Monthly Archives: March 2021

This week, we have plenty of photographs showing Class 33 ‘Crompton’ D6575 (33 057) in action on the ballast train workings that took place last Monday. The day started with some shunting in Williton, with D6566 (33 048) moving to take up a position in the DEPG yard so that she could get some attention later in the week. This then left D6575 free to run around her train of three ‘DOGFISH’ wagons and position them for filling with fresh ballast. Then, D6575 hauled the train to Doniford, where the ballast was distributed along the newly re-laid formation. The empty wagons were then taken to the Permanent Way yard at Dunster and the loco returned to Williton light engine.

A number of our members and supporters were all safely positioned with cameras at the ready, so we received several excellent images of these workings, some of which are included below:

 

 

 

 

DEPG volunteer Class 33 loco manager Ian Robins and DEPG volunteer Tom Courtney have been attending to D6566 at Williton and have started to replace the fuel injectors with newly-refurbished parts. One of the high pressure fuel injection pumps will also be replaced as part of a programme of work to trace a possible fuel leak that appears to be gradually diluting the engine oil. Analysis reports show that the engine oil is currently at its lower limit for viscosity, so we hope that a solution is found before having to replace the engine oil.

The next scheduled working of our locos will take place in mid-April in support of the crew refresher training workings that will take place prior to the RE-OPENING of the West Somerset Railway ! We can keep you informed of diesel loco workings if you join our DIESELGEN e-mail bulletin service.

 

LOCO NEWS: This weekend, a small team comprising Gordon, Leroy and John Cooke attended at Williton to work on our Class 52 D1010 ‘WESTERN CAMPAIGNER’ and get her started up, the objective being to prepare her to move under her own power so that our Class 47 47077 ‘NORTH STAR’ can be extracted from the loco shed. This work has become essential due to the need to prepare our celebrity ’47’ for hire to another railway… but more about that at a later date!

Below is a short video clip by Tom that shows the Maybach MD655 V-12 engine at ‘A’ end being started up for the first time since November 2019 and a longer series of clips from two different perspectives that have been provided by Leroy:

 

 

The below picture, captured by the Williton Depot security system, shows the moment when the ‘A’ engine burst into life:

Other than reported above, the status of our locos remains unchanged this week, due to lockdown. Many thanks to all of our volunteers for their continuing work to keep our locomotives in the best condition possible, considering the circumstances.

 

BOOK REVIEW – This week, we are very pleased to have received a copy of a booklet dating back to 1985 entitled “IAN ALLAN MODERN RAILWAYS PICTORIAL PROFILE:8 The HYMEKS”. This booklet is in excellent condition and has been donated by member Ian Harden, to whom we are extremely grateful. We intend to raffle this booklet so that we can generate a contribution to DEPG funds while allowing the maximum number of people to participate, each with an equal chance of success. We will provide more details in a future roundup.

Also this week, we received two books from the daughter of the late Roy Hudson who passed away in 2013 after a lifelong love of railways. These books were produced in the late ‘seventies by our predecessors, the DIESEL + ELECTRIC GROUP in conjunction with Bradford Barton. We will also be including these books in the forthcoming raffle. We are very grateful to Roy’s daughter, Kim, for taking the time and trouble to send these books to us.

If you have books or magazines that you want to donate to us, please email us at contact@depg.org or USE OUR CONTACT FORM so that we can provide a postal address to you. Our diesel depot is only open for a few days of the week, so it won’t do to have a pile of packages outside the gate, but we will work out an alternative arrangement. We intend to offer pre-owned books on our website, starting soon !

 

DEPG NEWS: A Board Meeting was held yesterday via Zoom and many issues were discussed, not least of which was the impending re-opening of the WSR and the preparations that the DEPG has to make in order to be fully ready to support that re-opening. A synopsis of the meeting will be released as soon as possible.

 

DEPG WEBSITE: Our ONLINE SHOP IS NOW LIVE so go ahead and visit our store!

As mention earlier, we intend to create a new product category for pre-owned books, where we will offer items for sale that have been donated to the DEPG for the purpose of fund-raising. It may be possible to find some of these books on other pre-owned book websites, perhaps cheaper, but buying from the DEPG will ensure that 100% of your purchase goes straight into our loco funds – and you will get an interesting book in the bargain.

 

WSR NEWS: The WSR have now posted details of the ‘excursion style‘ public services that will start on Saturday 22nd May 2021, subject to the reduction of Government restrictions in force at that time. The timetable is colour-coded, so to find the details of a particular ‘excursion’ day, click on the appropriate coloured dot that is below the calendar graphics. For example, the BLUE timetable can be studied in detail by clicking this link.

We want to help to make sure that these services, and especially the diesel-hauled services, will be a commercial success, so please visit the WSR website and consider buying a ticket to ride.

To support the return to scheduled running, the WSR have announced that training and competence assessment of traincrews is restarting on Saturday 17th April and will run for 5 consecutive weekends prior to reopening on 22nd May. 

The WSR will be running another of their Zoom sessions for volunteers on Wednesday 31st March at 1800 and we encourage all of our volunteers to join these sessions. The next session will be hosted by Steve Williams and will cover Business Development on the WSR.

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Our Class 33 ‘Crompton’ D6566 continued to claim the ‘most watched’ top spot after having worked the WSR ballast train on multiple occasions over the last two weeks. The ballast has been hauled from Williton to various sites along the line in the direction of Watchet. On Monday 22nd March, there will be more ballast trains working between Williton and Doniford in support of the track relaying work that is close to completion there.

However, they won’t be hauled by D6566 because she has failed a lubricating oil test and now has to stand down from WSR duty pending an investigation to find the reason for the drop in the viscosity of her engine oil. This is most probably due to a fuel leak in one of her high-pressure fuel injection pumps, resulting in diesel fuel reaching the lubricating oil sump, mixing with the oil and causing a reduction in viscosity. Her place will be taken by sister D6575 (33 057) who will be in action on Monday and D6575 will move D6566 to the DEPG depot for further attention.

DEPG volunteer Class 33 loco manager Ian Robins and DEPG volunteer Tom Courtney have been attending to D6566 at Williton and have eliminated the possibility of a fuel leak from the pipework that carries the high pressure diesel fuel from the injection pump to the injector. All eight rocker covers were removed and the engine was started up last Saturday, and allowed to run for a while so that any fuel leaks could be identified. This test showed no signs of leakage so additional investigations will take place during this coming week. Here’s a short video clip taken by Tom Courtney that shows the Sulzer 8LDA28 engine of D6566 running without its rocker covers in place:

 

Consider signing up to our DIESELGEN service where we (try to) let you know by advance email whenever one of our locos is called into action. In previous years, this service was used to post the dates and times of loco-hauled passenger services, but since Lockdown 1.0, we have expanded it to include ANY working. The difficulty with engineering workings is that they run under the direction of the Infrastructure Engineering group, so dates and times will be varied to suit the circumstances on the day. The webcams provide the answer – we include webcam links in the Dieselgen bulletins where possible, so you can watch the live action !

To view the Williton webcam, click on this link. Many thanks to Railcam UK and the WSR for providing these webcam services.

Although it is great to see these locos and their crews at work on the WSR, we must all remember that the railway and the stations are still closed to the public. Safety is the number one priority.

 

Last week, we featured the ex-BR ‘DOGFISH’ wagons that are being used for these ballast workings, and we can now provide more background to these wagons because DEPG member and regular contributor Jon Tooke has sent us the following information and photos:

Jon Tooke writes:

“Just to fill in the back story of the Catfish and Dogfish wagons that may be of interest to readers. As you correctly stated in the recent piece about wagons, it was the GWR who invented using all manner of coded names for wagons to avoid confusion such as Conflat, Mica, Mogo and Tadpole to name a few but the terms Catfish and Dogfish were later additions, possibly when BR came into being.  Many more can be found here Code Names for Great Western Carriage Stock and Vans or here Great Western Railway telegraphic codes – Wikipedia.

Way back in September 2004, a DEPG team led by Graham consisting of Darren, Roy and myself undertook the repainting on a contract basis of the WSR’s fleet of Cats and Dogs and we must have done a good job because the wagons still look good today, considering all the work they are involved with on the railway, and I notice the paintwork is weathering nicely after all this time!

When the wagons arrived at Williton, they were in all sorts of varying shades of colours, with the paintwork in even more varying states of peeling and paint loss. First, we set about steam cleaning them all over thoroughly to remove years of dirt and detritus from all the nooks and crannies, then the old paintwork was either needle gunned or angle-ground back to a decent surface to apply a base undercoat.

The top coat of black on the frames and below the solebar was sprayed on by Graham, likewise the hopper front, back and sides but in olive green colour. The important bits of hand painting were done by myself, Roy and Darren on the chequer-plated platform on one end of the vehicle, the brake reservoirs, buffer-beams and so on, all in gloss black. The door operating hand wheels were painted white as were the hand brake wheels. To ensure that the doors on the hoppers were in the correct positions for loading and discharging, I made up a stencil from thick card with the words DOOR, OPEN, CLOSED and an arrow pointing in the appropriate direction. These were stippled with white paint to give a clear indication of operation. Likewise, another stencil was made and used for the wording on the solebars to state the wheelbase and weight, again picked out in white as was the old cast BR wagon works plate alongside.

The guard rails and foot step supports were also picked out in white, and in true BR workshop fashion, the hoppers had overhead hazard warning flashes added to them, the wheel sets were given white tyres with yellow axle bearing covers with roller bearing red bands through the middle and my goodness, they looked just like something out of the Hornby box when we had finished them!

The wagon information details were sourced and applied to the hopper sides by Colin and Graham.

As this was a rather unusual task for the DEPG to undertake, and so that everyone who saw these vehicles knew who had done such an excellent job on them, on the bufferbeams on each vehicle I painted the date and that it was A WILLITON WRD REPAINT !”

 

 

Many thanks to Jon for sharing this information with us all.

 

LOCO NEWS: Other than that reported above, the status of our locos remains unchanged this week, due to lockdown.

DEPG NEWS: Last week, we learned that ex-BR, ex-WSR driver and former DEPG member Lennie Renwick had passed away. Lennie was one of life’s real characters, having started work on BR in the late days of steam and subsequently amassing a huge wealth of mainline driving experience that he was keen to pass on to our own volunteer crew members. Our website carries a very appropriate obituary, penned by our chairman, Martin Howard. Lennie will certainly be missed.

 

DEPG WEBSITE: Our ONLINE SHOP IS NOW LIVE so go ahead and visit our store!

This week, we have already mentioned the wheel lathe at Bristol St. Philips Marsh depot, so it is quite topical that we have just received a donation of some GENUINE ex-BR vinyl stickers featuring that very depot – see below:

We are going to be placing these on sale via our website but we only have a small quantity, so it will be first come, first served!

WSR NEWS: The WSR are delighted to announce that ‘excursion style‘ public services will resume on Saturday 22nd May 2021, subject to the reduction of Government restrictions in force at that time. The commercial success of these services will depend on public patronage, so please visit the WSR website and consider buying a ticket to ride.

To support this milestone date, the WSR have announced that training and competence assessment of traincrews is restarting on Saturday 17th April and runs for 5 consecutive weekends prior to reopening on 22nd May. 

 

The WSR will be running another of their Zoom sessions for volunteers on Wednesday 31st March at 1800 and we encourage all of our volunteers to join these sessions. The next session will be hosted by Steve Williams and will cover Business Development on the WSR.

 

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Last week, it was our Class 14 ‘Teddy Bear’ D9526 that was in the spotlight, but this week, our Class 33 ‘Crompton’ D6566 has reclaimed the top spot after having an ‘A’ exam performed at Westridge Shed, Bishops Lydeard, last weekend. This was to prepare her for duty on the ballast trains that have been running from Williton to various places along the line, delivering ballast as required by the Infrastructure Engineering Department.

Eight hundred tonnes of ballast have been ordered by the WSR for distribution along the line. The ballast is used in quantity when relaying track at sites such as at Doniford, but it also used in smaller amounts for topping up and building up the shoulders of the trackbed at multiple places along the line. Considering the length of the line, a little ballast spread along both sides of a very long line will amount to a lot ! These photos, posted on wsr.org.uk last week, say it all:

 

The ballast workings are set to continue on Monday and Tuesday next week, and no doubt at other times that have yet to be confirmed. Sister Class 33 loco D6575 (33 057) has been re-positioned from Platform 1 at Williton (the ‘down’ line) to Platform 2 (the ‘up’ line) to leave the line clear for the ballast train workings. D6575 remains on standby and is fully ready and available for use by the WSR.

The DEPG offers its DIESELGEN service where we (try to) let you know by advance email whenever one of our locos is called into action. In previous years, this service was used to post the dates and times of loco-hauled passenger services, but since Lockdown 1.0, we have expanded it to include ANY working. The difficulty with engineering workings is that they run under the direction of the Infrastructure Engineering group, so dates and times will be varied to suit the circumstances on the day. The webcams provide the answer – we include webcam links in the Dieselgen bulletins so you can watch the live action !

To view the Williton webcam, click on this link. Many thanks to Railcam UK and the WSR for providing these webcam services.

Although it is great to see these locos and their crews at work on the WSR, we must all remember that the railway and the stations are still closed to the public. Safety is the number one priority.

 

The hopper wagons in use are ex-BR ‘DOGFISH’ types that were built in quantity from 1955 onwards. These wagons are very useful for heritage railways and many have been preserved. They incorporate three discharge chutes that allow ballast to be dropped to the right, to the left or on the centre line of the track, with each chute controlled by the white-painted handwheels that are mounted on the operator’s platform at one end of the vehicle. Each wagon is fitted with the continuous vacuum brake so a brake van (or Guard’s van) is not needed. The smaller white-painted wheel low down on the side of the wagon is for applying the handbrake when the wagon is not under the control of the vacuum brake.

There was a tradition in BR civil engineering days of naming types of wagon after fish or things ‘fishy’. This goes back to the old days of telegraph communication when a codeword was the most useful way of describing a type of wagon with the minimum risk of a mistake being made. There were MERMAID, TURBOT, SEACOW and other types of wagon. The WSR also has several of the smaller ‘CATFISH’ variety. Here’s a photo of a ‘DOGFISH’ (well, a ‘DOGFISH’ hopper wagon, actually):

Ex-BR ‘DOGFISH’ 24t hopper wagon number DB983290, seen here at Dunster station on the WSR on 8th June 2018. The three discharge control handwheels can be seen on the similar wagon to the left. The smaller handwheel at low level on the right is the handbrake. Photo by Geof Sheppard © CC BY-NC 3.0

 

LOCO NEWS: Other than that reported above, the status of our locos remains unchanged this week, due to lockdown.

 

DEPG NEWS: The DEPG has been invited to attend at the STEAM & VINTAGE RALLY that is planned for the weekend of 7th and 8th August this year, subject to Covid and the weather of course. We are DELIGHTED to confirm that we will attend and we will be bringing along some of your favourite vintage diesel locomotives!

There is a dedicated website for this rally and there is also a Facebook page so you can find out more about this event from these two sites. We will be contributing to these sites as soon as we have had our plans reviewed and accepted both by the DEPG Board and the WSRA event team. We are really looking forward to it !

DEPG WEBSITE: Our ONLINE SHOP IS NOW LIVE so go ahead and visit our store!

We have just updated our online store to include our new range of coasters. These complement the new range of mugs that we placed on sale last weekend, so we now have multiple products featuring ALL of our heritage locomotive classes. Here some photos to show you what we have been doing:

Mugs featuring your favourite locomotives !

 

Coasters featuring your favourite locomotives !

 

WSR NEWS: The WSR have announced that public services will resume on Saturday 22nd May 2021, subject to the reduction of Government restrictions in force at that time. This announcement was made in the WSR’s ‘THE PLATFORM’ e-newsletter. This newsletter has been posted on the WSR website so this news is definitely in the public domain !

The re-opening date allows us to focus on the planning and resourcing of the multiple tasks that need to be completed in order to support the railway, not least of which are staff competencies. The staff ‘refresher’ training could start as early as 12th April, but the work of the infrastructure, signalling, rolling stock and operations teams has to be sufficiently advanced so that the ‘refresher’ trains can actually run at this early date. There is much to do, but we will all pull together to support the WSR and make sure that this season is a success.

The WSR will be running another of their Zoom sessions for volunteers on Wednesday 31st March at 1800 and we encourage all of our volunteers to join these sessions. The next session will be hosted by Steve Williams and will cover Business Development.

 

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After the news bonanza of last week, it is a bit quieter this week because we only had two volunteers back to Williton since then to perform repairs on a malfunctioning door lock on Class 14 ‘Teddy Bear’ number D9526. Maintaining the security of our heritage assets is a priority task, so that issue was resolved first, then the loco was started up and moved back to her previous resting place, closer to the Old Goods Shed, with ‘Hymek’ D7017 in tow.

Just a reminder, last week, we had to move the locos away from the Old Goods Shed to allow access for a structural survey, but now that has been conducted, we need them back up tight to the Old Goods Shed to maximise the space available to the WSR infrastructure team who are using part of our yard for materials handling in connection with the Doniford track relaying project.

Here’s a couple of photos of D9526 from 2018, to give us a taste of what we hope to see later this year, after restrictions have been eased:

 

 

Last week, we provided some background to the pre-heating equipment that is fitted to all of our Maybach-engined locomotives. The article stated that it takes four or more hours to get the coolant up to the required temperature, but I have been informed that it only takes that long if the pre-heater is playing up !

In normal circumstances with a fully functional pre-heater, it will take between 60 and 90 minutes to warm up from cold and this period is built into the three-hour preparation period that the driver allows when readying the loco for service. Interestingly, in ‘railway speak’, the name given to the opposite process that takes place at the end of the day is ‘disposal’. A detailed account of the ‘Preparation and Disposal’ of a ‘Hymek’ locomotive is given in Chapter 5 of our booklet “HYMEK D7018”.

While on the subject of corrections, the WSR’s Andrew Barclay 0-4-0 diesel-hydraulic shunter, works number 578, ex-ROF Puriton ‘Number 1’ uses a 24V electrical system, not 48V as I had stated last week. Two errors in one roundup ? What a dunce ! Must try harder, as my school teachers used to say.

 

LOCO NEWS: Other than that reported above, the status of our locos remains unchanged this week, due to lockdown.

 

44 YEARS .. and a week … AGO: Last week, we covered the last working of the ‘Westerns’ on BR, the ‘WESTERN TRIBUTE’ railtour of 26th February 1977. Several of our readers have sent comments and photos, so we can now share their feedback:

From Neale Long:

“Although I was not present, it has been established that D1013 ran Newport-Plymouth on one engine due to a split engine coolant vent pipe which was replaced at Laira before the final leg of the tour from Plymouth to London. Interestingly, the original routing of the tour was London-Plymouth-Swansea-London but this was changed after objections from Laira who wanted to fuel the ‘Westerns’ for one last time, so the itinerary was reversed enabling Laira to service their locomotives for the last time. Thankfully, the diesel hydraulic story didn’t end that fateful night !”

From Paul Mear (with expansion from the editor):

“D1013 ‘WESTERN RANGER’ led from Swansea to Plymouth. Here’s a great photo by Brian Aston showing the locos climbing out from the Severn Tunnel on the Bristol side, having already passed through Pilning station. The two tracks are at different levels along this section of the line. The photographer is probably at Ash Lane footbridge or Over Lane bridge, just west of Patchway tunnel. By the way, the M5 goes over the top of Patchway Tunnel. The Bristol Channel and the hills of Wales are visible in the background.”

Many thanks to our contributors for sharing their knowledge and experience.

This and other ‘Western’-hauled railtours will be covered in our forthcoming booklet “D1010 – from Merehead to Minehead”.

 

DEPG NEWS: The February 2020 edition of our quarterly newsletter has now been mailed out and all members should have received their copy by now. Please let me know if you didn’t get your copy.

A word of explanation on the current policy of mailing all of our members 4 times per year. A few years back, we asked members to indicate if they would prefer to have an electronic copy of the newsletter rather than a hard copy. This database of preferences was not GDPR compliant so it could not be copied across to the new and compliant DEPG email system.

We intend to set up a new system for member preferences and we will describe our intentions in a future newsletter, including a method of verifying that members do actually receive the emails that we send to them. Meanwhile, we will continue to mail out the Newsletter on a quarterly basis because this is the most inclusive and reliable method of reaching all of our members.

The synopsis from last weeks’ DEPG Board Meeting is not yet ready but we hope to include it in the roundup next week.

 

DEPG WEBSITE: Our ONLINE SHOP IS NOW LIVE so go ahead and visit our store!

We have placed orders for our new range of coasters to complement the mugs that we featured last week and we are expecting stock to be delivered in the next few days. We will then be able to offer mugs and coasters for each of the locomotive types that are in our fleet. We will add these to our online store as soon as we can take photographs of the different designs and get the products uploaded.

We now have stock of the caps including four colour scheme options with the DEPG logo and two options for D1010 (let me know if you want a cap that is specific to your favourite loco) and we are standing by, ready to ship !

 

WSR NEWS: The unofficial WSR website wsr.org.uk carries an update on the status of the replacement of Seaward Way level crossing, just outside Minehead station. The detailed news article is available by clicking this link.

Also posted on wsr.org.uk are the minutes of the Partnership Development Group (PDG) which is a multi-interest group that is tasked with looking at the ‘big picture’ for the WSR and the surrounding area. The report is well worth a read and is available by clicking this link.

Finally, there is a warning on wsr.org.uk/news regarding the increased incidence of trespassing on the railway since lockdown began. The railway must be considered as ‘live’ at all times. Engineering trains will be operating during this coming week and we have to make sure that the railway can be operated safely. With the improvement in the Covid situation and the planned relaxation of restrictions, we are getting closer to a re-opening – so let’s not jeopardise anything by reckless behaviour.

 

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