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March 25th was the day set to re-arrange the two vans that are to form useful stores and workshop space for Andrew.
As regular visitors may have noticed, up to recently there was only one such van, a 10ft wheelbase "Palvan" which has been bursting at the seams over at Rowsley. At Scunthorpe he had no accomodation to store parts removed from, or arriving for, both the 03 D2128 and "Beverley" but late last year permission was granted for a normal (i.e. not long) wheelbase van, and the search was on. In the end, agreement was reached with the Class 20 group to purchase their redundant "VBA" van - which of course was a long wheelbase example, and was therefore to come to Peak Rail in exchange for the Palvan, which was to go to Scunthorpe.
So on Thursday March 25th, Andrew and his father met up with Dave and George of Neil's Plant at Ruddington, at a little after 9 o'clock. There was some delay in getting started, as although the VBA was out on the "pan" for loading, other locos and roling stock had been pushed through the shed behind it, and a loco had to be started before these could be moved away to make sufficient room to dismantle the trailer, assemble the ramp, and drag the VBA on to the trailer.
In so doing, we blocked the access down to the side of the Heritage Centre, and so we offer our apologies, for during the operation, the recycling vehicle (bin lorry to us older souls) came in, took one look, turned and went out again - so the bins are full for another week at Ruddington.
With the VBA aboard, we dismantled the ramp but during this, heard a loud report and found that one of the deck rails, which had an old fracture from base to fishplate bolt hole, now had a fresh fracture from said hole to top. Others may have panicked at this stage, thrown in the towel or run screaming into the hills. But we are made of sterner stuff, and although one ramp rail now stuck upwards at about 20 degrees, we continued unabashed.
The VBA was after all fully-secured, the broken rail could be dealt with at the appropriate time, and time we did not have in abundance, since with the various delays we were now 2 hours behind Andrew's schedule. But the VBA was on the move.
About an hour and half later, having gummed up the traffic in Chesterfield and Bakewell, the VBA arrived Rowsley, where Andrew's Vanguard "Charlie" was patiently awaiting. The normal loading area here is beyound the end of the station headshunt - the buffer stop being lifted off by a JCB and two temporary rails substituted. A condition of this is that no passenger service is running.
Once again the ramp was assembled, the broken rail persuaded to sit where it ought, and the VBA brought carefully down onto the rails of its new home, where the Vanguard waited to run round it and take it away.
But first the Palvan was collected from the adjacent siding, and so the entire rolling stock of the Andrew Briddon (Loco) Collection was together for a short time.
The Palvan was loaded to the trailer, and set off north and east for the M18 and Scunthorpe, by which time it was too dark to take pictures, but with a bit of help from a YEC 0-6-0DE "Arnold Machin" the Palvan was unloaded and waits an influx of bits for Beverley and D2128 Heidi - but to close, a picture of it about to say goodbye to Rowsley....
A big thank you to Dave, George, Rob, and all those at Ruddington and Rowsley who assisted.
25th March 2010
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