Preservation Report February 2007

from Richard Lakin

In the last preservation report, I wrote about working at three different sites: The East Kent Railway, Horsted Keynes on the Bluebell line, and the London Transport museum at Acton . The last six months have seen activity at all three sites and I will cover them separately.

First, the East Kent Railway where we have three of the original four coaches from unit 3142. These coaches are not in a state where they can be left out in the open, and stout tarpaulins were purchased to protect them. The most vulnerable coach is the trailer third, this has no canvas roof covering at all, and so top priority was to get this covered with the tarpaulins. This was duly completed within the first few weeks, in fact in the photo on the front of LR 213 the sheeting can clearly be seen over the middle coach. The other two coaches had some temporary patching with tape, and the plan was that the driving motor coach S11161 would be opened as a static exhibit. Some of the stores were removed from this coach and placed in the goods van which the SEG had purchased for this purpose. Unfortunately however as we had rather feared, it has proved too difficult for volunteers to get to the East Kent regularly, and so in October, a party of five of us went down to finish covering the driving motor coach and trailer composite completely.

This was the first visit for most of us to Shepherds Well; it is in a rather pleasant rural setting, with a smart if fairly small station, and with the EPB group's 2 EPB and MLV in the platform. A couple of hundred yards down the track their 4 BEP is in the siding and just beyond that the three Cor coaches.

Fortunately we picked a day with good weather and covering the remaining two coaches proved a relatively straight forward task, the tarpaulins are heavy but with two people on the roof to pull it did not take too long. We noticed that the trailer third had been sheeted with the tarpaulin tied to the bogies and unfortunately while manoeuvring around the tight curves the bottom ends had torn as the bogies swung around. No serious damage was done however and we re tied the sheeting on this coach, and made sure that we did not tie anything to the bogies on the other coaches either.

In the short term it seems that there is nothing more that we can do with these coaches and they must remain in store rather as they were at the Woodpax yard at Sheffield Park .

Moving on to Horsted Keynes, motor coach 11201 is still drawing in the visitors (and the money). By and large the coach is standing up well to its period outdoors, however there are a few nagging problems which require attention on a semi regular basis. The paint has peeled in a number of places and the main reason for this is old filler that had been applied before repainting, quite probably while still in service with BR. This old filler is apt to crumble, and the thick flakes of paint over it start to curl up. Oddly the metal underneath is often perfectly good and we have applied fresh paint on to this, to restore the appearance, at least from a distance. In addition there are of course areas where rust has poked through, where we filled the holes before moving to Horsted Keynes, some of these areas have been re filled and painted, it is all rather like the Forth bridge. The one area of the outside which has suffered most is the cant rail, paint has peeled very badly on this, and it requires a proper repaint.

The most serious problem however has been water getting inside, as always with water it is very difficult to be entirely sure where it is getting in, some must be coming in through the roof but some also probably through the sides especially around the windows. Inevitably the electrical sockets which power the heaters to keep any damp at bay are situated on the side wall of the coach, and this is of course where the wet runs down. It does not need much water to get inside a socket to cause the supply to trip, and this is what has tended to happen.

We did some repairs to the roof in June, and found a split which had developed in the old canvas; we patched this and recoated the area in roof seal. This work was all done on a day when it was so hot you could hardly bear to touch the roof. Later on in November we took another look at the roof on a day when we had to wait for the frost to melt before starting work. We were pleased to see that the previous patch was still good. We then proceeded to chip away all the old coating around the conduit which runs the length of the coach, and patch underneath this with roofing felt. The theory being that this area around the conduit is very difficult to seal and where puddles can form. We did about half the length of the coach in this manner, time will tell if this has any great benefit.

There is still some wet getting in through the side and although this can never be as much as could come in through the roof, it is still too much for the electrical sockets, we therefore plan to move these sockets under a seat or to some other suitable position where the wet cannot get to them.

Overall however I must say that '201 is still looking good and is a good advert for the group. The fact that the Bluebell line has given the group a further two year extension at Horsted Keynes, is surely a tribute to its worth.

Lastly but by no means least is our main project, motor coach 11187 at the London transport museum at Acton . Back in the August report we had reached the stage of clearing one side of the large saloon ready to start replacing the internal framework. For six weeks or so we did not visit the coach at all, but concentrated on making up framework and panelling at home, using old pieces salvaged from the coach as templates. Finally in late August we took a car loaded with pieces of internal woodwork up to Acton ready to start wholesale restoration.

Figure 1 shows the framework of a typical seating bay. The uprights are all teak body members, all these have stood up pretty well over the years, and of course form the structure of the body. The internal framework is in a much worse state however. The most important parts of this structure are the seat supports, these are made of hardwood and about half of them in the large saloon are fit to reuse. Those that are too rotten to use are being replaced with new hardwood ones. The inner skirting board and panel backing strips were originally softwood and virtually all of these are rotten. These we have replaced again with softwood, having taken the precaution first however of treating them with wood preserver, and then painting in wood primer. The arm rest supports have also been replaced in the same way.

The top part of the internal panelling consists of 9 mm (originally 3/8") plywood. This comes down as far as the lower edge of the window. Below this on the curved part of the side is a sheet of more flexible (4 mm) plywood, this is covered over its upper part by Rexene (American cloth), and below this the wood is just painted. The upper panels are almost all beyond repair although we have salvaged one upper panel to reuse on the drivers side. The lower panels have long since crumbled almost completely away and so these are all being replaced. The steel seat supports will eventually screw through the lower panel into the seat supports behind.

Having refitted the framework on the driver's side of the large (front end) saloon, the whole frame was treated with wood preserver, we then fitted the upper panels, but it still remains to refit the lower ones. This saloon has now been completely emptied of stores and the old panels and framework on the blind side taken out (and thrown away). New framework has been fitted to almost all of this side also, but the panelling is still under construction.

This then is the status as I write this report in mid December. Our plans for the short / medium term are quite ambitious; we are hoping to largely complete the fitting out of this saloon during the remainder of this winter. This will include replacing the lino (probably with vinyl).

When the weather improves we want to work outside on finishing off the cant rail, replacing the gangway bellows on the train (back) end, and the junction boxes, there is also one last step board to fit. Perhaps then next winter we will concentrate on the smaller saloon, much of the internal framework has already been replaced in this saloon which was never in such a bad state as the large one. This leaves only the outside to be repainted, and although there is a significant amount of work to be done on other odd areas, we are quite close to getting the coach into a state where it is fit to be seen and fit also to be hauled on a preserved line if the opportunity arises.

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