clean at work.
Do you have the 5 star system in Scotland?

 

I know the type and he gives us railway photographers a bad name. I have to say that I visit the GC fairly regularly but support is limited to donation boxes and attending photo charters, the latter hopefully provides a trickle of funds to the railway. The railways and locos I do support is on my profile but unfortunately I don’t have a bottomless pit of spare cash. I would never argue about the livery of anything, that’s the choice of those who put in the work and the cash.

 

See also: "my photo has been ruined by a box on the back", said by a photographer who's never paid to be on a mainline steam railtour in their life.

 

Someone made that comment to me about my picture of Clan Line at Dover in this month’s Steam Railway. My reply was, who would have thought, back in 1961 when the last steam hauled Golden Arrow ran, that over 60 years later we would see a MN on a set of Pullmans running around Kent in the 21st century. The good news is the diesel was only there because Belmond’s generator coach is out of action so we will be pure steam eventually, hopefully for the Golden Arrow anniversary run on September 30th

 

We have a version of it. But I don't know how well the mobile caterers are checked up on. We have had food vans in the courtyard where I work and its strictly speaking their certificate for hygiene but the council budgets for such work (and budgets in general) have been slashed.

 

The "Diesel Gala" on 2nd -4th September has now been downgraded to a "Diesel Running Weekend" - "Due to a shortage of locomotives".......
https://www.gcrailway.co.uk/special-events/september-diesel-gala-2022/
The single car Derby Lightweight is still shown as a visitor as that's going to be there for longer than that weekend but the other 3 locos shown are all home based (25 + 2 x 37's).

 

I suspect that, with a lot of other railways now needing diesels to keep operating in this dry spell, not much is available for short term hire/gala events.

 

At least the Griddle car is highlighted as "returning" for the Diesel Running Weekend, though it is sadly absent from running at the Midland Red bus event this weekend so I'll have to have a decent breakfast before I leave home....

Hopefully the details of the "Railcar Weekend" will get published online soon (week after the Diesel one), as it will be decision time as to which of the two events I attend given that the Diesel Gala has been downgraded. Haven't heard anything if the "& Branchline" suffix has been totally from the Railcar event as yet. Still appears on the GCR website as such (with no details linked from it), but whether the remaining outstanding work has been carried out on catch point on the Mountsorrel line is anyones guess.....

 

Was a pleasant surprise to find the Griddle car back in use on the GCR yesterday, so I did manage to get my usual GCR breakfast on the first train out of Rothley after all! Its return to traffic hadn't been pre-advertised, hence it not being shown as running at yesterdays Midland Red event.
Quite a few people about at the bus rally, though loadings on some of the trains seemed fairly light from what I observed throughout the day.

D6700 certainly looks (and sounds) good....



This TRBF has now taken up residence in the bay platform at Leicester North - for "static use" according to a report I found elsewhere online, though this vehicle has yet to be mentioned in Main Line as far as I know.....


Given the fact that the station building there is fairly securely shuttered up, I do wonder how long those coach windows are going to last in that area....

The maroon Beavertail was parked up at Loughborough yesterday, so work seems to have been completed on repainting that vehicle.

Quite a good turn out of Midland Red vehicles at Quorn, albeit mainly single deck examples.......





There were also a selection of other operators vehicles there as well, which included some that haven't been to any of the Quorn events before....



There were some posters up about the Railcar Event in September and no use appears to be being made of the Mountsorrel branch. There seem to be various "drags" of DMUs by other motive power planned, just in case you get excited by such things, so that is a good enough reason for me to give the event a miss!