With the Gala now behind us I’m concentrating on our web presence. The old site had become a little stagnant, so once again we are moving format to what I hope will become more of a community effort.

Please bear with us while the changes are happening, and please let us know if there is anything you want to see on the site, or if you want to contribute.

The Gala DVD is now available and can be ordered from Belhurst Productions via www.steam-railway-videos.co.uk, or through our shop.

The dvd has 4hr 45mins of footage! It consists of 2 main discs and a bonus disc and it is narrated by Danny Hopkins, editor of Steam Railway magazine.

Now available for download, Newsletter 12.

Contains a Gala preview and all the latest progress on 6880.

Don’t forget that you can help us by making your online purchases through our webshop. Please remember to use this link whenever you are buying online.

For this months special offers, please click this link.

6880

The first of new parts arriving ready for the 21st - 22nd of Feb’s working weekend are the nuts and bolts to fit the brake hangar brackets.
They have been made by Premier Engineering in Southport from drawings by Keith Gilbert of the 1014 County Project at Didcot, the brackets also supplied by Didcot have had counter bores put in the back of them so collar studs can be fitted…..all a bit technical I know, but that is the way with this sort of project. After fitment the next part to consider manufacturing will be the brake hangars themselves.

A second visit to the NRM at York took place on the weekend of the 24th - 25th of Jan, first time visitors were Quentin and Peter Thomas. I think Quentin was taken aback by the enormity of the task and was surprised just how disorganised the Great Western drawings collection is, but after the weekend we reckoned we were over two thirds of the way through. We have found some more drawings relevant to 6880, one being the cab and splasher drawing, and the other for the rocking arms. Our next planned visit will be during May.

Most of the side brackets which hold the footplate angle in place are now in the process of being machined and should be ready for the working weekend.

I took a trip to Microform near Wakefield who specalise in data capture and they copied seven microfilm aquired from Ted Lacey who is in charge of Didcot’s drawings. The films were scanned and blown up into 1/4 sections providing us with readable dimensions and we have found that what was supplied by Ted was about 95% legible.

Our bogie wheels are now at the South Devon Railway where they will be tested for any cracks and flaws in the axles, and if sound then the next step will be have new tyres fitted.

5199

After a reported 73 steamings and 100% reliablity in traffic, with only a few small jobs needing attention, 5199 has flown the flag for team and the Llangollen Railway while out earning her next overhaul. She has proved to be an excellent performer in traffic and has now departed from the Bluebell Railway and is now a little closer to home at the Churnet Valley Railway.

Will Naylor.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM 6880
News just in..

The image above shows 8 pressed steel brackets which support the footplate, the two bigger ones brace the saddle plate which holds the rocking arm brackets in place. I have been preparing them by welding up the folds and as of the 31st of December 2008 are in the machine shop with an estimated completion date for early Feb.

The first set of drawings from  the NRM are due to arrive next week and these will include the cylinder drawings. I am off to Wakefield on Monday 5th Jan to copy 7 microfiche drawings in attempt to have more readable drawings, there are just a few dimensions that could be clearer.

Next weekend I should be down at the Bluebell Railway preparing 5199 for her trip back up North to the Churnet Valley Railway.

Will Naylor.

Since the decision was taken to press ahead with the building of 6880 all those years ago (yes it does seem along time ago) the key component to any new build project has been the drawings, without which you either have to make new or best guess.

The best guess route is really not an option when building a new Grange, even with Swindon’s reputation for standardisation. It has been known for a while that we have appealed for the whereabouts of the missing cylinder drawings for the 6800 class over the last few years, all to no avail.

The NRM has been a bit of a closed shop due to lack of available facilities over the years – the Swindon collection was simply too large and too disorganised to be dealt with by the existing staff in the limited space available, and the logistical challenge of uniting a GWR team and the NRM archives staff over hundreds of miles was one that took time to overcome. So since we started this project we always found ourselves frustrated in the knowledge that ex-Swindon drawings did exist at the NRM, just what and how many we could never find out.

Thanks to massive amounts of investment and a new direction to collate and make available information with Search Engine the NRM has made available to us the Swindon Drawing collection. The reason for this is plain and simple, time and money. The NRM needed a large expert volunteer team to assess and summarise the contents of the Swindon archive to make it available through Search Engine, while the 6880 team needed to find key drawings. A working weekend with mutually beneficial aims was duly organised!

An initial inspection of the task ahead, as shown to us by NRM archivist Tim Procter, revealed the enormity of the task, over 600 boxes of two different sizes with an estimated 6000 plus drawings; we were under no illusion that it would not be a quick job.

So armed with all the paperwork a National Museum requires, we stepped up to the challenge with representatives from the GWS Didcot looking for drawings for 1014 and 2999 and the 68 boys looking for…. well 6800 drawings. The team of eight commenced battle on the 29th of November.

Cylinder drawings found at the NRM.

Left to right, Ian Massey, Ian Carpenter, Max Trench, Alan Naylor, Will Naylor, Mick Prior, Mike Cooper and Ron Hows with the newly uncovered cylinder drawings.

It was like opening Pandora’s Box on the once known to be very secretive Swindon Drawing office, throughout the day it was a series of finds from Gooch to Hawksworth, the Taff vale and Rhymney to the Broad gauge of the Bristol and Exeter Railway. We concentrated on the locomotive drawings leaving the carriage and wagon for another gang to take care of.

Come Sunday we starting to think, maybe just maybe those cylinder drawings weren’t there after all. Then on the table that seemed to produce the best results, they appeared in a roll of drawings around Castles and Kings in excellent condition as drawing number 106875 DEC 1935. Any doubts as to what was going to drive 6880 had gone, the information was there, found by Ian Massey and Mick Prior of the 6880 Betton Grange Society.

Anyone who stuck their nose into the room at that moment would not have thought it was in any way connected with a Museum/library; to say we were happy would be an understatement more like ecstatic so with renewed hope we set out to see what else we could find. Unfortunately the NRM staff in attendance, Tim and Peter, had headed to the store to get another load of boxes, so they missed the happy moment!

A brief list of what I remember goes something like this:

Drawing for a fire bucket.
Drawing for display stand at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition.
Drawing for the Swindon test plant.
Wheel for Broad Gauge Lord of the Isles.
Outline drawing for Churchward’s proposed standard locomotives (remember the Grange specification was set out in this plan).
Boiler for number 111 The Great Bear.
County 460 as originally numbered 9900.
ARP protection hats ?

By the end of play on Sunday we were all more than happy with our finds, although a little tired and all facing a long drive home.

So I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the NRM for retaining what is left of the products of the Swindon drawing office. We are in no doubt that this visit will pay dividends in the future and not just for 6880 1014 and 2999 we will soon be in the position to know exactly what has survived and where it is, something that has been asked since the end of Western Steam in 1965.

A big thanks to Tim Procter and his colleagues at the National Railway Museum for moving ahead with this most worthwhile project; we are all looking forward to returning next year. After all, this is the first part of the first stage of the task – to create an overall summary of the contents of the Swindon locomotive archive, to flag up conservation issues such as Swindon’s extensive use of fragile tracing paper, and to identify which rolls of drawings need priority detailed attention. We’ve opened the box, but it’ll be a long time before we reach the bottom!

The 6880 Society, Great Western Society and Tim Procter from the NRM

Now available online, our latest newsletter in a web optimised PDF format.

Sorry for the delays in producing this newsletter, but I think we cover the reasons for this in the publication, along with all the latest progress news, and plenty of information about the upcoming Gala.

The 6880 AGM has been postponed until the 9th of November.

We will announce the details of time and venue nearer to the date.

Apologies for this late change.

The Gala website is now live.

All the Gala news and info will be available on this link.