Carriage Sheds

That really depends what your project is starting with. Yes keeping a carriage indoors will save some work on the exterior and fabric of the body. But if you are starting with an ex departmental with no interior, then it won't make that much difference overall. That is not belittling the importance of weather proof storage though. Keeping restored vehicles undercover is more important.

Sawdust.

 

Your hands are tied to a certain extent if you have paid staff working on your carriages - once you have them a workshop heated to meet legal obligations has to be your number one priority. This applies less to volunteers, I suppose, but I have noticed that volunteers tend to slow down somewhat if working in the open or in unheated sheds (where it can often be colder inside than out!). Not only that, but long projects are extended if carried out in the open by the periodic need to undo the ravages of the weather - a coach may need to be externally restored two or three times before the interior is complete.

 

If there is room do like the WSR has done in the Swindon Shed at Williton, and put up a plastic structure up for painting in to keep the coach clean when painting is been done on it.

 

I would go further and have a paint shop, a clean shop to do the woodwork and interior and a dirty shop for mechanical, needle gunning, grinding etc. .

Sawdust.

 

Are the carriage works at York available?
They would fit the bill.
Lift shop, Repair and Paint shops, forget new build though.

 

I don't know to be honest. They would be nice though lol. I expect they would be a tad expensive though.
They still have the traverser there though.

Sawdust.

 

Bluebell are moving towards that ideal - paint shop and repair shop already in place with OP4 providing overhead cover to the mainenance road (which has the pit and jacks already in place)

http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pde/opuc_p4.html

Donations welcome (hint hint)

https://www.justgiving.com/cash-for-cover/

David R

 

Do not forget to try to include public access to any planned shed. Many of us on here are interested in rolling stock and less so in the locomotives. It would be a shame if all the gems were locked away never to be seen again. Again the IoWSR seem to get this right. The Bluebell offer tours on certain dates, Didcot you can wander around. But its a shame if you visit the SVR to see the LNER teak set and they are out of sight in the Shed.

 

Yes indeed "public access" of some sort is often included as one of the "Terms & Conditions" of getting a lottery grant for such buildings. It's one of the few if only major terms they insist on, not surprising really considering that the money comes from the public buying lottery tickets/scratch cards. Whilst it's not that great a problem so long as said access is managed, as speaking from experiance at Pickering, the public can be just as interested as those of us involved. They are on occasion most surprised at the costs involved in restoration, in so much as the price of the timber shrinks when you compare it with the costs of replacement luggage rack brackets. On the bases of .....the smaller the part the more it costs.

 

I know many people are surprised in the costs, I think paint costs and moquette costs tend to surprise people most from my experience. It seems HLF favour an education aspect more than they used to. didn't the SVR carriage shed get HLF? I suppose it probably wouldn't today as no public access, no educational aspect.

Much like the GWSR setup then. Barn for dirty work and jacking up, workshop for main repairs and paintshop for finishing off, plus seperate woodwork and upholstery shops. In reality the paintshop is more of a "finishing" shop as a fair amount of sanding takes place as well due to the nature of our work. However no pad sanders are allowed, as they create clouds of dust everywhere. Usually the fact we sand in the paintshop doesn't really matter as long as it's kept tidy as if you're sanding you're unlikely to be doing anything other than an undercoat elsewhere. The main thing is being sealed from work on other carriages earlier in the line.

 

Another thing I forgot to say, is that this is pretty well the only area that the Lottery [and some of the other grant makers] will fund "new build." [Hence the A1 guys have had to fund Tornado and Prince of Wales by their own hard fundraising efforts.] As it as has been mentioned it protects that stock be it engines, carriages, waggon what ever when not in use. Or wait it's turn to be restored/repaired/overhauled.

 

The education aspect is a tricky one to meet and overcome, but this is where the creativity of the application writer is key as there are more than one ways of dealing with the issue.

 

Not true, you have the same safety and welfare obligations to volunteers as you do to paid staff. Volunteers may be more willing to ignore that, but if anything goes wrong the authorities will not look kindly upon you.

Fire safety is a massive concern, about 16 years ago Crich had their off site storage shed catch fire. Thankfully there was only one total loss and one mostly lost, could have been far worse. Then there was the Mid Hants's brand new shed, containing a freshly rebuild bulleid coach. I'm sure I read something about there being oxy-acetylene, or other gas cylinders, inside, which meant the fire brigade could only stand well back and wait for it to burn out.

 

The MHR fire was very sad the LSWR Resturant car that had been out side in the elements for 40 years had just came in to be restored. LSWR coaches are fairly rare anyway.

 

Just looked it up, it was a Mk1 that was almost ready to go back into traffic. I knew there was something interesting lost, ta for the info.

 

Quote from wiki

"On 26 July 2010, a major fire occurred in the newly constructed Carriage & Wagon workshop at Ropley. The cause of the fire and the full extent of the damage to the structure of the building is as yet unknown, although the fire service estimated that 50% of the building had been destroyed. Nobody was injured in the accident. The adjacent Boiler Shop and its contents are thought only to have suffered smoke damage.
A vintage wooden LSWR restaurant carriage, a British Railways Mark 1 carriage (Tourist Second Open, S4712), a British Rail Class 11 diesel shunter 12049,and the tender of U-Class 31806 were inside the shed at the time. The vehicles, plus tools and equipment, were lost in the fire. The carriages and diesel shunter were irreparably damaged and were subsequently scrapped, but the tender was repaired and reunited with 31806. Fortunately, the building and its contents were covered by insurance but the Mid Hants Railway estimate that the rebuilding of the Carriage and Wagon Shed and the remedial work to the Boiler Shop will be completed by February 2011. The knock-on effect of the loss of the facility will put restoration work back by two years.
The Carriage & Wagon shop has now been rebuilt, the Boiler Shop repaired, and restoration work has recommenced"

 

Well my experience is that volunteers will carry on working in an unheated shed in winter where paid staff would be, to put it mildly, very unhappy.

 

Fantastic to see that the IoWSR have won a well deserved award (joint with SVR) for the Train Story display building at Havenstreet. The building is really excellent and the display shows the history of the Islands Railways in a away no other Heritage Line currently does, just a shame there is a missing part of the history in that one of the origional standard stock tube motor cars was not obtained, a 1938 stock car will add to the story but the standard stock was actually hauled by a O2 class on gauging runs on the island.

 

I can only go off conjecture so this may not be accurate, but I'd heard that as far as the IOWSR were concerned, the Island's Railway history that they wished to portray ended when the Tube Stock came in. This was after a conversation I had when 03179 (the ex NSE one dumped at Ryde for years) came up for sale and I suggested that this was a rare chance to obtain a true Island engine from the "Electric Era". As I've already said however, this might be rumoured rubbish as it was hardly an official view.

I also like the idea of a vehicle each from the 1923 and 1938 tube stock being displayed in Train Story, preferably restored to the condition they were in when first launched on the island. Between them they represent a good 50 years of Island Railway history, which for just two coaches of exhibition space seems a pretty good deal!

On a slight tangent, apparently there are those who disapprove of the Ryde Pier Tram as its not steam.

Sent from my HTC Desire 620 using Tapatalk

 

Regardless of anything else Train Story is already fully occupied!

PH