The aim of this project is to return the 1930 steam railway breakdown crane shown above to operating condition.
I am a long-term (30 years +) volunteeer at the Great Western Society's (GWS) headquarters at Didcot Railway Centre in Oxfordshire, a railway preservation society that was founded in 1962. I took on this project a couple of years ago and in that short time, it has become apparent that the ampunt of work required and the number of things that require fixing has exceeded our initial thoughts by some margin!
The crane, powered by steam, was built by Cowans Sheldon of Carlisle for the London Midland Railway in 1930 and was sent first to Motherwell in Scotland. It was subsequently sent to the Haymarket Depot near Edinburgh and the GWS acquired it in the early 80s. During its LMS and BR life, it was used to lift crashed or derailed locomotives, wagons or coaches, as well as helping with Civil Engineering jobs, such as the installation of bridges.
When restored, the crane, capable of lifting 50 tons, will be used for giving demonstrations to visitors to the Centre as well as for work within the Centre, lifting boilers of our large fleet of ex-GWR (Great Western Railway) locomotives as they need repair. At the moment, boilers requiring manipulation of this nature have to be 'jacked and packed'.
Although other preserved railway have such cranes, they seldom give demonstrations and it will give visitors to Didcot a unique opportunity to see one in operation at relatively close quarters.
Here it (the big red thing on the right) can be seen in operation, preparing to lift a locomotive during a night photo-shoot in 1992 at Didcot (photo courtesy Colin Washbourne).
... and here are two of the team, Rob and Liam, fixing a problem with the suspension. As you can observe, it's quite large and, yes, it's turned black! The pieces of light-coloured wood are packing pieces placed under the jacking mechanism (all of which is manually-operated - no hydraulics here!) to spread the load on the surface of the ground.
The sort of thing that we have come across is corroded steam pipes, such as ....
... which will clearly need replacing before we can go chuff again! ("All I did was to tap it with a screwdriver!")
Painting is also a job that is needed and here is Mike, suitably attired, preparing a surface for painting.
However ... yes, there's always a 'however'! - the major challenge is the boiler. It needed to be removed initially for a rivet to be replaced ... but once we'd removed the boiler, we found that another rivet needed replacing ... and then another ... and so on. Here it is in situ on the crane body:
and then sitting expectantly on a wagon, awaiting work. It stands some 2 metres tall.
The two large holes are inspection openings and the smaller holes inside are the ends of the tubes which contain the water inside the boiler, where it is exposed to the heat of the fire and turned into steam.
Finally, for now anyway, with the boiler on its side, is the view from the fire, which heats the tubes I was just talking about. The daylight at the far end is where the chimney is.
The amount I am asking for is £50,000.
This will enable me to sort out the boiler (c. £30000), to purchase new wire ropes (for lifting the jib and the load) (c. £5000), Coal bunkers and water tanks (£5000), to hire a Load-cell (a device to show the weight of the load for the insurance test) (£1500), to overhaul the electrical system (£1500) and leave a reasonable amount over for maintenance,over,the next 3'years (but not for consumables such as coal, water or oil) - paint and tools (thus far, I have purchased second-hand tools and they don't last all that long, so to buy new will be a good investment).