Mid Hants Railway Operational Matters

I guess your the perfect person to help me Duty Druid , where are the Watercress Line getting all these passenger guard vans from?!!

 

Sometimes, just sometimes we question our sanity on a Saturday morning as why we are there........ but to be qeustioned by the bakers as to just why we were there takes the biscuit!!!

My response was, the weather doesn't stop us from turning up, we can always find something to do........ but they actually thought we'd all give it a miss becuase of something happening in London........ Nope, we have troublesome trucks to tame!!!

And so, dear reader, a rather soggy day greeted the five like minded nutters who gathered in the mess room for breakfast....... our plans had been based around sorting out the T&G for LMS van M517317 that had been delivered during the week, but the weather put paid to what we wanted to do!

So...... first job of the day was to move 25 lumps of T&G of varying lengths anywhere from 4m up to 6m........ it proved an 'interesting' exercise, as we had to move them vertically, not horizontally as we had to weave them around various vehicles!!!

That done, we then had our first proper look at the S&D road van that is in the yard for some TLC.... not sure who's doing what with it yet, but there's also the S&D box van alongside it..... this had been reported as having stiff brakes..... upon inspection it was obvious that the brakes and linkage were in need of some TLC, so began the process of taking it all apart bit by bit, cleaning it up, greasing it & putting it back togther.........

Then muggin's 'ere had to nip down to Ropley to see his Ropley spy, who for once was pleased to see me! ....... mainly because I had something for him, which for once wasn't money! If you want to know what it was, you'll just have to attend the ULS open day later this year to find out.......

Upon my return, it turned out that one of our newest recruits had yet to experience a full round trip of the line & mugin's suddenly found himself being volunteered to show matey around the railway - not that I was complaining, at least it was dry and warm in the carriages behind 41312, so matey had the cnace to sample & see the difference between a Bullied open 3rd, Mk I TSO & Mk I FK........

Upon our return to base, 2/3rds of the brakes on the S&D van had been done and the lenghts of T&G had been cut to size., oh, and the rain had finally eased off !!!

It was nice to see the loco's tastefully decked out in honour of the coronation - a couple of pics.....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52876837382/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52876839297/in/dateposted-public/

Finally, on behalf of all in the wagon group, a big thank you to all who came and saw us at the gala, either by visiting our sales stand, taking a brake van ride, visiting the model railway PMV or just making a donation, our funds for taming the troublesome trucks are now a bit better - thank you!

Some more pics from the weekend......

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52877867083/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52877867428/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52877865863/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52870207136/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52870591220/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52870207196/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/duty_druid/52870365909/in/dateposted-public/

 

Some pictures from the excellent Coronation event at the railway yesterday. According to a press report today there were over 500 people attending the event at Alresford. The train services were sadly a bit quiet though.

 

I must have been standing a little further down the bridge! Took the BBC camerman lineside to film 506 departing but that bit didn't make the report on "South Today" yesterday.

Iron Horse, Hobby Horse by Stephen Morley, on Flickr

next to you!

 

Not very far away. We took the shot at the same time as we have both captured the crew waving.
My sister and I were a bit worried we were going to end up on the news as the BBC cameraman filmed us eating our lunch for ages!
We saw him filming the guy that was featured on the news report. He filmed a lot of coverage at the party.
I wonder if he also filmed the hang gliders? We thought that the King and Queen were dropping in for a surprise visit!

Sent from my XQ-BT52 using Tapatalk

 

There was a hang glider over Alresford last week when 4073 and 5329 were preparing for their double header. There always seems to be a (I'm assuming privately owned) plane that flies over Ropley every time I seem to attend a Gala event on the Railway too.

 

Needing two generator vans for Steam Illuminations created a reason to reactivate the vans. I think they look great.

 

They do, especially behind 41312

41312 celebrates the Coronation by Stephen Morley, on Flickr

When 35005 is back, we can combine that set and the RAT set to hang 9 coaches and a BY behind her!

 

You could do that with a Black 5. Or an S15 if you haven’t got one of those to hand.

 

Done that. Boring. Put 13 or 14 behind it and I’d be more interested.

 

The S15 with 9 is a very good idea. More would be even better though. 11?

 

9 years ago (I think) there was a Mid Hants - Bluebell Charter with "Braunton". When it go to the Bluebell, the charter terminated at Kingscote and we ran a feeder service for the passengers using our S15, which I fired. The last trip was the S15, 7 of our coaches, Braunton's support coach and Braunton itself, which was being towed "dead" since they wanted to conserve water. (I think they went our backwards, reversed at East Croydon and then had to get back to the MHR without a water stop, so didn't want to use any water unnecessarily before East Croydon). The eight carriages were 282 tons, so probably about 420 tons tare, which is about equivalent to 12 in weight. 847 absolutely romped away, even with me on the shovel (I was still a cleaner back then, when such things were still allowed ...)

It always struck me with an S15 that the more you put behind them, the better they go. The trickiest trip I've ever had with one was light engine straight off shed after an indeterminate wait while there were signalling difficulties, when it was a real handful with no draught when we did eventually get going. Give them a big load and they are fine.

Tom

 

Got to agree with your thoughts on the S15’s. They steam more the harder you work them and when you’ve got it throwing hotties out of the fire hole door you know it’s on song. Need to keep the back end well filled as, given half a chance, it will lift it up and deposit it at the front of the box.
Intrigued at your comment with regards to cleaners and ‘such things were still allowed.’

 

Back then we had a grade of “rules-passed cleaner” (*) who had passed the rules part of their assessment, but not the firing part. You could fire unaccompanied (ie just driver + RPC) at the driver’s discretion. That’s no longer allowed - you now have to have passed all parts of the firing assessment to fire unaccompanied.

(Cleaners can still fire under instruction as a third man, of course, but you have to have a qualified driver and fireman on the footplate: ten years ago, our rules allowed just a driver plus a second rules-competent person, so driver + rules passed cleaner was allowed).

(*) Entirely unrelated to “passed cleaner” which is something else altogether.

Tom

 

Surely any proper loco should be able to make Rugby non stop on an express from East Croydon - after all that used to be a tank engine run so why were they nervous about making Alton?

 

Big load (probably about 9 or 10 coaches plus a trailing diesel as I recall) plus everything round London uses a lot of water because there are frequent accelerations and slowing for pathing. If they had just taken their fair share of the load to East Grinstead they could easily have been 800 gallons down on a 4500 gallon tank before they even got off the Bluebell. Knock another 1000 gallons off as your contingency reserve and you can see why they wanted to save water. Beyond that - ask a mainline crew! It didn’t seem an odd request at the time when they asked us to do the work to Kingscote.

Tom

 

Back in the day on busy lines there were probably water columns every few hundred yards so pushing your loco to use every last gallon in the tank wasn’t a huge thing. If you run out of water now the consequences of dropping fires, delay attribution, etc are significant and it would be a brave person who took that decision.

 

We haven't built that platform extension at Alresford yet Simon!

 

Who needs passengers

 

True!