Round and about

At the end of last week, this was the state of play with the steam crane, nearly all painted and ballast going back into the ballast boxes after new wheel arches were made and fitted to the frames.
Over the weekend, we visited family in Morecambe, and during a walk on the prom, I took advantage of the January sunshine to photograph the Midland Hotel, with LMS ancestry dating from 1933 and being an icon of art deco design. More info here: http://www.midlandhotel.org/
I had a call from a friend who is a freelance industrial conservator on Monday, he was going to visit Washington "F" Pit in Washington, Tyne & Wear for its annual condition survey. As someone with an interest in industrial archaeology, I was keen to have a look, so went up yesterday morning and met up with Paul Jarman, curator of transport at Beamish in order to discuss some matters of mutual interest which you'll find out about when they take place! Paul has put photos of the winding engine on his blog http://beamishtransport.blogspot.com/ . In the yard of the museum in the shadow of the headgear is this unique Ruston & Hornsby mines loco, LHU class number 392157 of 1956, a 2 foot gauge machine. Paul can be seen behind the engine recording it for posterity and he's caught me doing the same!
Heading in to York by train today I caught "Tornado" being prepared outside the museum this morning in readiness for its Royal Train duties tomorrow. That's Richard Pearson, our workshop manager at Shildon climbing into the cab, he having taken this week off to assist the A1 Trust with the run to Manchester where Prince Charles will visit the Museum of Science & Industry on the last day in post for their Director Steve Davies before he begins as the NRM's new Director next week.
Half term will soon be upon us, and the major attraction at York will be our newly rebuilt and reboilered replica of Stephenson's "Rocket", which you can seen here on test after the work was undertaken at the Flour Mill, Bream and Alan Keef Limited and is due to arrive at York later this week:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nulzwWq-dR8 Alongside "Rocket", we have borrowed "Locomotion", the 1975 built replica from Beamish, to run as well. Here it is arriving with James Milner at York this lunchtime. The chimney has been taken off for transport and the motion has been arranged to be at its lowest height to get under the Leeman Road bridge just before the museum. Should be interesting to see the two in steam in a couple of weeks!







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