This Bulletin comes hard on the heels of the latest Warrior magazine, whose distribution has taken a little longer than usual because of the coronavirus emergency. (It was mailed to members on June 1^st)

On the engineering front, the good news is that West Shed is still expected to re-open on the 1st July.  Our contract is now signed and plans are being made in conjunction with PRCLT to establish task priorities. Funding has been agreed for three months and will continued to be managed carefully on a rolling basis.

At HBSS, we have very recently paused the work for the time being for budget reasons, but good progress has been made on the cladding.

You can now easily join The LMS-Patriot Project as a Member using our new web sign up page on our website. Simply click here to join up, then choose your required Membership type, starting from £25 for single Membership, then fill in the form on the screen with all your details. Once completed you will be directed to our secure PayPal page where you can pay your Membership Fee with optional Donation to the Project.

Members receive our award winning quarterly magazine - The Warrior, Membership Card, Membership Certificate, and an invitation to Members' Day to view the latest progress with 5551 'The Unknown Warrior'.

The Coronavirus pandemic continues to circumscribe our scope for making progress in most aspects of the Project’s activities, but I’m very pleased to be able to report that we are not yet, at least, at a complete standstill. 

Although all work at West Shed has ceased, HBSS continue, on a reduced work-basis, to work on the boiler cladding.  Further work has been approved, but will be on hold until HBSS can return to full-strength operations.  Whilst at Leaky Finders, work on the tender frames should be completed imminently.  A number of components - the dome and cover, heater-header and bracket, reverser assembly, among others, have been completed and are ready for delivery to West Shed from various contractors as soon as conditions allow. 

This Bulletin is dominated by how the Coronavirus emergency is impacting on the project.

We are pleased to say that our partners at HBSS are at the time of writing continuing to work on the project, making steady progress with fitting the stays and working on the cladding assembly. Elsewhere, the dome and cover have passed their safety tests, but it is likely that the shut down will prevent transportation for machining and then return to HBSS. 

We would like to inform our Project Members and website visitors that, because of the Coronavirus emergency, our Stafford Office premises are closed until further notice to our volunteers, who are doing everything they reasonably can, by working from home.

We are seeking to make special arrangements to manage post delivered to our office address, but this will result in processing delay.

Should you need to mail us, please use this temporary address:

Our finances received a welcome boost in the quarter ended 31 December when income exceeded the combined total of the previous two quarters despite our being asked to repay a large short-term loan, plus interest, at the end of November. Our particular thanks go to two members who provided short-term loans totalling £70K, which were in addition to the best quarterly total for one-off donations for 12 months, amounting to £85K. We very much appreciate this demonstration of members’ confidence in our ability to finish the job – your generosity makes us more determined than ever to justify your support.

The LMS-Patriot Company has receievd the HRA award for Communication for its Members' magazine 'The Warrior'. The annual event which is dubbed "the Oscars of Heritage Rail" was held in Birmingham on 8th February and was attended by societies, heritage railways as well as new build and heritage projects who were awarded for their achievements during 2019.