Southern Electric Group 4Cor unit 3142 Preservation Report 3

Power Car Front End

The layout of the power car has a driver’s cab at the outer end, with a guard’s compartment behind it. The remainder of the car is divided into two open saloons of 2+2 seating in bays—i.e. face to face. There are four bays at the inboard end and 3½ in the saloon adjacent to the guard’s compartment. The half bay is at the guard’s end and is called the coupe. It is rather claustrophobic with passengers facing the seat backs in front of them and perhaps represented the shape of things to come! The presence of this coupe compartment means that the window nearest the guard’s van is smaller than the others. At either end of the saloon is a vestibule (a transverse corridor) with a passenger door each side, thus only two passenger doors, per coach on either side, serve the entire car.

By April 1998 all of the wooden framework on the driver’s side of the saloons had been repaired. The upper body panels had all been patched as necessary and all seven lower panels replaced with new ones. We did not at this point proceed with refitting the panels as there was possibility that we could obtain more ‘red lead’ paint and a coat of this before assembly would be a big help to guard against further rusting.

In the meantime, however, we turned our attention to the nearside of the guard’s compartment and the front end. See Figure 1 for the general layout of this side. The vestibule door was in good shape and did not require any major attention. The guard’s compartment, not have a window, meant that there had been nowhere for water to seep in and rust the upper panel which did not therefore need replacing. But the lower panel was in a similar state to those on the passenger saloons and the wooden main bearer was split at each end by rusting bolts—i.e. the bolts which hold the reinforcing brackets and which in turn hold the upright to the main bearers.

The main bearer was repaired using small patches in the outer face, held in place by coach screws and glue in a similar manner to the work done further back. One problem that came to light and which we had come across before, was the presence of bolts through the main bearer to secure it to brackets on the inside. The heads of these bolts were quite badly rusted. Previously these had been removed and new bolts fitted. It had taken a day or two to do this after drilling holes all the way around the bolt in order to loosen it. A simpler and quicker method was called for.

These bolts almost certainly do not affect the strength of the carriage, merely holding the frame together before it is bolted to the steel bars. It was therefore decided to simply cut off the remains of the head, cur a thread on what remained and fit a nut and washer to hold the bolt. The wooden path was then fitted over the top.

The lower body on the guard’s compartment was found to be in rather better shape than those further back. Being fitted between two doors meant there was no overlap at the edges to encourage rusting. As the cost of a new panel is about £80 or more, we decided to patch the old one as necessary to save money. A strip about 6" wide was cut from the bottom and this was replaced by sections from discarded panels, these being butt welded into place. We had been warned that welding a long seam in a panel such as this is likely to cause it to buckle, but my friend at the local garage did a good job, spot welding at intervals to reduce the effects of heating. The final seam did have some buckling, but with a bit of hammering (panel beating?) and filling, it finished up looking quite good. The refitting process which caused the panel to bend to mach the curve of the body side tended to smooth out buckles still further. The panel was painted before fitting with zinc phosphate which is OK for older, rougher metal, but it does not adhere quite as well to new panels where red lead would be preferred. The replacement panel obviously only cost a fraction of the price of a new one.

Next in line came the guard’s doors. The framework on both was in good condition. The lower part of the door has a metal panel screwed on in a similar manner to the body side panels. The windows slide up and down and are held in any required position by means of a leather strap. (The passengers doors have a lever to ‘lock’ or ‘release’ the windows.) The metal panel on one door was fine, but the other was missing having probably been discarded earlier as being beyond repair. Having cut patches from discarded panels to repair others, the logical approach was to cut a complete new door panel from one of the old body side panels. This proved surprisingly easy as the panel is a simple rectangular shape, the only complication being that the top of the panel folds over inwards for about an inch under the window, the panel effectively hanging on the wooden frame. It was then only a matter of drilling the fixing holes round the edge of the replacement panel.

One point not discussed before is that in order to screw any of the panels to the frame, the fixing holes have to be pressed inwards to take the head of the countersunk screw. For the new panels, this had been done in what could be considered the professional manner, but we had to improvise. A reasonably large nut was placed on a solid base underneath the panel and a suitable sharpened bolt was inserted into the hole before being struck with a hammer. See Figure 2. this did not provide quite as clean a recess as a proper tool, but when fitted and with the screws in place, it looks equally good.

Moving forwards from the guard’s door, the front corner around the driver’s cab was in good condition. Luckily, one could say, this portion had suffered some accident damage while in service and most of this section had been renewed! The front corner and most of the front end had been repainted with red lead at an earlier stage during preservation.

At each front corner is a rounded panel running the full height of the carriage. This is in good order on the driver’s side as explained about, but the same could not be said for the opposite, blind side, corner. The blind side, or offside, is that on the opposite side to the driver where the headcode was carried in place of another forward facing window. The corner panel on the blind side was almost rusted away at the base and the main bearer was badly split with rusted bolts. The upright post at the edge of the driver’s door had completely come adrift at the base. The layout of this side is exactly the same as that for the driver’s side shown in Figure 1, previously referred to.

The framework at the bottom of the front corner is held together by a special reinforcing bracket as shown in Figure 3. The bracket is about a foot long and ³/₈" thick. Both ends have uprights to bolt to the door pillar and front corner upright, these ends being strengthened by webs. The base of this bracket is bolted to the main bearer and front cross beam. The woodwork repairs were made in a similar way to the ones mentioned earlier, using an Iroko wood patch, glue and coach screws. Fortunately we had replacement brackets which had been specially made some years ago. It must be said that we rely quite heavily on spares like these which have been built up in earlier years, also the more normal brackets used on the body sides and body panel screws. All five cars at St Leonard’s are staked up with them!

Once the framework had been made good, the corner panel had to be addressed. Some years ago a replacement corner panel had been made up for 11201 and a spare was also made to the same pattern. Unfortunately this proved to be wrong as it was for the driver’s side corner. The cost of a new panel would have been very high, being curved round through 90°, but without parallel sides and without a constant radius curve. So patching was the best option as, apart from the bottom 4" or so and one or two other small patches, it was in reasonable shape. A replacement strip about 6" wide was pinned into position with pop rivets and then welded professionally. The curve was a bit difficult to judge, but once screwed in place, the panel bent to the required position satisfactorily.

Finally, I will describe the work on that most characteristic feature of these units, the end gangway. Figure 4 shows a cross section through this item. Some time ago, the gangway from 11187 was removed and a start made on replacing it with that from 11201. The latter car is the one in the poorest condition of our three power cars and will probably be the last to be restored. Its poor state was one major reasons for acquiring 11187 as an alternative. The inner shroud from this replacement gangway had been fitted to 11187. new bellows have been made—another item from our “Aladdin’s Cave”—a new one would have cost around £1,000.

The outer shroud was more of a problem. This shroud forms a complete arch around the doors as shown in Figure 5 and being in the position it is means that rust will inevitably get to it. There were holes in several places and one lower end had almost completely gone! This was removed for patches to be welded in. The complete replacement of one bottom end was a particular challenge with the shape of the cross section being maintained all the way round the corner. Carrying an item such as this in a car is quite an interesting experience. The only way is to insert it through the rear door (of a Maestro hatchback) and rest the bottom corner on the dashboard. Accessibility of the controls is OK but getting in and out is not easy! The outer shroud was then bolted back to the front plate, which is a fairly thick piece of metal and required little attention, other than a repaint.

The doors slide on a runner fixed to the top of the front plate. Their construction is of wood (coarse ply/blackboard) with a thin sheet of metal screwed onto each of the outer faces. The wood at the bottom of one door was in a poor state and a new section had to be spliced in. the thin metal sheeting was also rusted in places around the bottom. This thin sheet was unsuitable for welding so metal reinforcing patches were pop riveted to the inner side, the wood being relieved to take the extra thickness. Filler was then applied to obtain a flat finish.

The front end has not yet been completed, nor has the gangway been fully reassembled. Several items like the junction boxes, cables and rigging associated with the gangway still require cleaning and repainting. To return to the driver’s side of the body, it had become clear that we could not expect to get hold of any more red lead and would have to be content with zinc phosphate which is considered in the trade to be almost as good. We have had to use this to coat the body’s side panels and all of this side has now been replaced apart from the window frames. It certainly looks more like a train now, but it has been suggested that in the red oxide colour it looks more like Metropolitan Railway stock. It must be added, however, that where the bright new screws stand out against the red panels, it appears to be more of a Meccano model!