Despite the first sprinkling of snow, Saturday 25th November was a busy day here at the Museum. There were trams on the move in preparation for the next phase of our depot refurbishment project, an intrepid team set forth in the cold to continue our track project, and the remaining wheelsets and motors for LCC 1 were delivered to the workshop by our sub contractor Dorlec Ltd.
Sheffield 74, which has been in the workshop for the last few months, having its mould damaged ceiling panels replaced, as well as a full repaint, was moved out of the workshop and into the exhibition hall. Notably it was also the first tramcar during the Saturday movements to take up a temporary position under the new insulated roof of Depot 2.
With 74 having vacated the workshop, Leeds 180 has now come in for some work. Some people might have noticed 180 was out of service for part of the season, and the reason was we had to send its resistances away to a contractor for some repairs. They needed quite a bit more work than we had originally anticipated, but we’re now working on refitting them. At the same time we’re also reviewing the wiring on the tramcar and it is anticipated some work will need to be done on this as well, whilst the tramcar is in the workshop.
Saturday would probably best be described as one of those days, where the Crich weather throws everything at you. But never deterred we’ll move a toastrack tram in blowing snow, in order to keep on track with our refurbishment project.
The aim with the tram moves, was to free up the space in Depot 3, which has roads 7-9 in it. By the end of the moves, just our tower wagon was left under the roof, ready for work to start again on Monday morning with the removal of the overhead line fittings.
The photograph below, shows G&I 14 back on road 4 and Blackpool 40 next to it. You can see the difference the new roof is making to how light the building is, and this is before we even put the new electric lighting scheme in completely. There are nine full length sky light panels on each side of the roof, which let a tremendous amount of natural light into the building, but filter out a high level of harmful UV.
But whilst tram moves were a large part of the days activities, so was the progressing our track work project. Brilliant work was made by the team, despite the cold conditions on the day, as they worked on getting all the sleepers lined up and spaced correctly. Once complete this will allow us to start putting the rail back in.
The weekend was rounded out by a delivery from our sub contractors Dorlec Ltd, of the remaining wheelsets and motors for our major restoration project LCC 1.
The delivery of these means we can carry on the work on the north bogie for the tramcar, which has been the focus of our mechanical engineers in recent weeks.
It’s safe to say that there’s no slowing down for all the teams at the Museum, as our winter work programme rolls on with some great progress being made by everyone involved with all the different projects.
Photos courtesy of Mike Crabtree, Dan Heeley and Dean Sharp