October Update

By Pete Maddicks

Neil Taylor, the SVR engineering services manager, has left his position on the full-time staff, at the end of October. May I put on record my thanks and that of all my colleagues in the fund, for all of the support he has given us during his time in office. Neil has told me that we have not seen the last of him, as he will be back as a volunteer. Martin White has taken up the mantle, we wish him well and look forward to working with him, in his new role.

We have continued with the H&S work on-site at Bewdley, tidying of the whole site! The first job was to put the remains of the old ash pan in the metal skip, all useful parts from the old one have been taken to Bridgnorth, as patterns for new, or to be reused. We are still trying to tidy the van and container. The next big job is sorting out all the scrap, the old frame stretcher was loaded onto a trolley and moved to the skip. Next job was to collect all the old steel pipes, that has been kept as patterns but are now redundant, they are now in the skip. The job we are not looking forward to is the lean-to. It has to go, as the paint shop roof is in need of some maintenance. At the moment, it has the smokebox door, boiler cladding, crinolines, and copious amounts of bits that are being painted, plus a load of junk.

As I am writing this the PM is on the television, telling us we are in lockdown again, as we are mostly of a certain age, we have decided to not meet up until December and hopefully by then we will be able to get back to work fully.

Now progress in the Boiler Shop:

The boiler has been turned over, which has released a lot more work, patch screws, needle gunning, cleaning the tube plate to mention a few of the jobs. I think it looks a lot different with the boiler turned. The chance has been taken to tidy up the area.

The Ash Pan continues to make progress, with work on the ash removal door advancing. Looks like the plan to offer up the Ash Pan to the foundation ring may be put on hold for a while.

Phil Mason who left 12 months ago to have a 'look' at New Zealand, is back from Monday 26th October and Phil D has said that he will probably be working on our boiler.

It could be that we will be restricted to working on Mondays and only one at a time, because of the numbers in the Boiler Shop.