Steamlights SUCCESS!
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WINTER 2020 Vol. 62 No. 4 £2.99 SteamLights SUCCESS! Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage awards us £727,200 ‘Off the Rails’ gala Palmers Bridge replacement JOURNAL OF THE BLUEBELL RAILWAY 001 - cover.indd 1 16/12/2020 09:07 BLUEBELL RAILWAY Winter 2020 Sheffi eld Park station, nr Uckfi eld, Vol. 62 No. 4 East Sussex TN22 3QL. Tel: 01825 720800 Email: [email protected] Issue 287 www.bluebell-railway.com www.bluebell-railway.com/brps Filming Enquiries: Tel: 01825 720835 Editor: Colin Tyson www.bluebell-fi lming.co.uk ‘Westering’, 6 Kedale Road, Seaford, East Sussex BN25 2BY [email protected] Tel: 07943 021585 Editorial team: Roger Cruse, Paul Bromley, Roger Price Design: Anita Waters COPY DATE for the Spring 2021 issue is 1 March 2021. Front cover main: No 73082 Camelot heads our new SteamLights experience train at ree Arch Bridge on 5 December 2020. DAVE BOWLES Rear cover: e goods train is being prepared at Horsted Keynes in readiness for the ‘O the Rails’ event on 24 October 2020. JAMES HAMILTON Bluebell News is published quarterly at the end of March, June, September and December. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the society or company. BLUEBELL RAILWAY PLC BLUEBELL RAILWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY Chairman & Locomotive Director President Gordon Pettitt OBE Chris Hunford Vice Presidents Bill Brophy, Graham Flight, Company Secretary Graham Flight Charles Hudson MBE, David Quarmby CBE, Roy Watts MBE C&W Director Bob Pamment Acting Chairman Steve Bigg Acting Vice Chairman Roy Watts MBE Communications Director Paul Bromley General Secretary Gavin Bennett Finance Director David Burch Membership Secretary Don Brewer Treasurer Jan Kozminski Infrastructure Director Barry Luck Trustees James Funnell, Robert Hayward, Roger Kelly, Commercial & Marketing Director John Knight, Mike Priestley, Chris Saunders, James Young Paul Lelew Chaplain Rev David Murdoch Operations Director Mike Ellis Web team Sophie Matthews and Richard Salmon - [email protected] Safety Director Martin Cresswell HRA Representative Roger Price Non-Executive Director Steve Bigg BLUEBELL RAILWAY TRUST Registered Charity No. 292497 Museum Curator Tony Drake Trustee BRT Trustee Ltd Archivist Roger Price Chairman and Administrative Governor Vernon Blackburn Funding Governor Trevor Swainson Governors Sam Bee, Steve Bigg, Terry Cole, Richard Salmon, Roy Watts MBE BRPS Governor Colin Tyson Company Secretary Lance Allen 2 BLUEBELL NEWS 002-3 - flannel-welcome.indd 2 16/12/2020 09:10 Comment O1 Class No 65 approaching Ketches with the 2.30 train from She eld Park on 31 October 2020. PETER EDWARDS Welcome to the winter issue of Bluebell News. wagons had been overlooked for far too be a prime candidate for speci c heritage ere is a lot happening at the Railway as I long but it goes to show that when a band of lottery funding. Funding that would pay for write (mid-December), having just completed volunteers are able to get the bit between their its restoration o -site (candidates such as my rst rostered SteamLights platform sta teeth then they can make great things happen. Statfold Barn or the Middleton Railway which turn last night. It was so good to see lots of is seems to be a welcome trend at the is located in the city of the locomotive’s birth, happy visitors once again. moment; witness the volunteers from the come to mind) and again the story of the Following the end of England’s second Loco Dept who are moving fundraising contractor and associated navvies building the national lockdown in early December, our forward to accelerate the 9F’s position in the line could make a great educational story so sta , volunteers and visitors breathed a sigh restoration queue. that would be another box ticked. It is also no of relief that both East and West Sussex were ere has also been much talk on social coincidence that there is a Manning Wardle to be in ‘Tier 2’, which e ectively meant ‘Full media regarding other potential projects sized gap on the track at the south end of Steam Ahead’ for our seasonal trains. e gathering pace for acceptance. Bear in mind SteamWorks! which, with a little attention, national situation remains uid however that projects still have to be agreed by the could make for a great cameo of pick-axe and so we remain cautious going forward. e railway’s management in order to prevent shovel wielding mannequins and a push- second lockdown did shave o the start of a ‘scatter’ approach of undeliverable and button recording that tells the story of Joseph both our Santa Specials and SteamLights un nished projects. Like the wagons, again it is Firbank and his merry men. products and the latter was extended into non-revenue-earning vehicles that are attracting As it was only designed to pull a few mid-January and then the end of January attention because there are still many heritage wagons, full restoration would be costly and to meet demand but, as I write, this is not assets on our stock list that remain unloved. possibly needless, but a quick x would be to a ‘given’. Fortnightly Government brie ngs e rst is our Southern Railway Travelling get this locomotive inside from being out in continue to keep us on our toes! Post O ce carriage, abandoned a er its the elements at Horsted Keynes and letting During the last quarter we even managed restoration many years ago when its treatment the 9F Club loose on it when they are allowed to stage a mini ‘special event’ in the shape of using a ‘new’ etch primer didn’t etch and the to meet again. an ‘O the Rails’ gala, with visitors travelling nished paintwork literally fell o in chunks. Meanwhile, stay safe and we look forward on socially-distanced managed trains that Its promoters rightly suggest that it has a to meeting you in 2021. paused at stations long enough to visit learning value for our schools/education various forms of heritage transport displays. visits as to how our post used to travel and be Providing a further link to various means sorted in pre-motorway juggernaut days. of cartage by road, was the return of our However top of the pile is the interest demonstration goods trains, ably put together being shown in doing something with by our recently-formed Bluebell Goods Sharpthorn – the little 0-4-0ST Manning Division volunteers. Well done to all of those Wardle contractors’ locomotive of 1877 responsible for maintaining and restoring our vintage that helped to build the Lewes & Colin Tyson wagon eet. Here’s to many more examples East Grinstead Railway. Probably unique in Editor being brought back to operation. As non- its circumstance – a heritage line owning a revenue-earning vehicles, it’s fair to say that locomotive that built its line – it would surely BLUEBELL NEWS 3 002-3 - flannel-welcome.indd 3 17/12/2020 08:51 News promote SteamLights in future years. anks to driver Jim Grant and SteamLights season reman Ben Dingley who said that it was a challenge to run the train at the right speed to show o the lineside displays – but they did a terri c job. I have to thank two key sta members for their outstanding work on SteamLights; namely co-ordinator Julia Pique, who has put an enormous amount of planning into this new product and has spent countless hours organising every detail. Secondly hats o to Carriage & Wagon works manager Rowan Millard and his team of employees and volunteers. e promoter of the event, Andrew Pooley, said it was the best rigged train he had ever seen at any of the railways running similar events. SteamLights had to be moved from November due to lockdown No 30541 passes ree Arch Bridge with the 8pm SteamLights train from She eld Park on and is essentially being run 11 December 2020. NICK GILLIAM through December and until the end of January and we hope e SteamLights test train ran without a hitch with the exception equipment at Horsted Keynes that it will be one of our premier on Friday 13 November very of one string of LED lights which and the locomotive returned products going forward. successfully from She eld Park to failed on the locomotive Camelot. to She eld Park fully lit. e PAUL LELEW Horsted Keynes twice. e rst run is was recti ed very quickly second run was lmed for use in Commercial and marketing was a full dress rehearsal and went by our contracted supplier of the our future marketing activity to director HELP YOUR RAILWAY AT £727,200 GRANT AID BOOST THE JANUARY SALES Hoping to bag a bargain in the January sales? A reminder that FOR GOING FORWARD you can shop online at over 4,000 e Railway has been successful in obtaining a grant of £727,200 from the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage. retailers to generate funds for the Apart from funding for the rst phase of the refurbishment of Horsted Keynes station which was refused, Railway at no cost to you. To set we were successful in obtaining a grant for everything we asked for – a total of £727,200. However, like the up EasyFundRaising, simply go NLHF Emergency Grant, we cannot spend the money as we like – it can only be spent on the 28 speci c to www.easyfundraising.org.uk elements we included in the application. Some are ones that we wanted to do but, unless they were grant- and specify the Bluebell Railway funded, we would not have otherwise been able to a ord, particularly in the current nancial climate. as your nominated charity.