Preservation Report Winter 2007-8

from Richard Lakin

For last couple of years I have been producing two preservation reports per year, one for Summer and one for Winter. This is tying in well with the way we work because there are very definitely summer jobs and winter ones, we are obviously very limited in what we can do outside this time of year.

By early October we completed our repainting and roof improvements on coach 11201 at Horsted Keynes. The Summer of 2007 will not be remembered as one of England 's finest with new records being set for rainfall and flooding. On Saturday 21st July for instance, the Bluebell held their annual collectors fair at Horsted Keynes. This day started very wet, and I was late arriving because I had been to the Woodpax yard at Sheffield Park to pick up some seats (of which more later). By the time I did get to Horsted Keynes the roads were gridlocked because the Bluebell had had to stop people entering as the car park was a sea of mud, there was no choice but to turn back home - a wasted day.

Apart from this however we seemed to be pretty lucky, typically the rain holding off just long enough to finish painting, it is surprising that as long as the paint is at least tacky before the rain starts, then not too much harm is done, a light rub down and the next coat covers perfectly well. In general we have applied one complete coat to the outside of the coach, two coats where we have been filling. The final stage has then been a coat of varnish to give a shine and of course help keep the water out, before the varnishing however it was necessary to replace some of the orange and black lining which runs right along the side, this had been peeled away where filler was needed. You may remember that this lining was achieved by means of thin strips of tape, the orange being half the width of the black and laid on top of it. Luckily we had enough of the tape remaining to replace these patches.

It is clear that the platform side (drivers side) of '201 suffers worse from the sun than the blind side which is well shaded, in fact the Bluebell notice the same effect on their coaches. As a result we actually applied two coats of varnish to the platform side and only one on the other.

Our other area of work at Horsted Keynes has been to improve the roof, or to be more specific the cant rail. I mentioned in my last report that this wooden strip where the side meets the roof had suffered quite badly from the weather as the rain runs straight onto it, and soaks in. the wet then seeps under the paint on the outside and also runs down inside. We decided that the best approach was to cover it all over with a canvas strip, tucking the top of this strip under the roof canvas and then tacking it down. The canvas is then "glued" over the top of the cant rail with paint, and the whole lot is then painted. This has so far worked out quite well, it is a lot tidier than the flaking paint it covers, and should stand a better chance of keeping the wet out. Finally the roof has been given a complete coat of roofseal, and in this we have received some assistance from a Bluebell volunteer Angus McIntosh.

Only time will tell of course whether these measures will prove effective, in the long term we will have to re roof the coach but we do not want to do this until its sister coach 11187 at Acton is complete. Before leaving '201 we have also finished off upgrading the inside of the cab, some new plywood panels have been fitted to complement the repainting by Simon Jeffs which I referred to last time.

As a final point concerning '201, the Bluebell tend to do customer opinion surveys quite routinely and the Cor coach certainly comes out well, some people rate it as the best attraction on the line (this must be after the ride on the steam trains I am sure), but none the less it is very gratifying to those of us who work either on maintaining or manning it. A very definite success for the group. Let us hope we will be able to build on this success.

November has seen us return to Acton to carry on with fitting out the small saloon on '87. The large saloon as I described last time, is now just about fully fitted out apart from two extra seat backs which are needed at one end, and this in fact was the reason for my visit to Woodpax in July which I mentioned earlier.

We obviously need enough seats to complete both saloons in '87, but in addition we also want to be able at some time in the future to refit the seating in the small saloon of '201 at Horsted Keynes. Some spare seats are stored at Woodpax, and also there are some inside the coaches stored on the East Kent railway. Those at Woodpax are covered in the BR standard Trojan moquette (grey with coloured stripes) which was fitted when the unit was withdrawn, while those at Shepherds Well on the East Kent are mostly of an earlier style probably "boomerang" which is predominantly red. These seats were acquired from the Severn Valley Railway a good few years ago, the reason we picked these up was because '87 did not have any seats at all in the small saloon when the group first got hold of her. It is believed in fact that if she had stayed on the Nene Valley she would have been converted into a cafe, but I digress. The large saloon in '201 has of course been converted into an exhibition area and shop, the need for extra seating therefore would seem to be less urgent, but we have discovered unfortunately that the material on at least some of the seats is in a poor state. In some cases you can push your finger straight through the moquette, the reason for this is of course damp that was an ever present problem at St Leonards and rather worse at Woodpax.

At one time we were worried that we would not have enough seat backs to go at the ends of the saloons, while we have plenty of backs for the middle of the saloons. The end ones are narrower and with flat sides, while those in the middle have curved sides. We have experimented with a couple of mid saloon seats to see if it is possible to convert them to fit at the ends, and this does look possible, but fortunately following a visit to Shepherds Well it does appear that we will have enough ends.

We are confident therefore that we will be able to get enough seats together to complete both coaches, but they will not all be the same colour! '201 already has Trojan in one bay in the small saloon as well of course as in the coupe on the large one, therefore we will try to finish this in Trojan. The large saloon in '87 is also in Trojan, this leaves the small saloon in 87 to be fitted with boomerang. Nothing has been decided for certain yet however.

Before I leave the subject of seats, we tried to find out how much it would cost to buy some Trojan moquette, we have learned that it comes in rolls of about 32m length, £550 per roll with a minimum order quantity of 19 rolls. A quick sum brings this to £10450 plus VAT (of course) - I think we will do the best we can with the boomerang! In fact it is possible to buy some more common colours at about £15 per metre in small quantities, so at least we will be able to cover the seats with something I am sure.

Returning to '87 at Acton, as I write (in early December) we have not spent a great deal of time yet on the small saloon, but none the less progress has been good, we have cleared out the small saloon and stacked the seating we have in the large saloon, this is something of a shame because it rather spoils the ambience, but not for too long I am sure. The internal framework in the small saloon has almost all been replaced (in odd moments) over the last few years, so only a couple of pieces needed replacement, and where existing seat supports have been retained, extra stainless steel screws have been added to help hold them, just as we did in the large saloon.

We had prepared the saloon interior panelling in advance, and this has now all been fitted, plus some of the window surrounds. One difference from the large saloon concerns the colour of the rexene panels under each window, instead of brown, we have used red in this saloon, this should match well if we use boomerang moquette as now seems likely, but at any rate it will provide variety. I believe at one time green panelling was used in smoking saloons, and red in non smoking - the exact opposite of what one might expect these days.

I promised last time that I would give a bit more description of how the seats are supported, so for those with an interest in the technicalities I include a sketch below:

Substantial steel brackets about ¼ inch thick are screwed into the carriage side and also into the seat sides at the gangway end of the seat. This seems perfectly satisfactory in the carriage side as the timber is pretty thick, but the seat sides are only plywood about ¾ inch thick, and you wonder how they manage to hold the weight. However they obviously knew what they were doing 70 years or so ago, as this method has certainly stood the test of time. The seat squabs have holes in the bottom near each edge, which locate onto the pegs on the steel brackets. The base of the squab consists of thick planked wood with steel reinforcing, this holds the springs, over the top of which is a thick layer of horse hair. When you consider that there is a foam rubber cushion on top of this, the standard of comfort is extraordinary compared to the garden furniture style seating on modern trains.

One problem we have encountered is that we do not have enough of the angled steel brackets for the carriage side supports, so we have had to improvise using square brackets from surplus seat sides, it is then necessary to insert an extra angled wooden spacer (the angle of the carriage side is in fact rather exaggerated in the sketch.

As I write this we have just finished fitting the seat supports to the carriage sides in the small saloon.

To conclude I will return to my opening statement about summer and winter jobs. We have been giving a certain amount of thought to our programme of work for the next few years, and tentatively propose a plan as follows:

This still leaves us with the roof fittings to replace on '87, and undoubtedly more remedial work to do on '201, but we would by the end of 2010 be close to having a 2 car unit capable of being hauled (I cannot see that the exhibition area and shop in '201 should be an impediment to running). This of course is an exciting prospect, and while I am sure like all the best laid plans of mice and men, it is very likely to be delayed, it is good to have a definite goal in mind. Of course should we manage to attract more volunteers, we could even improve on this schedule...

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