Apologies for the non-availability of the RRRG website earlier today. This was caused by a hardware failure at our web hosting provider which has now been resolved and the site has been restored from a backup.
Apologies for the non-availability of the RRRG website earlier today. This was caused by a hardware failure at our web hosting provider which has now been resolved and the site has been restored from a backup.
On 23rd and 24th February the RRRG sales stand attended the Nene Valley winter steam gala. The stand was predominantly coordinated and managed by Tim and myself; Mark was around on Saturday morning to bring stock down and help set up but couldn't stay because of a family appointment. It was cold. Very cold. So cold, in fact, that it was the first time in ten years of RRRG trading that we have had the sales stand out whilst snow has been falling... That said, it was nice to see a preserved line trying something new and trying to extend their operating season to make more money. Saturday trading was reasonable although in the afternoon the star attraction no 70000 Britannia unfortunately derailed at Yarwell Junction whilst backing onto coaching stock at the end of a run round manoeuvre. The non-availability of this locomotive undoubtedly affected attendance levels at the gala, which was a shame. We sold a mixture of items but no really high value items such as the boxed Hornby model sets you see in our online shop, sold, which was again a bit of a shame.
The final figures for sales were:
Saturday 23rd Feb: Total Turnover £161.55
Sunday 24th Feb: Total Turnover £137.25
Total RRRG profit after fees was £93.08 for the weekend, which was a respectable showing. Renown Repulse Universal, RRRG's commercial wing, also sold a number of items from the stand over the weekend to create profit which can be re-invested in RRRG and its activities (such as the hosting fees for this site!) and contributed to the putch fee.
Even though I fell ill late on Sunday evening with one of the worst colds I've had in many a year, doubtless aided by standing out on a freezing cold platform all weekend, it was still a worthwhile event and our thanks go to the Nene Valley Railway for inviting us to have a stand once again.
As long-term followers of RRRG will know, for some time now we have been investigating the remanufacture of CU2 field divert units to replace the ones missing from our locomotives. Our contractors for the job, Industrial Electronic Services Ltd, had analysed a genuine CU2 kindly loaned to us by another Class 50 owner and were confident they could reproduce the circuitry and components in the unit, using modern equivalents where possible/necessary. They had however hit quite a snag when it came to replacing the little relay in the original unit. The CU2 is a really amazingly compact piece of equipment for mid-1960s electronics as seen in the photo of the loaned unit below. The relay in question is the small black box seen in the centre of the picture. It switches at the operating voltage of Class 50 auxiliaries, namely 110v DC which brings about the problem of how to find a modern equivalent. Electronics is obviously one area where technology has progressed leaps and bounds in the near-half century since the Class 50 was constructed by English Electric and relays to operate at such high DC voltage, let alone such compact ones (it appears the original was custom-made for EE by ITT) are almost completely obsolete these days. Most modern relays, even of a size too big to fit the case, would burn out very quickly if asked to switch 110v DC.
We thought about various ways to overcome the problem. Inverting the current to AC, using an AC relay and then rectifying it back to DC was suggested but dismissed as impractical. 50030 Electrical Officer Andy Rowlands suggested using a spare NR28 relay, as used elsewhere in the locomotive to switch 110v DC. It wouldn't fit in the box for the CU2 (and the CU2 is deliberately designed to be compact as it fits into a very tight space in the cubicle) but Andy reasoned it could be mounted externally and wired in. We supplied IES with a couple of NR28s to test the theory and they agreed it would work but felt the new divert unit would need some circuit modification if it were to be used. IES decided to have another look at the relay market and managed to source a relay from the US which has a 24v coil and can switch up to 220v DC. IES ordered a number of these relays on our behalf and have now advised us that they have arrived and appear to work fine in our 110v DC application.
We now expect progress to be rapid on the rebuild of these electronic units. IES have invited Andy to inspect the new relays in person the first week in March and if approved by us, IES expect to finalise the design within the next couple of weeks with production of the two units requested following imminently thereafter.
A full description of the electronic units in a Class 50, and how many of each type RRRG has, can be found in RRRG newsletter Issue 23 (Autumn 2011). Since that article was written, we have acquired one original CU2 from another Class 50 owning group however we still intend to have two units built by IES to cover for possible future failures.
RRRG will be attending the Nene Valley Railway steam gala with our sales stand at Wansford station on February 23-24. We will have our usual selection of books, DVDs and keenly-priced Hornby models on sale and we thank the NVR for extending us the invitation to attend their events once again this year. Come along and say hello, there's a good lineup of steam power on show including 70000 Britannia, and you can chat to RRRG representatives about the state of the project and how you can help.
A few bits of news to report.
We've been a bit quiet here whilst we all took it easy over the Christmas break. Back to the grindstone now however! (At least for our regular day jobs!) This weekend I made a few changes to the shop on the RRRG site. I added a few new products and also comprehensively revised the Past and Present books in our used books section. I added scans of a few sample pages from each one so you can see what you're buying, and also the maps from each volume showing the areas covered - again, so you know what you're buying! The most significant change to the shop is the addition of second class postage options for some products and insured delivery for our higher value products. I am personally a first class postage man, prepared to pay a premium for express service, but we realise that it makes sense to give the option of a cheaper service if you aren't insistent on having your items arrive quite so quickly. This is only available for some items because items over 1kg in weight can't be sent second class, plus some models are more expensive than the insurance level offered by second class post. However if an item from the shop is eligible for second class postage then the option will be presented when you check out. We will be adding more merchandise over the coming days so keep checking back!
The RRRG sales stand will be out on the following dates: Burton on Trent Town Hall swapmeet Wed December 12th 18.30, Castle Donnington Exhibition Centre Sun Dec 16th 10.30 – 15.30, Kirkby in Ashfield Sunday 6th Jan 2013 10.30 – 15.30 (location TBC), Stafford County showground 13th Jan 2013 10.30 – 15.30. Full details in Railway Modeller magazine! We will have a great selection of merchandise and some very keen prices on brand new Hornby models.
Welcome to the new RRRG restoration diary and blog! This new section of our website incorporates many of the old postings both from our interim website at renownrepulse.wordpress.com and our old website that died in late 2011/early 2012. There are some posts missing from July 2011 up until February 2012 which we do not appear to have copies of (even the Wayback Machine cannot help!) However, from now on we will be posting RRRG restoration news, work party reports, reports of RRRG socials and personal thoughts to this blog. It's not just RRRG Committee members who will be posting: any RRRG member with opinions to share is welcome to post here. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested in contributing!
After much hard work and development we are proud to announce the launch of the brand new RRRG website at http://www.renownrepulse.com.
We are now able to launch a proper new on-line presence and wanted to launch now so that our online shop is made available to you in time for the Christmas market! You can get as much as an additional 10% discount if you are a member of RRRG.
The site contains lots of information and photographs of the project. It will be constantly updated and grown as a site so please do check back regularly for updates, new pictures and more online shopping opportunities!
We will be happy to receive your feedback and comments on the new site and we will gladly incorporate the best suggestions into the design of the site. We look forward to your visit! Thank you to all RRRG fans for your support.
A small RRRG party consisting of Sarah McCall and Steve Tripp visited Booths today to pick the remains of 47829 and 37428. The pickings were unfortunately a bit thin as not much was left on these locomotives by the time they arrived at Booths. The RRRG volunteers recovered a number of resistors (these are needed for Renown and we're getting closer to completing a full set), some insulators, turbo gauges and two dismantled arc chutes (complete ones were missing but these parts will help us repair our damaged examples) which made the day excursion worth it. Well done to those who took the time to go along to Rotherham today.
No, RRRG has not dissolved and ceased to exist! Yes, things have been a bit quiet regarding posts here. The main reason is that we are working frantically behind the scenes on a brand new website which will eventually supplant this Wordpress site as our window to the world. Much effort is being devoted to this; in fact so much that we haven't had much time to update things here. A number of RRRG Committee members attended a meeting at Peak Rail on October 14th where we decided on various strategies for the future of the project and the way ahead. The fruits of this will become apparent in due course. I can also report a successful sales operation during the recent diesel gala season where thanks to a number of railways kindly inviting us we made some good money. I can also confirm that RRRG members will receive the next issue of the Group newsletter in early December.
So, yes, from the outside it looks very quiet in RRRG land. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes and in the words of Shaw Taylor: "Keep 'em peeled!" - there will be some exciting announcements in the near future.
The RRRG sales stand will be out at Wansford station on the Nene Valley Railway this weekend (29-30 September) selling our usual wide variety of books, toys and models. In particular we will have some brand new Hornby Class 56 models at highly competitive prices. We hope to see you there and help us match our takings from the NVR steam gala which provided valuable revenue to progress the restoration of 50029 and 50030. Thanks to the Nene Valley Railway for the invitation to their event where we are pleased to note the effort put in to give a good show.
We were at the Nene Valley steam gala this weekend. Saturday was excellent: warm and sunny with crowds aplenty. Sales-wise we cleared about £310 profit. Today was always looking more risky, the weather forecast was for steady and persistent rain in the afternoon. This duly arrived about half past one and we decided to shut up shop rather than risk getting soaked for the sake of no punters anyway. A bunch of last minute sales took us up to a respectable £90 profit. Worth doing and with £400 profit for the weekend and disposed of some "long term inmates" from the sales stock. We will be back at Wansford next weekend for the diesel gala - thanks go to the Nene Valley Railway for the invitation to both events and for putting on a good show this weekend.
Today I are be mostly...sorry been watching too many episodes of the Fast Show. Dave had spent the week on site as he's still off work following his operation & he's cleaned & painted most of the water & air inlet piping for the ex-008 power unit. Mark B dug out of the stores the two sections of protective shields for the A side generator conduits & cleaned and undercoated them; one each for 29 & 30. He also sorted a third section of the gen conduits, loosened off the joints and began removing years of layers of paint. I and my girlfriend Julie belled out and marked both sets of wiring from the cab AWS sunflowers to the AWS relay box, though removing the lid of the relay box proved difficult as two of the fixing bolt heads had been broken off some time ago, and I had to put an angle-grinder through the one stud to release the lid. I brought away the shaped mounting bracket from No.2 cab and the sunflower dial from No.1 cab to clean the contacts.
Ian & Pete cleared various debris out of the sump of the power unit, and started cleaning & painting sections of inlet air piping. Dave...supervised, as he is still recovering from being under the knife for a hernia and is excused duties for the moment. Mark cleaned & sorted another section of conduit for the generators, to go with the two sections he had previously done, so three down, 13 to go. This is not as easy as it sounds, as most of the lengths of conduits had been separated from each other for easier storage, so it was a case of multiple visits inside Repulse & our stores to find the right sections.
I test-fitted one of the new Z70 resistors, and found it fits the existing brackets perfectly. I just need to properly space the tapping bands, then it can be fitted permanently.
Sharp-eyed Mechanical Officer spotted an interesting addition to the livery of 66030 at Hereford on 11th August.
Our gas bottles on the trolley used to collect them; oxygen (black) and acetylene (maroon).
One of those "must get round to doing that sometime" tasks hanging over RRRG has been to collect a couple of cylinders of oxygen and acetylene with which to power our cutting and welding equipment. Although there is a BOC distributor just across the A6 from Peak Rail's Rowsley South site they have limited opening hours which are somewhat inconvenient for the regular on site RRRG volunteers. Tim and I decided we would head up to Rowsley last Friday night in order to be on site in the morning ready to collect the gas. So, shortly after 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon I hit the road to drive the 170 miles or so from Reading to deepest Derbyshire whilst Tim got a train from Peterborough to Matlock, where I would meet him. I got delayed by the usual Friday traffic whilst Tim got delayed when 66008 decided to investigate the ballast on the Midland main line near Duffield. (I did however make it through Bletchingdon on the A34 without incident after my two year anniversary earlier this month, and once on site, Dave was as helpful and complimentary as ever that my latest car was retaining its factory-fitted styling so well).
The cylinders are now in situ at RRRG headquarters. One of the main uses we will have for them is to heat up some bolts and pins on our spare bogies which are absolutely stuck fast and won't shift any other way. In particular there are some arms secured by pins and bolts which prevent the traction motors being removed from the bogies and we want to either free these off, or if necessary, cut them off (we have plenty of spares) in order to free the motors for removal to Bowers for overhaul.
Aluminium air intake manifolds destined for the ex-50008 power unit. The foreground example awaits the removal by wire brushing of years of dirt and grime to reach the standard of the background pair, which Dave Rolfe described as "Rolls Royce quality"!
After treatment with the wire brush, Tim and I set about red oxide primer coating of the manifolds we treated that day, as well as returning to some that other RRRG volunteers had already treated, just to ensure that "Rolls Royce finish"!
With the main excitement of the morning over, and after a few steadying cups of tea and brunch at the Peak Rail cafe, Tim and I set to work on wire brushing and red oxide painting of a number of air intake manifolds destined for the ex-50008 power unit. Chris Bodell's nascent music career meant he was playing a gig in Bakewell on Saturday night so he went home to practice and took his leave of us. Tim was diagrammed for transporting teenagers to a roller disco in Peterborough that evening and so, despite building up some momentum on the inlet manifolds, we reluctantly packed up and I drove us the 100 or so miles back to Peterborough, where the teenagers were transported and Tim and I undertook a mutual debriefing session in The Moorhen at Hampton Vale (Tim's local). Sunday was spent doing more work on the soon-to-be-launched new RRRG website (of which more in due course) and I then hit the road for the final time back to Reading, which was covered in a personal best time of 1 hour 50 minutes and brought my mileage for the weekend to a touch short of 400. But it's all good fun (allegedly!).
A large amount of heavy boulders blocking the path to the container where our purchased spares were.
On Friday 29th June 2012, Sarah and myself set off together with our trusty hound Toby to meet up with the contacted transport company at a site near Worcester to collect electrical items we had purchased from 50021 Rodney Group, this also included a Radiator Fan Motor and Traction Motor Blower for the D400 Fund.
When we arrived at site, we introduced ourselves to the Lorry Driver Nigel Chapman. The first problem we encountered was that due to the heavy deluge the day before, a delivery of large boulders had been delivered and dumped in front of the grounded curtain-sided truck body that our items were being stored in.
After a little head scratching it was decided we could get into the other side of the body if we removed the site security fencing. When we obtained access to the other side of body, the next obstacle was to release the tensioning mechanism, which through the passage of time had sunk into the ground, and after some digging with spades and persuasion with the site dumper truck which lifted the sunk body out of the ground we gained access.
We moved some fencing to gain access to the other side of the container.
With the transport lorry manoeuvred into position and stabiliser legs down the next problem encountered was a temperamental hydraulic hi-ab which with the technical know-how of Nigel, eventually played ball. The first two items strapped up and lifted out were the Cubicle and Rad Fan Motor. The two compressors and traction motor followed soon after. The items were secured down and we then drove to where the traction motor blowers and spare power unit (ex-50045) were stored. One blower motor was lifted and secured down.
We needed the site dumper truck to force our way in...
RRRG's main purchase, the electrical cubicle, safely loaded onto the lorry.
Once everything was checked to be secure we set off on our journey North, up the M5, M42 etc heading for Derbyshire with Bowers Electrical being our first port of call. We had anticipated the journey to be difficult with the usual Friday afternoon traffic, however also had the added problem of road closures along the A6 between Derby and Rowsley due to the Olympic Torch relay, fortunately the journey went without delay or incident. At Bowers we had the assistance of a forklift and very quickly off-loaded D400 Fund's Rad Fan Motor and Blower Motor together with our two compressors.
RRRG's haul included two genuine Class 50 compressors, ex-50011, seen being guided onto the lorry.
We then set off for Rowsley, arriving at site about 4:45pm, where we were met by local “BG” resident Dave Rolfe. Once on site we discovered one of our ETH generators (in worse condition than the others, which is why it was never sent for overhaul) was obstructing the route of the lorry to our storage shed, incidentally we also needed this moving, so with the Hi-ab on site we took advantage and relocated it dropping it near Renown together with the Traction Motor.
A further spare traction motor was also included in the deal.
A short break was had whilst we retired to the BG for a brew. Once refreshed we returned to our storage shed to off-load the electrical cubicle although this was not without problems as the hi-ab could not manoeuvre the cubicle all the way into the shed so with a solid steel bar and some brute force we pushed the cubicle in. Space in the shed being what it was, we had to man-handle the cubicle in at an angle until the doors could be closed and locked. Everything was then sheeted up, secured and we eventually left for site calling at Frankie & Bennies for a very well earned bite to eat and pint, eventually getting back home some 15 hours after starting out earlier that morning.
After some manhandling to make it fit the available space inside RRRG's designated facility, the newly-purchased cubicle was safely stored awaiting future work. With this final act, a long and satisfying day finally came to an end!
A big thank you to Nigel Chapman the jovial lorry driver, who was a tremendous help on the day, enjoy your retirement!! Photos by Sarah McCall.
RRRG are holding their Annual General Meeting (AGM) this coming Sunday 24th June 2012 commencing at 13:30 hrs at the 260th Birmingham Scout Group, rear of Scanlons Club, 254 Spring Road, Tyseley, Birmingham B11 3DW.
Current members and shareholders are very welcome to come along and attend to find out how the work on 50029 and 50030 is progressing.
Any non-members are also welcome to attend but would need to become a member or shareholder: this can be arranged on the day.
RRRG has just purchased a traction motor, two compressors and an electrical cubicle (all ex-50011 Centurion) from the 50021 Rodney group/ owners . The items will be collected, together with items bought by the D400 fund, and transported to Bowers Electricals Ltd. at Heanor for assessment and any work that may be needed.
The electrical cubicle that has quite a few re-usable components will be dropped off at Rowsley where the parts will be stripped for future use or spares.
We will be at Wansford station on the Nene Valley Railway over the weekend of 19-20 April with our sales stand at their diesel gala. It promises to be a great event and our thanks to the Nene Valley for inviting us again. We always enjoy going to Wansford and the NVR has put a good lineup together for this event so come along and enjoy rides on their trains, sample our merchandise and have a chat about the RRRG project.
Back in 2002 when RRRG successfully bid and secured Renown and Repulse together with various spares David Phillips was a volunteer at Pontypool & Blaenavon Railway and safely stored a CU1 on our behalf. As Sarah & I were travelling down to Swanage diesel gala this weekend to enjoy recently restored 50026 it was decided to call in to David's home in Trowbridge to collect the CU1 en-route. Whilst there I received a bonus in the form of an Ammeter for one of the cabs. I would like to thank David for safely storing the parts and also for the hospitality he and his wife offered us.
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| CU1 collected from David Phillips | CU1 Wiring Loom and Plugs | Cab Ammeter |
RRRG investors who have earned shares through work parties or purchased additional shares, up to the end of June 2011 will shortly receive an updated share certificate.
The date of end June is chosen because, for historical reasons, this represents the end of the RRRG financial year and so any shares obtained after this date will NOT be counted in this update. Only shareholders whose shareholding level has increased by one or more whole shares will receive an updated certificate - put simply, if you haven't acquired any more complete shares since the last update then you won't get a certificate this time round!
Anyone who thinks they should have an updated certificate but hasn't received one by the middle of next week, please get in touch.
Sarah and I attended site and again met on site by Dave who I now think lives on site full-time as he is always there :-)
Dave continued with clearing and tidying the container a job that when he started thought would take a morning ended up taking three days. Once this was completed he continued with the refurbishment of the radiator grilles. The process takes such a long take as each element is being stripped back to bare metal, prior to priming and painting, and as BR's policy appears to have been apply new paint onto the old there are numerous layers of paint and a rainbow of colours.
Sarah & I continued with the assessments of the KV10's. Starting with the best we are checking and cleaning contacts and replacing unserviceable parts. We have finished one complete unit having to re-terminate a couple of broken cables connections and replace a couple of components. The next best KV10 selected had sound looking components but the cable terminations at the top of the unit looked a little rusted and three of them sheared off when attempts were made to loosen them even after liberal application of WD40 (other lubricants are available lol). Therefore we had to loosen of the paxolin board from the body of the KV10 and using recovered termination studs from other scraped units these were replaced but this is not easy as unless you disconnect cables going from one side of the unit to the other side the board only gives finger width space.
Our next visit to site to continue with work on the KV10's will be in a few weeks as we will be participating in a railtour with EE Type1's and a couple of galas where it's hoped to sample a certain Mr Spracklen's 50026.
Myself, Sarah and Toby the dog attended site and the usual weekender Dave was there when we arrived. Dave spent the Saturday erecting a shelving unit the group acquired courtesy of one of our volunteers employers (enough said) and having a general tidy up.
We spent the day working on assessing our KV10's. A couple were found to have damaged PCB connectors, I have found a source for acquiring replacements.
The worst KV10 was dismantled to use a template to check the remaining units and to provide spare parts.
A list of spares needed is being compiled and all parts sourced so repairs can be carried out prior to transporting the KV10's and associated PCB Control Cards for testing.