The first patron of our Project, Simon Weston CBE, unveiled a crest on the new National Memorial engine at an event at Crewe Heritage Centre on 10th November to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice.
The new build steam locomotive 'The Unknown Warrior' has been built to commemorate all those who fought and died in conflicts since the Great War.
The RCTS book 'The LMS Patriot 4-6-0s', their latest book in their Locomotives of the LMS series, will be released this weekend and will be available exclusively from The LMS-Patriot Project at Crewe Heritage Centre on Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th November. On Saturday the author John Jennison will be available to sign copies. Costing £24.95 the book is casebound, 224 pages with 141 mono photos and 18 colour illustrations.
Also available will be our own pictorial book 'The Patriots, Volume 1, Nos. 45500-45525' with author Pete Sikes available to sign copies, our book is priced at £18.95.
In preparation for the upcoming Open Weekend on 10th/11th November the trial fitting of our new boiler and firebox commenced today with our engineering team and staff of HBSS carrying out a slick and professional operation. For a few 'taster' images of today's action see our Facebook page.
The LMS Patriot Project will have its sales stall open throughout this event, I assume at Bo'ness Railway Station as despite asking nobody has told me where we are located yet.
This will be the first time we have had a presence in Scotland.
The emphasis in January was on organising the transfer to Tyseley of our many components stored in containers at West Shed. A site meeting back at West Shed on 8th January inspected the contents and agreed a methodology for sorting and transferring components that cannot be simply transported in the containers without risk. An extended team of volunteers has been assembled for this special task. Our original plan to complete the move in late January had to be deferred to February because of temporary vehicular access restrictions at Tyseley (outside the control of TLW Ltd.).