16th June 2009

This post is a little delayed as it relates to a visit made two weeks ago, but I just hadn’t got around to posting it!
John Young from the Bowes Railway and I took a set of wheelsets from Bowes down to Rail Restorations North East, located in part of the old wagon works at Shildon. The wheelsets were to be exchanged with a condemned set from one of the arson damaged wagons Bowes is having rebuilt, this one being a Watts Hardy example being restored by Dave Foxton and his team. You will remember seeing images of Stanegate Restorations and Replicas Ltd at Haltwhistle who are restoring two further open wagons for Bowes as part of the same project to rebuild arson damaged wagons.
The works has a number of projects in hand at Shildon, some are outlined below…

Below: An LMS BG Full Brake, being rebuilt and reskinned for the G5 Replica group for use as a support vehicle. This is a spacious new area, long enough for a MK1 or Mk2 carriage.

Below: One end of the Bowes’ Watts Hardy wagon. All of the timber is new and the metalwork has seen extensive refurbishment and/or replacement to make it suitable for reuse.

Below: Another view of the chassis, ready for the W irons to be drilled and mounted.

Below: Two refurbished springs, these being for the buffer and coupling compression/tension. They lie flat within the chassis and are tied through the centre of the wagon as well as to the rear of the buffers and out to the coupling hooks.

Below: The snowplough from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway is at the works for some work to be carried out to the underframe in order to repair some quite extensive decay. Given that the other plough (restored at York) is on display a mile away at ‘Locomotion’, then I wonder if this is the first time since the mid 1960s that two NER snowploughs have been based in the same town?!