Listermania

One of the pleasures of any hobby is sharing a common interest with others. The relative portability of the smaller locos in the Moseley Railway Trust's collection means that it is occasionally possible to take them to other lines in the UK for a little visit. This is exactly what happened with Lister Blackstone 52610, which visited the Amberley Working Museum for their Railway Gala over the weekend of 13 & 14 July. It was not alone. There were no fewer than seven other visiting Listers - from as far afield as Gloucester and Ripon, North Yorkshire; these joined the museum's resident pair of such locos and a loco on site under restoration for its owner, making a total of eleven. Listers are characterful little locos, not least because they tended to lurk in out-of-the-way places, like small peatworks and the like. Their low power (around 8hp) meant that they did not get used at many large works or systems. These small works typically used one or two locos - leading to a debate about whether this event represented the greatest ever gathering of Listers in one place. One wonders how many were on the production line at Lister's factory in Dursley, Gloucs, at any one time? All in all, a splendid event, and all credit to Amberley Rail Group. More info can be found here and here. The photos show the Moseley Team gathered with LB52610, and then the world record breaking use of no less than nine (yes, count 'em) Listers on a passenger train on the Sunday. We won't be attempting anything quite like that at the MRT open days at Apedale on September 13 & 14 (details here) but you will be able to come along and see LB52610 and all its friends. As ever, contact us here.

Silent Power

With our new storage shed now full of locomotives, we're spoiled for choice over which one to use for shunting duties. One of our members suggested that we should use electric locomotives where possible, thus avoiding the noise and in particular the smoke that the usual diesels emit. The last thing we want to do is pollute our new building. Hence we started looking at our Pikrose battery-electric. This is the most modern loco in our fleet, having been produced by Pikrose, the successors to Wingrove and Rogers, in 1993. It is a WR20 model, number B0366V, weighing in at 3.5 tons. This locomotive was delivered new to the Kettering plant depot of Sir Robert McAlpine & Son Ltd, the well-known civil engineering contractor.

The locomotive is powered by 36 traction batteries, providing 72 volts in all. In use the engines are charged overnight from the mains and then a single battery pack should last for a day's shift. When in continuous use, a spare battery pack can be charging and swapped over when the first is exhausted. When acquired, our loco did not come with a charger and it was only recently that we obtained one of the correct voltage. With the batteries having lain out of use for some time, it has taken a little while to coax them back into life. Meanwhile, we have repaired the control system and freed-off the braking system.

Once charged, it was time to plug in the batteries and try for a test run. After a few false starts, the loco literally sparked into life again (this particular loco uses manual contactors to vary its speed). Its performance is quite impressive and although a little fettling remains to be done, this engine should prove a useful environmentally-friendly shunter. You'll struggle to hear it, but come down and see it in action on our open days later this year.

What we did on our holidays

Summer is here and it's the perfect time to take a week off work. Paid work, that is. This week, a loyal gang of Moseley volunteers booked a week's holiday and reported for duty. The task at hand was to fill our brand new shed at Apedale with the remaining part of our collection that has been in exile at Buxworth in Derbyshire. For the past few years, whilst our fleet has been in store, any shunting has had to be carried out with a fork lift truck. Now, for the last time, each locomotive was lifted to the door using a specially-made steel pallet and loaded onto a lorry for the 90 minute journey to Apedale. There were a lot of turned heads as our unusual loads headed across the hills towards their new home.

The result now is a fully populated shed, relief and a lot of smiling faces amongst our membership. We even managed to feature our new attraction in the local newspaper, the Newcastle Sentinel.

By the end of Wednesday, the major part of the mission had been accomplished and the rest of the week was used to gather up tools, wagons and other smaller items. As people departed at the end of their working holiday they left exhausted but satisfied that all had gone according to plan. So, the stage is now set for our open days at Apedale on 13-14 September when the public will be invited to view the entire collection in one place for the first time in many years. Don't forget to book the date in your diary. Contact us for further details.