Practical Engineering Courses

 

A number of internal training courses are now being prepared, these include the safe use of  Plant and Machinery, and a site Strimming team has been set up and trained to control vegetation around the museum’s grounds. More varied courses are hopefully being offered in due course.

Suggestions have been made  to in future cover welding basics, the use of workshop machines  and in this way skills could be passed to volunteers. There is an open invitation for those with those engineering skills to create learning opportunities , if you feel that’s something you can do, please contact HOD’s.

Brake cylinder operation and repair

One such training course  was run on Sunday 8th August by Brendan Sothcott, leading a practical day to strip, repair, reassemble and test a Brake Cylinder. It was run as  a trial; this being the first of a series of events  gaining experience of using the tools and workshop facilities available at Chappel.

Handouts supplied  explained how railway equipment must fail safe and have some form of redundancy, so even a “Wrong side failure” that is an unsafe condition – is mitigated by having a back-up. It was interesting to note how much force is applied by brakes. Mark 1 coaches using a  21-inch diameter brake cylinder,  produces 1.584 tons of force, this is generated by the application of atmospheric pressure over a large area of 346 square inches in the brake cylinder.

These photos taken by Vic Potts a participant  on this course  features other attendees Chelsea Wagland, Aimee Archer and Phil Ainsley.

 The first top picture - shows both an inner piston (on the distant blue hydraulic trolley),  and its outer casing painted black, being cleaned out. Normally a piston will be  inside it’s outer casing and not seen, where the complete assembly is normally seen inverted fitted under a vehicle’s frame.

 

Middle  picture - a piston is descending into the outer vacuum brake casing. A most unusual feature is the use of talcum powder being applied inside  (French chalk being an official workshop ingredient) lubricating -  without oil or grease which would perish rubber seals -  the void between the two to stop it binding on the way down.

 

Bottom picture - Finally reassembled, the brake cylinder is tested with a Vacuum gauge  creating 19” of Vacuum -  which when destroyed drops the piston and its actuating rod down -  applying the braking force via brake rigging.

 

Brendan also had the team clean threads with Die nuts and demonstrated the use of a micrometre, and introduced us to the Roebuck Zeus Precision Data Book.

Here are some examples of the course material supplied, if you would like a copy please ask and they can be forwarded on.  

“Yesterday’s news - tomorrow’s chip papers”, the value of Scrapbooks

 

In this technical world where so much recording  is done electronically, it is easy to overlook how paper documents hold information. While some historical records are held in archives, most paper sources  are disposed of quite quickly. An expression  “Yesterday’s news  -  are tomorrow’s chip paper”, may in time become confusing to future generations. Many younger people may have never eaten fish and chips wrapped in newsprint ,or even read news on paper. Old newspapers especially local ones, contain an important part of  the historical record, few are kept, or even more rarely held in the form of a scrapbook.

Circulation of newspapers has declined significantly, to pick out history from scrapbooks will become increasing rare. However, one such example has come to my attention, following a conversation with Rod Terry our volunteer electrician. He kindly loaned me for a while his family heirloom, a collection of cuttings, which are reproduced in photographs here.

These were compiled by his mother, Mrs Terry’s scrapbook records both stories about the Marks Tey to Sudbury railway and  the newly built Marks Tey and Stanway bypass (A12 road). These date from the1969 to 1971 period. On the right a view in the vicinity of Marks Tey station, the old station building was still there and major earthworks in progress.

These reports show changing times in local transport, a headline “Railway Line Reprieved” dated from 1969 reports the branch line should be retained for five years ( to about 1975). Foresight is seen as it suggests that passenger traffic might grow with the expansion of Sudbury as a town, partly because of a Town development scheme was in progress. This was also known as a London Overspill scheme to give is unloved unofficial name, promoted by the Greater London Council. This and others reports in the museum’s newspaper collection, shows the debate at the time to retain the Sudbury to Marks Tey line. 

The London “Overspill scheme” is a topic worthy of revisiting in another Chappel News, it affected towns such as Haverhill, Bury St Edmunds, Braintree, Witham, Thetford, Huntingdon, and as designated new towns Basildon and Harlow as well. 

Within the scrapbook was a genuinely rare  find,  loosely contained within it was government letter from June 1972 - which talks of a limited financial subsidy so delaying a potential of closure of the Marks Tey to Sudbury branch line. Treats of closure only really faded the 1973 an oil and petrol crisis in 1973 when it was thought more people would have to use trains as a result!  

A final academic study suggesting conversion of railways to busways report in 1976, actually studied the line and will feature in a separate article in future.(The better use of railways/ University of Reading  Geographical papers p51-56.)

Of course all this uncertainty was the catalyst to the formation of the former SVRPS (Stour Valley Railway Preservation Society),  on which the whole museum site has subsequently  been built, the  January 11th 1971 article below suggests running trains between Chappel and Bures. 

(Photo 2) 

Political uncertainty is highlighted in this press cuttings and Government announcement  (Photo 3)

Photo 4: An article on the branch line  from June 1969 featuring local people, including Mrs Nash ,using the service and a Cravens DMU in corporate Rail Blue livery passing Chappel main signal box.

Photo 5: Colchester North where a giant steel girder is being driven away from the station destined for the Motts Bridge near the Spring Lane intersection.

The occasional mishaps can occur in construction; a lorry stuck under the bridge would be a social media posting today.

Photo 6: Aerial views of the road when completed

 At the top the Spring Lane intersection looking South West it was opened for traffic on February 3rd 1971, ( An extension of the Colchester North bypass taking  A12 away from the town was built later).

Below that,  Tollgate intersection on the A12 seen looking south –east  from Eight Ash Green.

 A smaller roundabout at the end of Essex Yeomanry Way in the far  distance. GEML railway passing left to right in the middle. A  view today would contain a large Sainsburys superstore and associated new housing developments towards the top right

To conclude this story, my thoughts return to the idea of a scrapbook, maybe as paper is now only one of  medium of choice of choice for news, is a  blog  a modern equivalent?  While social media can capture thoughts at a point on time-  it is not edited or presented to tell a story. 

Scottish Connections

 

When running a tour as a guide, often people visiting tell us of surprising things about the railway or ask questions that will lead through research to new discoveries. A recent tour I gave for guests of our President Sir Bob Russell, was one such occasion. It prompted a glimpse of living railway history; from a retired farmer who lives locally. He recalled that a family descendent  from Scotland  came to live this way 90 years or so ago bringing with him with cattle from his old farm all transported by rail.

Sir Bob himself has Scottish farming  ancestors, I was told there were in fact many Scottish farming descendants in Essex and across the border in Suffolk.   I then enquired of my own farming acquaintance; he too had a great grandfather that moved to Essex with a herd from Kilmarnock.  Some research followed and then found Essex lands at the time were often abandoned as scrub land, partly as the soil itself being composed of  heavy clay and therefore was so difficult to work.

During the late Victorian period  there was a rising demand for milk from the rising  London population it was ideal to start  dairy farming as an alternative to arable crops. This was seen as  a profitable exercise by the canny Scots. Transporting milk as was something the Great Eastern railway was also pleased to develop, maybe using some of the 17-gallon churns we exhibit  on Platform 3, which in times past was the original Cattle Dock at Chappel.

Scottish connections can also made between between Essex and Ayrshire farmers  -with  Kilmarnock in particular. At The  museum there are  examples of  another  Scottish heritage , for the product of the Andrew Barclay locomotive works in the form of both steam locomotive No.11, also John Peel, diesel  a locomotive built in Scotland and supplied with a Colchester diesel engine!

Social historians have also picked up on this exodus from Scotland, it is further  described in this web link and in further detail another link within that posting.

http://historyhouse.co.uk/articles/scotchcolony.html

By reference to a rail industry calculator, to find  the distance by rail from Kilmarnock to Colchester. it's 414 miles and 74 chains; chains being  a quaint old measure still used in the railway industry being 22 yards in length, that of a surveyor’s chain-linked chain. Such a move could still follow a traditional  route via Dumfries Carlisle, Settle and Carlisle line, Doncaster, Peterborough. Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich.

Knowing the distance , then rates can be applied to approximate what such a move might cost. While can’t tell you the rates back in the 19th century, but I know per archive does hold Goods paperwork from Takeley, there is a mileage  book from those times, maybe a 19th century rate book may surface to more precisely take us back to the rates paid at the time.

In the booking office we display a copy of the 1957 rates manual which was published in ready reckoner fashion and pictured here. Every type of merchandise is listed in great detail, including our tour guides favourite examples, rates for elephants, and sea lions. For transporting 411 miles there is a rate published of £70 12s 10d. 

Decimal currency was brought into use 50 years ago in 1971, so it gave me  a reason to work in a pre-decimal calculation to work in Pounds, shillings and old pence. Referring our our rate book in 1957 the cost can be calculated at  £918 for the farmer  transporting 60 cattle. Using  an internet inflation checker, that equates to  £2070 in today’s money. What it actually cost the railway, in building and maintaining rolling stock,  marshalling the wagons together ,transport the animals then adding  labour to load and unload, possibly watering  feeding on route of course is incalculable.

It is also so incredulous that railways were for decades duty bound by law to accept any traffic offered, and  having published rates also meant the competition could always undercut their prices to take business. Finally, the Transport Act of 1962 took away that obligation, taking  many freights flows  off the railway. Livestock facilities such as  cattle docks were then immediately withdrawn from 2493 stations down to just 282 in that year. When cattle traffic itself ceased locally we don’t know but tall freight traffic had ceased at Chappel and Wakes Colne by 1963. From 1968 only the livestock traffic was that transporting Irish cattle which itself ended in 1975. Finally of course we have one of only three 12 ton Cattle wagons preserved which runs in our demonstration freight train.