MEMBERS’ MONTHLY BULLETIN JULY 2021

Engineering 

A full report on the driving wheels defects reported last month was submitted to our quarterly Trustee Board meeting on 31^st July (our first face-to-face board meeting since January 2020).  The Board accepted the evidence which showed that the wheels will have to be replaced, and gave guidance on the way forward for the project.  

As reported previously we are in dialogue with Boro Foundry who cast the wheels in 2010/11. This is likely to take a little while, to allow the foundry to complete their own investigations to enable discussion between the parties. The wheels are being transferred to the foundry next week for that purpose. In parallel we are actively considering our replacement options and we will report further at the appropriate time.    

PRCLT’s work on our locomotive continues to be limited to one day per week because of maintenance commitments on their own locomotive 6233. However preparatory work has started to allow minor modification work on the outside cylinders. 

Also, PRCLT completed their detailed assessment work on the chassis in late July; and at the time of writing we expect to conduct a joint review of the findings in the first half of August. 

With the tooling over of the boiler side stays complete, an order has now been placed with HBSS to install the transverse stays.

An order has been placed with Leaky Finders for the next phase of work on the tender axle box horns. 

Finance 

A review of the results for Quarter 1 to 30^th June shows that we are roughly 5% down on the income budget set at the Board Meeting in April. The Board will of course review these figures in detail as they have significant implications for what we now have to do to progress the locomotive to completion.

More detail will be provided in the Treasurer’s report in the next edition of The Warrior; however, it is clear that we need your continued unstinting support more than ever.

Website 

We apologise to any members who, for system management reasons, were unable to access our website from 18^th to 25^th July.  Happily this has now been resolved. 

AGM

We can confirm that with the easing of Covid restrictions we will be holding our AGM  on Saturday 13^thNovember 2021 at Severn Valley Railway Kidderminster. It is our intention to make a full presentation at that meeting on the way forward for the project. Further details and the meeting invitation will be sent out with the next issue of The Warrior.