4 COR Preservation Report Winter 2003/2004

Once again the preservation report centres very much on our move out of St Leonards. As has been reported we will be keeping the power car 11187 at St Leonards at least for the medium term future, to continue with the thorough overhaul which we have been carrying out for the last 8 or 9 years. Another Power car 11201 will also stay at St Leonards for a shorter time to undergo “cosmetic” restoration prior to going on display at Horsted Keynes on the Bluebell line later this year. This leaves the third power car 11161 and the two trailer cars 11825 (composite) and 11196 (third class) which have to move out to the former Woodpax wood yard premises at Sheffield Park, again adjacent to the Bluebell line. Figure 1 shows how the carriage wheels will sit on the rails after the move. Our first priority was to empty out 11201 prior to its being smartened up to go on show at Horsted Keynes. This car has traditionally been used to store all our spares and other useful bits and pieces and all of this has had to be moved into one of the three going to Woodpax yard.

Before we transferred our attention entirely to the move we have made a bit more progress on the power car 11187. The roof has now been completely stripped. I remember complaining last time about the heat in the summer causing the old bitumen to become sticky and clog the planes, but it seemed that as soon as the roof was clear the winter monsoons arrived to prevent us getting on with painting the planking, and only a small part of the roof has been painted to date, it should be pointed out that although we are indoors, nowhere at St Leonards is the roof sufficiently secure to prevent enough drips coming through to dampen some part of the area you are painting.

Another area of progress is the gangway at the train end, this as I mentioned last time had been cut away with a knife from its former home on one of the Brighton Belle cars. The damaged strip at the end has been replaced by a piece cut from a sheet of tarpaulin this has been sewn on, partly by hand and partly machine, and the whole gangway is being repainted in tyre paint and we hope it should end up looking almost as good as new.

Lastly the current limiter relay which fits inside the cab on the opposite side to the driver just under the headcode box has been removed and stripped down ready for repainting.

All these jobs and a good number of others must now wait for some months at least, while we concentrate on the move, and later the power car 11201 ready for it to go on display at Horsted Keynes. 11187 has therefore been sheeted over for the time being.

The date for the move has been rather flexible, originally it was going to be before the end of 2003, but in the end it slipped to mid February this year. We decided that the best way of protecting these three coaches was to sheet them thoroughly while still at St Leonards in the dry, and then they would be protected even if it was raining during the move.

In December therefore we started moving all the gear out of 11201 and putting it in one of the other three cars. I must say that the impending move has certainly encouraged more people to come along to help, a fair proportion of whom are not even SEG members. It is nice to see the Cor has such a wide following.

The moving around complete, we then turned our attention to sheeting up those coaches which were going to move. The tarpaulins used measure 7m by 5m and a total of 11 were used for each coach. One at each end was followed by three along each side, joined together along the centre line of the roof, and pulled almost together underneath. There is about 18 inches overlap where these sheets join. To cover the join along the centre of the roof three more sheets were placed over the top. All these sheets were securely tied with rope through the eyelets. This work took several week ends even with the extra help, the last coach was complete only about a week before the move.

The move started on 9^th February and was planned to take 3 days, about a dozen volunteers turned up at Sheffield park.

The first job was to transport the rails from the bogie wagon where the bluebell workers had stacked them, onto the low loader which was already parked there overnight. Our fist thought was that it might be easy enough to lever the rails over the side onto the lorry, about a foot lower down, but the driver vetoed this for fear of damaging his vehicle (probably quite reasonably). This left only one option—to lift the rails by hand using lifting dogs. I had never seen these before but they are like tongs that grip the rail and their action is shown in Figure 2.

The rails were 45 feet long and assuming 95 lbs per yard weigh about 1600 lbs which divided by 12 gives rather more than 1 cwt each. It could always have been worse, they might have given us 60 foot rails!

It was then a short run by the low loader to the Woodpax yard where the rails (12 of them) could now be levered off directly onto the ground. The lorry then set off followed by two volunteers to St Leonards to pick up the first coach, we were now running a bit late however it was by this time about 1130. To help us in laying the rails we had the use of a digger on caterpillar tracks which was able to lift the rails by means of a chain slung under the centre of the section. It took one or two attempts to find the centre, but with a couple of people on either end it was relatively easy to lower the rails into position. We decided to make two tracks side by side, one at the edge of the yard to take two carriages, and another alongside to take the remaining coach. The surface of the yard was fairly flat and was made up of what looks like crushed tarmac from an old road surface. This stage of the operation went quite well and by early afternoon we had laid the tracks and then settled down using shovels to fill any voids under the rails, especially near the joins, while we waited for the lorry to return.

We waited in vain, but luckily one of the volunteers managed to get in touch with the pair at St Leonards, the lorry driver had apparently refused to carry the coaches with the sheeting on, for fear of it flapping loose. Our two volunteers then had the job of cutting away the offending tarpaulins, a bitter pill to swallow after spending all that time carefully tying it on.

By now it was too late to bring the coach to Woodpax, a police escort was required and they would not sanction the movement after 4 pm. Day one therefore could at best be considered only a partial success.

Day two the lorry did make it to Woodpax. The next problem however was that our first line of track was considered to be too close to the bank at the edge of the yard for the lorry to get in, so the coach 11161 was placed on the second road out. Some adjustment was necessary to the gauge but it went in alright with a bit of help from the digger to push it up the slope. Again there was not enough time to bring the second coach, so another partial success.

Day three followed a similar pattern as day two but with the added complication that the lorry sank into the ground trying to get the coach onto the original road, the situation was saved however by the trusty digger which helped pull it out. All of this meant that the 2 coach road now had to be re laid the other side of the short road. This completed, the second coach 11185 was placed alongside the motor coach.

Day four saw the last coach 11196 placed into position on the end of the road holding the other trailer, without any further mishap (as if we needed one). In the end the move was completed satisfactorily but as you will have gathered not without problems. A lot of people put in a lot of extra effort to ensure the successful completion of the operation.

There remained then, only the small matter of recovering the coaches. The problem was aggravated by the fact that the trailer third 11196 does not have any roof covering, only the bare planks. However the weather which had at least been kind throughout the move remained dry and this coach was successfully covered the following Sunday 15th Feb, and the open gangways covered on the other two coaches. At the time of writing the job of re sheeting remains to be completed.

This extra work will of course have an impact on the completion of the cosmetic restoration of 11201. As has been stated in earlier issues this is a very important phase in the progress of the SEG, bringing as it does the opportunity to gain publicity, and stimulate interest in the Cor, and third rail preservation in general.

Our work in the next few months therefore will be rather different to that which we have been pursuing for the past few years, this is a chance to do something which will have a big short term impact. The prospect of putting in a few days work and helping to transform a slightly run down looking coach into a pristine exhibit which will be seen by thousands of people is surely a very rewarding prospect. This is a chance to enhance the prestige of the group, which reflects on all of us. It goes without saying that anyone interested in helping is more than welcome to come along. Jobs will include filling, rubbing down and painting bodywork, a certain amount of woodwork, and roof repairs the latter involving painting a coat of sealer on top of what is basically a sound covering.

I hope to see you there.

This page last updated 2nd July 2004 by Colin Duff.
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