MEMBERS' MONTHLY BULLETIN JUNE 2023

Here is our progress report for June 2023.

Engineering

The chassis frame rectification work referred to in the latest Warrior magazine was completed this month at West Shed. This involved around 100 individual items of work, all of which have been documented for recording in our quality management system.

The status of the driving wheels order with William Cook Cast Products is as follows. Two wheels are ready and we have all the necessary quality documentation. The other four required re-boring and re-machining work identified in their final inspection at the end of May. This work was completed on two of the wheels in mid-June: we are advised by William Cook that the remaining wheels will be finished on June 30^th. We are planning our own inspection visit on Monday 3^rd July.

Repairs to address the chassis component defects identified in our February MPI testing have now been completed by Riley and Son.

Fitted bolts have been produced and next week we plan to refit the middle cylinder to the frames permanently with volunteer help.

The Engineering Team has started work on project engineering strategy options following the review of project progress at our April 2023 Board meeting.  We intend to report the outcome at our 2023 AGM subject to Board approval.

Sales

We attended the GCR 50^th Anniversary event over the weekend of the 17^th & 18^th June. This time we were situated in the yard at Quorn after being informed that the railway is no longer allowing stalls on the station at Loughborough for safety reasons, but it didn’t seem to affect footfall or sales and interest. Gross takings were over £1200 and fortunately the weather stayed mostly fine!

Prize Draw 

A few unsold books of draw tickets have been returned to us without any indication as to who sent them. We realise that some people do not wish to take part for ethical or other reasons. Please let us know if you don’t want us to send tickets in future so that we can mark our records to prevent us sending them again.

Thank you to those of you who have already bought the tickets and many of you kindly included an additional donation which is very much appreciated. Some members have let us know that they do not want us to acknowledge such donations. We hope that you will all agree that your donations are better used towards building the locomotive than a portion of it, however small, going on postage and stationery in sending an acknowledgement.

Finance

We have been making grant applications to charitable grant-making trusts, outlining why our project deserves financial support. We had our first result in June, with an award of £2,000 promised. We have just received £5,000 as part of a Member legacy for which we are very grateful.

The Office 

We have now received formal notice to move from our office by mid-September. Our lease was through a not-for-profit company known as VAST, who are also a charity helping and promoting voluntary services in the local community, which meant we were able to rent at a very favourable rate. Since Covid many other charities have moved out of the building and haven’t been replaced. The cost of running the building is no longer covered by the rental income from those remaining, hence the decision by VAST to close it completely. We are urgently investigating alternative options in the Stafford area.

Thank you for your continuing support for our project.