Restoring the Vehicles
with all the steel cladding removed
The first stage in restoring the vehicles was to see what remains, and to make a judgement as to what of the remaining material it would be possible to save.
To this end, all of the remaining steel cladding sheet was removed from No. 93 by a team of volunteers in 1999 so that the timber framing could be inspected. The cladding was not, of course, original but dates from the 1934/35 conversion to an auto trailer. The railmotor was clad with wooden panels when new, and the restored vehicles will be clad in the same way.
With the structure of the vehicles thus exposed, the next, very time consuming, process was to draw up a detailed specification of all the work needed to completely rebuild both No. 93 and trailer No. 92 to their original condition.
This not only involved surveying the vehicles but has also required many hunts through the Society's considerable collection of Great Western coach spares to identify those items already in stock.
As the work involved in restoring two coaches in such poor condition was beyond the capacity of our own Carriage and Wagon team, given all the other vehicles currently being worked on, it was agreed at an early stage that the restoration would need to be contracted out. After a long search and several false starts we were put in touch with the award-winning carriage workshops of the Llangollen Railway, who have the capacity and capability to undertake the work at a reasonable price and in an acceptable timescale.
The Heritage Lottery Fund
With all the planning done and information duly gathered, we were finally in a position to submit an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for finance towards the restoration of the bodies and underframes of both numbers 92 and 93.
The application was signed and delivered to the London office on 13th October 2006 - and yes, it was a Friday. The report, which addressed not only the engineering aspects of the project, but also made a robust case for the educational and historic interpretation elements, ran to about 150 pages and had to be submitted in triplicate, Naturally, we used recycled paper !
The submission needed to be considered in detail by the Heritage Lottery Fund so it was not until June 2007 that we were told, to our considerable delight, that we would be awarded £768,500.
Great Western Society Chairman, Richard Croucher, said: “We are absolutely delighted about this award. We always felt that we had a strong case for restoring these unique vehicles and the level of support and interest shown by HLF in what we are doing has been extremely encouraging. I am certain that our success is largely due to the highly detailed application compiled by Graham Drew – project manager for the body and underframe restoration of the vehicles – which addressed not only the areas of engineering and restoration, but also focused on the historic interpretation and educational aspects of the project.”
Sheena Vick, Heritage Lottery Fund Manager for the South East, said: “The age of steam is one of this country’s greatest gifts to the world. These vehicles stand today as a visible reminder of our proud industrial past and as the link to modern travel. We are proud to help restore them to their former glory for a whole new generation to enjoy”.
To Llangollen for Restoration
4-Sep-07 - A Knowles
The Heritage Lottery Fund gave us official permision to start the project on August 14th 2007. So, the railmotor and trailer vehicles were prepared for a move from Didcot to Llangollen. This involved several inspections, ultrasonic testing of the axles, a pad exam, checking the tyre profiles, several minor repairs to the running gear and a requirement that Number 93 be sheeted 'to avoid any bits falling off'. The culmination of this work was on Thursday 16th August when the Society's Vehicle Acceptance Body (VAB) was on site to check that all was in order. To allow the tests to be carried out the vehicles were run for a distance of more than five miles on the Main Demonstration Line. All went well, and the vehicles were entered on the Rolling Stock Library data base, being allocated TOPS numbers 99092 and 99093.
On Tuesday 4th September an EWS class 66 locomotive (66157) collected the Railmotor and Trailer (Nos. 93 and 92) from Didcot Railway Centre and tripped them the short journey to Milton Freight Terminal. This is the nearest point at which they could be transferred to road transport for their onward journey to Llangollen.
The 'Walkover' seats were collected from storage and loaded into No. 92 as they also needed to be transported to Llangollen. Then on 6th September 2007 the lorries arrived at Milton Terminal and both vehicles were loaded and driven to North Wales where the extensive and skilled task of restoring the coach bodies is being undertaken in partnership with the Llangollen Railway. The contract has enabled an apprenticeship to be offered at Llangollen, helping to keep coachbuilding skills alive.
The full restoration story can be followed by looking at the News Archive and Latest News sections of this website.
