MHR Restorations and Overhauls

60F would be a luxury! I suspect you meant C...

I was on 5643 on another nearby railway on that Saturday. Jeepers it was grim on the footplate! A can of water on each half trip and another in between each trip ... "Daddy, what do you do as a hobby?" "Well, Bea, I wait until the hottest and most humid day of the year, then go and stand in a small confined space in heavy cotton overalls and shovel half ton of rocks onto a fire burning at 1000C ..."

Tom

 

31625 seen in Ropley waiting to depart LE to ALR (1997).

 

Err, yes I did D'oh!!

Put it this way, the footplate crews weren't too happy to discover 925 was OOA!

One of the firemen on Saturday, who had the task of uncoupling 34007 from her train at Alton didn't so much as climb out the cab but fall out1 I saw him the next day, and he was best described as a zombie..... and the fire woman on Sunday was just as bad! I know I melted in the heat at Alton on the Saturday, and that was in the open.........

As for being stuck on the footplate of a Western tankie engine, lucky you!

 

as this thread is about restoration major progress, can the mods move the debate about Mr Bunch's locos to a new thread and can we get this one back on track please. 73086 aprt, these locos are now history as far as the MHR is concerned

 

There is already a suitable thread ...

http://www.national-preservation.co...locos-currently-based-on-the-mid-hants.38651/

Tom

 

lets move the debate there then and return this to being about the MHR

 

I would say 18 months for 31874, thats from when her frames arrive at Herston, theres the stripping yet, then it depends on how bad everything is i would say the same for 31625, but her bottom end shouldnt be so bad, she wasnt in traffic that long ,boiler problems lead to her withdrawal, not her mechanical condition.
so they might be able to get 1 season with all 3, but 31806 wont have much longer left by then, or even be on the last months of its ticket

 

Got to agree with what you are saying.

 

but shouldn't the thread be transferred to the Steam Traction section?

 

Here's a bit of major progress for you, taken just over a week ago, so I suspect its a bit more advanced now - and its bigger than you realise!

 

how longs that taken? i,ve lost count the times you watch soaked customers running for cover

 

That's sprung up this year, and its been long overdue, and will be a godsend come this winter - I wonder just how popular it will be come the Autumn gala?....... though officially, its not due to be fully complete until next year!

I've seen the plans for what was originally proposed - this is the "slimmed" down version, and believe me its not a cheap project, but will last many a lifetime.

My hat goes off to the lads in the building dept for the quality of the work. and especially John Lark for drawing up the numerous plans and managing, more or less, the project.

 

That is one impressive building, congrats to the building team on the line

 

Going through my Photo albums I found this picture I took of 31625 in April 2001:


It's the last picture I can find in my albums of 31625 in good condition. Don't know if she was still in service by this time or she was withdrawn with boiler problems. I have a feeling she worked for the Thomas event but was withdrawn after this? So she hasn't run for 13 years.
The last picture I can find of 31625 in steam is this one from November 1999:



She was still ML approved at this time as she had worked on the Met earlier in the year.

 

I had my 40th birthday party on the "Watercress Belle" in June 2001 and we were hauled by "No 5"

I note that "Fern" the second "Belle" FO has now finished its refit and is due back in service at the end of the month.

On the loco front, is 76017 still on track for a return before the end of this year, or will it slip into 2015?

 

Not a Mid Hants loco any more... maybe that's Major Progress?

 

Quite aware of that. Just trying to answer a question that someone asked earlier in the thread.