Channel 4 Programme

What did grate a bit wa the "we had to work outside because we were working on the bogies". Have the LLangollen not got a couple of spare acomodation bogies. Did they ask SVR if they could borrow ours?

 

Exactly what I thought.
How long is this job going to last, the split untreated softwood on the roof repair summed it up for me.
I thought the line 'a hundred years of experience' regarding the team, was disingenuous. As there were eight of them (I think) that's hardly thirteen years each.
I feel privileged, as an apprenticed, indentured tradesman signwriter/coach painter, what I was taught and shown over forty years ago, were skills handed down through time.
You cannot pick things up, you improve your technique in the ways that you have been shown.
It's like an uncoached golfer practising hard every day.
All he is doing is improving his slice.

On the positives, it is a great advert for Llangollen and I am sure (hope) it will be for the other participating railways.

 

As with all these type of restoration programmes you only get to see a snapshot of what was done, and it was probally an " as long as it can run for that shot " we can sort it fully later type of decision, as regards the negative remarks, modern glues are stronger than the original material, so the hessian may not have been needed, we on the KESR, never used hessian backing because wood breathes it expands contracts along the grain, we preferred to waterproof the wood using an modern epoxy sealant on the back , so that moisture ingress was prevented, that rotten cant rail would have been cut out and replaced, because its a major part of the strength of the vehicle, as regards why its not in service, I bet theres a lot of snagging and finishing of to do, plus everything needs signing off before a vehicle can enter public traffic.

 

It's probably only missing floors in the toilets....

 

Don't think the strength of the glue is an issue, it's the propensity of teak to split due to its large open grain. I'm not an apprentice trained coachbuilder but I did work on the Bluebell Met coaches for over 10 years so do have a bit of experience with it and how to finish it. If we had outshopped one of the Mets with a finish like that I would personally been disappointed to say the least. Half soled and heeled. To finish that vehicle properly it would need to be completely stripped and done again. Bespoke wheelchair accessible vehicles are properly designed with suitable access and egress equipment. A big empty unheated hole doesn't count!

yes the programme was entertaining but no a traffic vehicle was not created. Changing rooms on wheels with No Carol Smile and the long haired idiot

 

I suppose it all comes down to expectations. Anyone who has been involved with the restoration of a Gresley (or almost other form of wooden bodied carriage) will appreciate that even with almost unlimited resources and relatively little to make (e.g. the LNERCA's HLF funded restoration of Gresley BTO 43567, which was more or less complete internally) six months or so is nowhere near enough for a complete and proper restoration, therefore my expectations were not high and to a large degree were barely met! On the other hand, a vehicle from the "linear scrapyard now looks quite impressive to the untutored eye and I'm sure those who are not fans of the linear scrapyard will have watched with approval. I'm not surprised that the toilets were not mentioned as having been sorted out as that's quite a job in itself and I'd be suspicious that only the one 3rd class compartment was shown. Hopefully, though, a lot of the underlying work on the roof and body frame had already been done.

With regards to the glue issue, the LNERCA has never used hessian on the backs of teak panels but we have always sealed them, and we are now using glue a generation further down the line in the form of West System epoxy, which seems to be the best we have found so far. The foaming PU glue being used at Llangollen is pretty good stuff be very messy.

 

Ive just got to ask Where are all these Gresley Teak coaches located all over Scotland, that are being cannibalised and why is no one restoring These priceless objects?

 

Use this site to trace most of the grounded bodies http://www.vintagecarriagestrust.org/surveystatus.asp Which Gresley's in Scotland are you referring to?

Many of these priceless objects are being restored all over the country but many more could be! But it needs more people to be interested in them, railways to have the workshops to assist the restoration and pots and pots of money.

 

They are grounded bodies which have been deemed too far gone to be restored, however they can yield useful spares for other carriages being restored as mentioned in the C4 programme.

The link given by Gary should give you plenty of examples


Keith

 

With the constaints of broadcasting in mind, I thought last night's programme a pretty fair stab at introducing some of the many issues involved. The scene expalaining "hunt the microfracture" when dealing with load bearing castings was particularly effective. Would I have liked a programme lighter on the "time train" theme and heavier on the specifics? Yes .... but keeping in mind this was a 1 hour slot programme for general consumption, any shortcomings us lot might identify need to be considered against the alternative being no broadcast. Tell me I'm wrong!

Another aspect I liked was the involvement of 'new blood' in the restoration. Bob Knows, we've had enough conflabs on here wondering if upcoming generations will commit the time and effort needed to keep the ball rolling, so any criticism along the lines of a team's 'X' years experience comes across to me as unneccessarily carping. I'd far sooner celebrate the evident fact that Llangollen (and elsewhere) are putting effort into ensuring the expertise needed is actually being developed.

With the 'teak' now back in far better condition than hitherto, there'll be time a-plenty to rectify any outstanding issues resulting from either the tight timetable or lack of decades of hands-on experience which any newbie is bound to have. Recall the comment in the programme that this carriage had sat around at the LR for twenty years, following (how many?) years of storage on the SVR. Would anyone seriously prefer it sat under tarps for another 20 years awaiting some tlc?

Bottom line, a previously unrestored wreck is now weatherproof, has safe running gear and is a hell of a lot more presentable. I'd call that a 'win'. I'd also call it a far better starting point for addressing many of the detailed issues clearly remaining before the restoration can be classed as fully completed. There are also some new to restoration who've successfully popped their cherry on the project and are now well on their way to a lifetime's involvement at the sharp end. Hat's off to them, I say!

If what I've seen both last night and in photos on here of the interior of IWR No.10 (and the tantalising long shots of the completed carriage in Mr Snow's train ) I'm positively salivating at the prospect of seeing the rest of the stock to be highlighted in the rest of the series. That clerestory especially looks very interesting. We don't have nearly enough of those running IMHO and it's reassuring to see the Maespoeth Mafia evidently aren't the only ones who agree with me on this one!

 

Well it is true that railway restoration in detail on the TV is more than welcome in fact they could also have a stab at the larger gauge garden railways Car restoration programmes are nearly as common as cooking programmes now The info regarding the "grounded teak bodies in Scotland is most interesting As for Hunt the microfracture We used to use NDT None Destructive Testing, as you probably know, on the rigs in the 60s, a simple but highly effective process to detect cracks in metal along with Ultra sonic testing It will be good to see the other restoration projects but with more interest in the projects and not Peter Snow's swan song If the y do another restoration series,say on wagons no doubt it will be narrated by his son

 

I think we should be thankful that there are people who want to make this kind of programme, for so long railway preservation was the forgotten hobby, but in recent years we have had several very good, and one not so good programme about railway history and about preservation in general, and there are some very good people who do actually take the trouble to learn about what they are presenting,
for instance the recent one with the trio from the Edwardian farm, was very good, I would love to see guy get his oily hands on an steam engine overhaul, he, I think would be very good, and to a degree tell it warts and all,
So I'm looking foreward to the rest of the programmes on these coaches, and hope they in turn lead to more being made, and if someone somewhere watching it, decides I want to get involved that's got to be good.

 

The information about coach bodies in Scotland needs to be issued with a warning! We (the LNERCA) had several trips up there with Peter Lund of Llangollen joining us for a number of them, and because we had a plentiful supply of new teak at the time Peter had most of the recovered teak. What we were after was mostly small brass fittings from doors etc. This was all covered in an article in an early edition of "Heritage Railway). However, this was 20 years ago and even then the numbers of coaches was plummeting as small farms were sold off and "yuppified". I doubt that there are many left now and those that are still there will have been largely picked clean by now.

 

Just to satisfy the nit pickers of this forum I will explain a few things connected with the restoration.
The rotten sections of cantrail mentioned were renewed by myself using Iroko.
Where was the split untreated timber on the roof ? We didn't use any of that.
We don't have any spare accommodation bogies , so the coach stayed on the jack's.
Both toilet areas have floors, but only one is fitted out.
The external body panels on the corridor side are all original & mostly left in place with some cover moulding renewal.
The other side, which had been blood & custard, had all panels removed & cleaned/ sanded to bare wood (mostly in my garage)
All new cover mouldings for these panels were produced in sets in the same place. I also cleaned & polished all of the brassware.
Another of our volunteers took most of the toplight & droplight window frames home for restoration.
There is still some work to do , such as fitting the steam heat & minor joinery work.
The parts retrieved from Scotland were acquired many years ago. I would doubt that there is anything left up there now.
If anybody is looking for Gresley coach doors , Peter has a lot of spares of varying ages available. There is also a GNR underframe (no bogies) & possibly ECJS377 which is an 8 compartment third dating from 1907.

Bob.

 

Thanks for the facts!

This was a very interesting programme and I look forward to the others.

 

Peter Ginn? He certainly isn't worried about getting his hands dirty and I for one rather like his enthusiasm for getting to grips with his subject matter and his understated delivery style. Yep .... I could go for that.

Could we use a dedicated thread to chew the fat over some possible presenters? A few names occur to me, though 90% are those programmes I would rather not think about ..... Next on ITV1, phone in for your weekly chance to win a railway trip to see trains like The Britannia with Ant & Dec ..... ). See what I mean?

A few thoughts on which previous programmes left an impression over the years could help work out how a monthly half hour show might look. Over optimistic? Perhaps a series run of 6 or so episodes for starters?

We've a fair few regular quality YouTube contributors too. I'm watching one from 'Penny Steam' right now (NNR Gala Pt.1 and boy, does the Y14/J15 look fantastic in GER colours, being lit up in the half-light of the dawn). Some of these clips have many tens of thousands of hits and that's achieved by dedicated filming types just throwing stuff at the internet on a fairly ad-hoc basis.

 

Hear hear. Whilst most of us who have been there know the futility of a 6 month timescale for such a project, if this programme suceeds in getting (say) 100 people sufficiently interested that they go and join their local railways c&w department, then it will have been a massive success for the future of the movement.

 

I enjoyed the program I thought it was great to just see something on TV that was carriage focussed rather than the usual Rocket, Mallard, Flying Scotsman etc
It is obvious that 6 months wasn't enough time but if that is what the TV makers dictated then you have to fit in with their requirements. They are not going to give you 15 years, plus they will have a set budget. You could get round things I guess by fitting out just one or two compartments so they can film and do the others later.

Does anyone know how much funding channel 4 gave for each coach project ?

It gave the flavour for what is required in a wooden bodied C and W which is what is needed to appeal to audiences and potential new volunteers. They aren't going to do a blow by blow account of every single step. In this program they focussed on stuff like the roof canvassing and bogie centre casting, but in subsequent programs I expect they will focus on other stuff.
Was great, looking forward to the next episodes.

By the way, having canvassed a coach myself (on my own) using the method shown, it is a lot harder and more work than it looks, especially getting all the creases out. It took me about 5 solid days of hard effort and I deliberately chose a time when my wife was away to get it done. This LMS coach association video is what people use to give you the method

 

I do know that I.O.W. No. 10 has cost, so far, around double the amount of the contribution from the production company. It is very much the smallest vehicle to be featured in this series but this is counterbalanced by being the only one of the projects to include the fabrication of an entirely new underframe. This is made of laminated European oak with a hidden steel core to take buffing and traction stresses and thus takes the craft of "re-railing" long grounded non-bogie carriage bodies a stage further.

Is it worth it? Well in the case of the I.O.W.S.R. it begins to fulfill a long established policy to restore all the Oldbury carriage bodies and provides a substantial financial boost to this aim. An incalculable amount of publicity is generated as well.

Lastly, isn't this exactly what all supposed "heritage" railways should be aiming for to justify their use of the term?

PH

 

Rather more viewers will have a car/garden/kitchen than full sized rolling stock. I know, coz I wanted a wagon when I was knee high to a shunt disc signal. For some reason, my parents weren't too keen on losing the lawn.

It was good to see applied (comparatively) modern tech, if for no other reason than to attract those interested in such kit to somewhere they can use it hands-on. I've no clue as to how many developments in apparently unrelated fields are finding a niche in the heritage sector, though I suspect the process has gained momentum since the geological problems of many lines in recent years.

Although Peter Snow's mind is clearly as sharp as ever, he does appear rather more frail these days. Let's hope he's good for another series or two. More carriages or maybe wagons, signalling or civil engineering? What say you?