We start with a statement from the museum:

In response to Government guidance on coronavirus, the museum will be closed from 4pm on Friday, 20^th March.

The health and wellbeing of our visitors, staff and volunteers remains, as always, our number one priority. The museum will be closed until 1^st May but we will be continuing to monitor all Government advice and will keep this under review.

We have taken the decision to postpone our forthcoming Great North Steam Fair and Horses at Work events, which were due to take place next month. We will be announcing new dates for these in due course. Full details of changes to our events programme will be updated on our website and social media.

We thank you all for your understanding during these difficult and unprecedented times for everyone.

We’ll continue to keep in touch with everyone through our social media and website. You can also sign up to our e-newsletter here http://www.beamish.org.uk/sign-up-to-our-newsletter/ We look forward to welcoming you back to Beamish soon

We will be working hard to operate this event later in the year. We will be in discussions with the exhibitors already invited, though our very exciting ‘exclusive’ which I was poised to announce this week will not now feature at the re-scheduled event – I hope I might be able to share what it was in due course. That said, I am confident we will put on an event with appeal to all of our visitors, when the time comes!

Inevitably there will be a break for the blog now, which I hope will only be brief. Meanwhile, do take the opportunity to browse back through the last ten years or so of posts and activity, stay safe and we look forward to seeing you very soon.

Consett Iron Company, 1922/23

I felt I couldn’t have a post without something of interest for readers! Julian recently scanned these superb images taken of the CIC works improvements in 1922/23 – notes and thoughts in the captions below…

The images show a varied collection of chaldron waggons and MSC type construction waggons. The latter were named after the Manchester Ship Canal construction contract with which they were synonymous (though the design had been seen earlier, at Barry Docks) and were supplied to the contractor T. A. Walker in vast numbers by the Ashbury Railway Carriage & Iron Company in Manchester. These examples may have been re-wheeled, or are possibly a local copy of the ubiquitous design. Usually the waggons featured split spoke wheels, not evident on these examples.

The post below describes one of our earlier endeavours to save a MSC type waggon for future restoration at Beamish…