Farewell St. Leonards - Preservation Report February 2006

from Richard Lakin

You will remember from our last report that we had been spending the 2 - 3 months since the motor coach 11201 went to Horsted Keynes, moving stores out of St. Leonards. This was in readiness for our complete departure from the depot by the end of 2005. For a long time we had no idea where we would be going with the one remaining coach 11187, none of the preserved lines had any room except possibly the East Kent . This location would have been good in many respects, it is of course home to the EPB preservation group, and there would have been the opportunity for '87 to be loco hauled and gain some public exposure. It must surely be good as well for the various EMU preservation groups to cooperate. The problem however is that situated where it is, the East Kent is so far away from where each of us in the preservation team live, that it would have been very difficult to do any useful work.

Various other options were explored and in the end, and rather out of the blue, London 's Transport museum offered us space at their site in Acton .

The one thing that was fairly clear to us, during this uncertain time, was that it was almost certain that '87 would end up standing outside, covered accommodation being even more difficult to find than outdoor. We made a decision therefore that the one vital piece of work we had to complete before moving, was to get the roof finished.

You may remember that we were in the middle of replacing the roof of '87 when the decision was taken to shift our attention to getting '201 ready to go on display at Horsted Keynes. The roof had been completely cleared and the awful bitumen coating that had been used to fix the previous canvas had been planed off. The first job therefore was to apply a coat of wood primer, and we were then ready to fix the canvas.

The roof covering consists of thick heavy canvas which is held in place by glue. This glue is similar in consistency and colour to peanut butter, not the easiest therefore to spread with a brush. It smells very much like putty and I believe that putty is basically what it is, well diluted with linseed oil.

The method of applying it is to haul the canvas up onto the roof, spread it out into position, and then roll it up from each end towards the middle. The glue is then spread out onto the roof and the canvas rolled out on the top of it, back towards the ends. Ideally it is recommended that about 8 people are present to pull the canvas into position as it is unrolled. Now I don't believe that even in the early days of preservation the SEG could muster as many as 8 volunteers, currently we have three, only two of whom are able to get up on the roof, added to this, very often there was only one person available on any one day. Given this limitation we quickly decided that we would have to modify the method, so that even one person alone could get on with the job.

We chose to glue only a strip about 6 feet wide down the centre of the coach first. This could be achieved from working on top of the coach. Having secured the centre we could then work on trestles at the side of the coach, lifting the canvas to apply the glue, and then pulling it down into position and nailing with clout nails just above the metal side panels.

This is not an ideal method as it almost inevitably leads to a few wrinkles, but in general it proved very effective. The problem of wrinkles was made more difficult by the fact that the canvas is not one piece but three strips sewn together with an extra join in the centre for good measure. This is shown in figure 1

It is almost impossible I am sure to sew two pieces of material together and keep the resulting piece flat, and our roof canvas was no exception.

It was mid July then that we started this job, the first weekend went fine, but the following one it poured with rain and we could not get on at all, due to the leaking roof at St. Leonards. We therefore came up with the idea of rigging up a kind of tent made from plastic sheets and bamboo poles which we could work under in the rain. The next weekend we had a shower just as we arrived at the depot, and rigged up the tent ready, Colonel Gadaffi would have been proud of it, but needless to say we did not get another drop of rain while we were working on the roof, either on that day or any subsequently!

One added advantage of completing this job while under cover at St Leonards is that it was possible to work wearing a harness when on top of the coach, which would not be possible outdoors. This is obviously a lot safer, and I must say gives you a great deal more confidence while working. It looks a long way down to the ground when standing on top of the coach, especially as the roof curves away from your feet towards the edge.

When we first spread the canvas out it was clear that it was plenty wide enough, but a bit short in length, we hoped that as we glued it down it would stretch to meet the ends, but unfortunately we were still an irritating 6 inches or so short at each end, may be if we had had more people to stretch it tighter, it would have reached ok, but possibly electric coaches are a shade longer than steam hauled ones. I dare say there are many members who would know if this is the case.

The net result was that we then had no choice but to nail a strip of canvas over the top to complete the length, obviously this is not ideal but now that it is painted it appears to have formed a very good seal.

After the canvas was glued down the next job was to paint it to make it waterproof. First we applied a coat of thin paint all over, this is just normal paint but thinned down to enable it to soak into the canvas. The traditional method is to continue with more coats of this thin paint and build up the thickness, however we decided it would be best to apply one coat of roofseal. This material is the same as we used successfully on '201 now at Horsted Keynes, so we have a fair amount of confidence in it, especially as we had to cover over the strips nailed over each end. Roofseal is thicker than paint but very flexible, so we think it should do a good job, only time will tell.

I mentioned earlier that the ideal working method is to have about 8 people working over one weekend, i.e.16 man days, doing the job in bits as we did, it took about 12 man days, and was complete by the end of October, it was indeed a big relief to know that when the coach was moved it would at long last be waterproof.

The last job to complete the roof is to screw the cant rail strip over the join between the canvas and the side panels as shown in fig. 2.

The canvas is trimmed to the right length, just overlapping the side panels, then the wooden strip (about 2 inches wide) is screwed in place using stainless steel screws, with plenty of mastic on the back of it. Time did not in fact permit the fitting of all the cant rail strips before moving from the depot, only the front and half of one side being complete, but given that the canvas overlaps the side panels there was no real panic to finish the job.

We obviously knew for many months that we would be leaving St leonards, but the end when it came, seemed very sudden, it was only about mid November when we learnt that the moving day would be 6 th December. There was a last minute panic, to board up the open (inner) train end of the coach, also to remove the collector shoes (a necessary requirement to travel over potentially live juice rails in the London Underground sidings at Acton, then all was set.

The move went almost exactly to plan albeit with some delay. SLRE had already shunted the coach into position ready to move, the day before. The lorry did turn up late, and then there were snags hauling the coach up onto the trailer, but the ensemble was still away from the depot on the evening of Tuesday 6 th December. There was some slight damage sustained on the blind side, train end corner while negotiating a sharp bend at Polegate but otherwise the journey was uneventful, although the lorry did not reach Acton until 02:30 the following morning.

So far at the time of writing we have not been able to do any work at Acton , London 's Transport museum staff want to study our risk assessment, and then give us some induction / training before letting us work on site. It will probably be March before we can do any real work. So far, the staff at Acton have shown a good deal of interest in the new arrival, and have been very keen to help.

So that is the end of our time at St Leonards, the group moved 3142 there in 1991. The extra coach '87, which is on long term loan to the group, joined a year or two later. Ever since I joined the group and started working on the Cor, we have been working there, it will seem very strange being somewhere else.

We will miss the "relative" comfort of working indoors, we will probably not miss the fumes from the DEMU's though. We will miss Henry the depot guard dog, I am sure that if anyone had ever broken in he would only have gone up and wagged his tail in greeting. Sadly during his time at the depot he lost a leg in a shunting accident, he does still manage quite well on the remaining three, he can even run a bit, but stopping does present more of a problem.

We will also miss the seagulls, large numbers of these lived on the depot roof, it was not uncommon to see two of them on top of the glass roof, fighting a tug of war over some tasty treat from the sea, or possibly something rather less tasty gleaned from the council dust cart depot on the other side of us from the sea. The glass roof to which I refer was never really water tight, and in heavy rain, water would cascade through the holes onto the coaches, unfortunately, because of the seagulls, that which fell through was not really water, but dilute guano, and white streaks down the coach sides were far from uncommon.

We shall also of course miss the help from the staff at the depot, only a fortnight before the move they were heaving and straining with us, refitting the buffers on the train end of the coach.

At the time of moving to St Leonards the SEG management had predicted confidently that within ten years the unit would be back in running order and on the main line. Clearly this has proved hopelessly over optimistic. To look on the positive side however we have achieved a good deal, '87 has undergone a very substantial rebuild, and the structure is now in very good shape. Given perhaps three years or so, we should be able to finish the outside and refit the internal panelling and seats, so that we will then have a coach ft to be seen, and even hauled if the opportunity arises. 11201 has also been a great success, although it has only been patched and not rebuilt to the same extent as '87, the result is very good, and has brought the group a great deal of publicity.

Let us hope we will continue to make progress while at Acton . Shortage of volunteers is of course a big handicap, let us hope perhaps that some members living in the London area may now be able to join us. Bob Burrows our preservation manager (telephone number inside front cover) will be very pleased to hear from anyone who is interested. There really is no need for any particular skill, there is just no limit to how much any of us can do, once we get bitten by the preservation bug.

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