Work in Progress - 13 November

Regular updates appear here from the "Thursday Gang", but they are not the only group of volunteers regularly working at Woody Bay or elsewhere.

If you are involved in any way with the activities at Woody Bay - or anywhere else - supporting the L&B, then please consider sending in a report of your latest efforts.  it doesn't have to be regular, and can be with or without photos, but others are keen to find out what is going on, and who knows, you might even recruit some new hands to help out with your endeavours!  

Dave Took was at WB this weekend, and sent in this report of yesterday's activities.  

Four members of our S&T Department have spent the weekend sorting various items of signalling equipment. For example, a lever frame has been collected from the Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust at Washford.  

To coincide with this visit, it was decided to start work on re-gauging the wheels on a Hunslet 60hp diesel loco which we have had in store for over 3 years. This loco, works number 6652, built in 1965, is a twin of HEDDON HALL (works number 6660). 6652 was built to 2 foot 6 inch gauge, and ran at Dean Hill. When that MoD facility closed, it was briefly on display at the “Explosion” museum in Gosport, before being purchased for use on the L&B.  

The first job is to have the wheelsets re-gauged, and we had an offer from our friends at the Talyllyn Railway to do this work for us. The S&T team kindly offered to transport the wheels to Towyn, so the job for the day was to jack-up the loco and extract the wheels. Helped by a pleasant, sunny day, the work went remarkably smoothly, and the team were back at Woody Bay for a late lunch.  

Our thanks to the visiting S&T team for their efforts: Murray Dods, Geoff Loynes, Rob Prosser and Tim Wilkinson.

1. Murray Dods and Chris Carder jack up the loco.

2. Chris unbolts the springs, watched by Murray and Martyn Budd.

3. A tele-handler was then used to pull the wheelsets out from under the raised loco body.

4. First set of wheels out, Chris checks all is OK before removing the second axle.

5. All wheels out, the diesel loco will be transferred to Woody Bay shortly (together with the box van), to await the return of the wheels from Wales.