2021 AGM 

On November 13^th we held our first AGM since 2019 in the Kidderminster Railway Museum. There was a full house to conclude the AGM formalities and then receive our presentation on the way forward for the project – dubbed Project Reset.

Warrior Magazine

Issue 51 started landing on doormats from Monday 6th December. There is a full write-up of the AGM and Project Reset presentation; and as this is the nearest magazine to Remembrance Day we bring you two very interesting articles about Remembrance and the efforts that were made to make sure that those who never returned home were and are not forgotten. 

Engineering 

ENGINEERING

PRCLT completed the overhaul of 6233 towards the end of October, allowing resources to be re-allocated to 5551 work. Before that, significant further progress was made in October with component removal from the frames, in preparation for refitting to the standard required. 

Leaky Finders have fitted spring links to the tender frames and trial fitted the springs: the frames have now been sprayed and the horn blocks and spring link brackets top-coated. HBSS are continuing making the boiler slide studs.

FINANCE

For those who couldn't attend the AGM we have reproduced the presentation in The Warrior, however because of space constraints we could not reproduce the tables at a size where they are easily legible. With this in mind we have uploaded a pdf of the presentation so that you can see the amount of work that goes into the areas of Budgeting, Project Control, Risk Management, etc. and that a system is now in place to inform exactly where the build stands. These will be updated on a regular basis.

Click here to download.

Engineering 

Resource for progress at West Shed continues to be restricted by the overhaul of 6233. This was intended to be complete by the end of September, but is now expected in mid-October. 

Work on 5551 in the month has concentrated on the successful removal of various components from the frames (such as the inside cylinder and motion bracket), in preparation for refitting to the standard required. 

Engineering

An independent competent review has supported our decision to replace the driving wheels rather than attempting repair.

Our driving wheels are now at Boro Foundry for examination: we and the Foundry are cooperating on the provision of information about the engineering history of the wheels to establsih the cause of the defects.

The PRCLT chassis assessment was reviewed in August.  Issues were agreed with the preparation of frame surfaces for the attachment of components and the fixings used. There is more on this in The Warrior: we are finalising the detail of the remedial work with PRCLT and have started work on the forward programme implications.

Engineering 

A full report on the driving wheels defects reported last month was submitted to our quarterly Trustee Board meeting on 31^st July (our first face-to-face board meeting since January 2020).  The Board accepted the evidence which showed that the wheels will have to be replaced, and gave guidance on the way forward for the project.