Just a quick couple of photos this week which illustrates the huge variety of work which takes place down at Apedale. In the Yellow corner (actually, it's grey) we have the Pechot wagon. This is a rather huge French military vehicle dating back to WW1. It was reassembled in time for the 2014 Tracks to the Trenches event, but need a fair bit more work. Needless to say, it hasn't quite made it to the front of the queue - until we remembered (as you do) that Tracks to the Trenches 2016 is less than three months away. The wagon carried a tank (liquid, not panzer) after the War, and had a fair few modifications to accommodate this. Not least is the absence of a floor in the well of the wagon. So, the race is on to get the wagon looking something like for the big weekend in May - 13, 14 & 15th.
In the Red corner - actually Magnolia - is the team painting themselves and, in between times, the station canopy. There is an awfully large surface area in a station canopy, and it's needing three coats of paint. That's a lot of paint; most of the work is overhead, and some of the paint does insist on obeying the laws of gravity. This can only be done when we are closed to the public - and Easter is now close. So it's another race against time.
The Trust's aim is to build a museum and a railway to display its collection of industrial narrow gauge equipment that has been gathered from various industries around the UK in the last 30 years, and in doing so we aim to educate and entertain both the general public and the railway enthusiast.
The Industrial Narrow Gauge Railway is an unusual aspect of British Industrial Heritage that is now almost extinct. These small, self-contained railway systems were often hidden away from the general public and served such diverse industries as brickmaking, sewage works, munitions factories, mines, civil engineering and many more.