6024 King Edward 1

Which may well help answer @GWR4707's question.

 

At the end of the day do you think i will see The King turn a wheel again before i turn my toes up only asking as a ex volunteer ??.

 

It a wonderful sight seeing her working hard the note of the locomotive it a must and i hope to see her again the power of a king in full flight is a must .second is seeing her doing what she does best Roaring along the sea wall at Dawlish .

 

No we most certainly did not do anything like a shoddy job. Professionals from outside were utilised when necessary to ensure the work was completed thoroughly and correctly and signed off. LSL refused point blank to come to Minehead to carry out their inspection which would have been the easiest option, and instead chose to uproot her on a low loader and drive it to Crewe. We KNEW that day that we had lost her, despite a successful steam test and running up and down the yard at Minehead. We were that close to finishing and apart from any snagging needing doing and some minor wiring, getting back out where we belonged on the mainline. Gutted really does not cut it I'm afraid.

 

The work on 6024 was done at Minehead not Williton, but they are all consummate professionals on the WSR.

 

The 6024 Preservation Society as was never once failed to make payments as required under the agreement.

 

You will always play the 6024 side so there is no reasoning with you. I note you’ve failed to answer the question multiple people have asked……

So I say again…..What strikes me is LSL have accepted 60007 and 71000 with minimal fuss, they didn’t accept them and then take them to bits again. Same with 61306, other than fitting air brakes it was straight out in service, albeit already in ticket I grant you. And that gives me a great deal of confidence that not all was well with 6024. To spend the man hours they have taking it to bits and going again suggests they found things that they weren’t happy with, otherwise why be so resource wasteful?

 

But also, why would LSL/Hoskins want money to be spent on the loco at Minehead and then for that to be 'wasted', along with time out of action, and then started again up at Crewe? Guess we will never know the full facts but let's hope we see 6024 again back out doing what she was built to do very soon. Very odd LSL would not inspect the loco at Minehead, yet house locos on the WSR for months on end, don't you think?

 

6024 has obviously seen it's fair share of issues behind the scenes with the society and LSL, but I hope it wont be long before we see it on the mainline again.

I've travelled three times on the mainline with 6024 on railtours. The first out of Cleethorpes to Holyhead in 1999 which was a massive contrast in weather kind of day. The 47 was caked in snow on arrival at Crewe, and it was glorious sunshine at Holyhead... 6024 flew that day!

The second was again form Clee to Bristol in 2000 with 6024 scheduled to run from Reading - Bristol - Didcot. Unfortunately, we only got Bristol - Didcot due to operational issues.

The third was over the Settle Carlisle around the same period (2000ish) I can't remember where that started or where I got on (I think the steam started in Crewe), but it was a poor day all round. 6024 really struggled - poor coal I seem to remember, and the weather was shocking.

Good memories though!

 

Perhaps the money LSL were spending was in good faith of the job being done to their standard, and it wasn’t maybe?

I can only go off what I’ve heard from the LSL camp, and as such this is very one sided, but if it was true I’d totally understand the need to take it to bits.

 

As others have suggested, I suspect there are three sides to this story.

On the one hand, I can totally understand the argument that says “if LSL were happy with the work, why would they spend considerable sums re-doing it?” But I’d be less confident about a blasé acceptance of “Perhaps the money LSL were spending was in good faith of the job being done to their standard, and it wasn’t maybe?”. No one puts £750k into an external contractor without being all over them from a QA point of view and instead having a blind acceptance that the work is being done acceptably - least of all I suspect an outfit like LSL.

So I don’t know what the reality is, but I suspect it is being spun from both sides, not just the one you seem to take as gospel.

Tom

 

This is it, whatever one thinks of either side the thing that does leap out is that LSL seem to have paid £750k for work to be done whilst taking little to no interest in the quality of that work until right at the end, its their cash to do whatever they like with but good grief it should set all manner of financial management alarm bells ringing...

 

When 6024 came out of service in 2012 (?) a "Rent of workshop space" contract was agreed between the WSR and 6024 Pres Soc so that the society had space to overhaul the locomotive in the workshops at Minehead. This suited both parties as they had a base for 3 years and the WSR gained a monthly income from shed space that for a period was vacant, all of the locomotives under the control of the WSR plc being operational and no overhauls were due for 2 years.

Under the contract the overhaul of 6024 was self managed by the society and the WSR was not involved with any of the work, or any standards associated with the work, this was mostly due to the WSR not being a mainline operator and not having a Steam Locomotive Maintenance and Overhaul Policy under it's Safety Management System that was intended for mainline operation. There were some engineering items that were contracted to the WSR such as welding repairs to cab and splashers/running plates but these were very few, in addition the WSR shed staff undertook lifting operations to remove and replace the wheelsets.

Major aspects of the overhaul such as wheelset repairs, supply of new outside cylinders, boiler overhaul, bogie overhaul, axle box repairs etc were all undertaken by outside contractors, the ones I can recall all being well known and well respected. The onsite engineering work such as fitting of cylinders, horn grinding, inside cylinder weld repairs and everything else were undertaken by contractors or by the society members themselves.

During the time that all of this work was going on with the locomotive the tender was offsite at an engineering works in Somerset and only reappeared as a finished vehicle.

When withdrawn from service 6024 was not in the best of condition and the extent of the repairs involved were probably greater than had been expected, combined with the extra work involved to modify the locomotive to make it more loading gauge friendly the timescale stretched out to considerably more than 3 years. Inevitably fresh people came to help and others unfortunately dropped by the wayside.

I suspect that like many volunteer led overhaul projects whilst most of the work was to a high standard there will have been some aspects that may have been missed, rushed, or not quite as it should have been. From the casual observers view point generally the effort put in by the society to get the best possible result from the very able and dedicated team produced something for which they should be rightfully proud, perhaps with a bit of snagging to sort out hear and there.

I can quite understand that as a very professional team LSL demand the highest standards, both in engineering work, and in record keeping, such that they will have wanted to assure themselves that all was right with the locomotive. Once being aware of some of the snagging items for LSL to want to conduct a thorough audit of engineering standards and record keeping is logical. I only hope that now this has been done the extent of any remedial work necessary was not that great, once started it certainly appears to have been done quite quickly.

The end is now in sight and mainline operation is close. I would like to think that the hard working members of 6024 Pres Soc who did so much over 10+ years will sometime get an invite to join 6024 on a mainline run along the sea wall at Dawlish, it would be the honourable thing to do.

Andy.