Of wagons a-go-go

1st July 2025

I have received a number of messages from readers, generally expressing regret that their weekly written dose of my activities has left a small hole in their lives, over coffee on a Monday or similar. I do appreciate the comments but out of modesty won't repeat any here.

Equally I had no feelings of regret when the first Sunday evening in 14 years didn't have me pounding away at the keyboard, and occasionally making some remark which, in hindsight, might have been better phrased or not said at all. But I said I would be back at the end of the month so here's an omnibus edition. Setting myself a target of writing something  meaningful, maybe humorous, maybe thought-provoking every week - like a newspaper columnist - is/was challenging sometimes, but equally a holiday is not unwelcome.

Recently the MoD decided to scrap its fleet of Warwells and Warflats. Readers will recall a couple of years ago, I moved 3 examples from Ludgershall to W H Davis for assessment, but apparently the budget, spread across the entire fleet, was not considered viable, and the decision was taken to scrap them. Some weeks ago Andrew was able to view those at Bicester and selected six - 3 for himself and 3 for an acquaintance in Scotland. The sale, through Ramco, was organised but first those going for scrap - craned and shipped out at a rate of 8 a day, or so I heard - had to depart, after which Andrew was given two 2 day 'windows' to extract the remaining six.

When I shifted the ones to Davis I had had access to the Doll trailer at Heanors but that was long gone and the decision was made to alter T1 to carry them, after all, they would only overhang the back by a metre. Thus the trailer got its alterations - well most of them, time was of the essence - and on the first day, Monday 16th, Jason and I arrived at Bicester. It is fair to admit that Monday did not go well. For starters I had nominated 8 o'clock but I was late and Jason later, mostly thanks to traffic.

The ramp was set up and the first wagon winched aboard - but this was the chinese winch mounted on the trailer neck. Personally I might have preferred to use the WARN winch, mounted at the end of the trailer, and hitched the cable farther up the wagon so that with an extension manufactured on a gradient the leading axle could pass over it and still be pulled on - after all, being flat wagons we had no height restrictions to concern us. But Andrew had designed the load-bearing extensions to be flat, and estimated that the axles would just pass over the WARN winch, which we left fitted. (There wasn't time to take it off!)

As the first wagon (a Warflat) advanced, it became obvious that at the very least the hydraulic hoses on top of the WARN needed to come off but as it got closer, we could see that the bogie's bolster was 30mm or so lower than the axles, and by this point the lead axle had entered the extension section with comprised a right angle with bar welded on. Andrew and I had argued this during fabrication. My doom-bell had rung warning me that track gauge, plus wheel width, looked like these angles were too close as they stuck up. Andrew did a quick sum and thought they were just ok, assuming a 'standard' main line wheel width. As the wagon had entered this section, my doom-bell was saying 'told you' as the wheels were pressing on the insides of the angles. In fact, do you remember how hump-yards used to have retarders that squeezed the wheels to slow the wagons down? That's what we had, but fixed ones.

So now we had a winch obstructing us, and a wagon which despite being 60-70% on the downhill was held by the trailer in an embrace that far surpassed gravity. The Rail guys kindly got out a loco, and very gently pulled the wagon back down, using a long chain between 'our' wagon and the other 5. This had to be done carefully - if I detached the winch cable, as the wheelset came out of the 'grips' it would have run out of control, so I had to keep the cable attached though it could only pay out slowly. Thus if pulled too fast - well 35tons of loco and 125 tons of wagons had enough mass to pull the tractor and neck backwards, snap the winch rope or even rip the winch out of the neck. Did I mention that an H&S guy was observing the proceedings?

We achieved this with care and now we had to dismantle the WARN winch - I had fortuitously brought an Allen key the right size and 3 bolts came out but one was corroded and wouldn't play, and of course was the most inaccessible. Jason proposed chiselling through the nut if I had a chisel. I had a couple, but I also had a nut splitter big enough. This was from a set of 4 I bought years ago, probably in the 90s, and the two biggest have travelled many housands of miles in the top tray of my tool box in the van and never been required. Not only that, the driving hex was 22mm AF, and I just happened to have a 22mm impact socket in the tool box, so Big Mak (Makita impact wrench, not a fast food) did most of the work, but as we couldn't get square on it had to be achieved in stages. At last the WARN was slid out of the way into the lower deck of the trailer and the wagon pulled back on, but it was now mid-afternoon when we set off for Rowsley.

It was an evening unload at Peak Rail, Tom D driving his favourite '873' (which he insists will still be named 'John Boy' no matter what I say here) repeating the actions at Bicester by pulling it so far with a chain so that we could then lower it on the winch until he could buffer up at the bottom of the ramp.

Tuesday - and we had one day to remove two more wagons. Back down for just after eight, Jason beat me this time. We had had problems with the winch cable jumping out of the drum yesterday but Jason was blaming this on lubrication, so I sprayed the cable every few feet with lubricant and the first one went on without issue. I even sprayed the angle irons with WD40 where the scratch lines showed the wheels had been gripped, and the Rail staff commented how quick the loading had been. Jason hit the road, I had a few minutes meeting to attend and then pursued: the H&S guy was not around so we must have satisfied him even though it had not gone to plan. By early afternoon we were back at Rowsley, and 873 used the first delivery as a barrier wagon to bring the Warwell down so as to avoid the delay/risk with 'tug-of-war'ing the wagon.

The two were parked up and moved down later to Darley. Meanwhile it was back on the road to Bicester. Jason arrived at about 7pm with no time left on his tacho. Again the load went without any snags and we rolled out of Bicester where Jason had to park up - he couldn't stay at the depot for 'security reasons' and had no legal driving time to go in search of a lorry park or layby. I hit the road (about 9pm) and got home just before midnight. The following day the trailer was worked up to Rowsley and parked up as we could not unload while trains were running.

Thursday. Jason arrived and we unloaded the wagon. Incidentally this Warwell, Andrew has had confirmed, was on the last MoD main line train of these vehicles so he's saved another bit of history. I brought 873 up the ramp to pull it off and parked it up by the signal box.

Meanwhile we were off again to Shackerstone. An ex MoD Vanguard, property of HNRC, was to be returned to Worksop so we loaded it (in the heat) and headed north, dropping it off later in the afternoon.

The trailer returned to Darley Dale and Jason returned home. Over the weekend (21st/22nd) a number of little jobs were completed. A frame across the back was created to hold a better reflector and a new number plate holder, which was tee'd off the old one (for the bulb) through a plug and socket. The two orange warning flashers were re-instated after I'd re-sited the switch to the side. A damaged marker lamp got renewed, as did a broken socket up front. As a precaution the Lister's fuel tank was drained and refilled with fresh gas oil and a new filter inserted - though I failed to bleed it through thoroughly. The angles that had so stridently grasped the wagon wheels were trimmed back, except at the ends where they might assist in stopping any wagon if I forgot to stop winching. And finally it got a coat of black paint on the raw steelwork.

T1 left Darley Dale again Sunday night as week two began. I had, in the interim, arranged with Barrow Hill that we could stable two wagons there for a week or so to give us the chance of getting all 3 out within two days, which, as these 3 were destined for Scotland, wasn't practical otherwise. We had proved that we could get 2 wagons out in a day, which was just as well as Barrow Hill had remembered that they had a Fire Brigade exercise booked for the Tuesday so we had to unload the second either very late Monday or be clear by 9 am next day. So off we went again, conscious that Barrow Hill was easier to get to than Rowsley so we should save some time in going there instead. The first was loaded and we were away and all seemed well. I got ahead of Jason and was in Chesterfield when I got the sort of phone call one dreads. It was Jason to say that the trailer had developed a major air leak. I turned around. Actually I saw him going the other way as I headed south over the Trent, but by now I had heard the extent of the problem and at Andrew's suggestion I had spoken with Adam Searson at Heanor Fleet and had a plan. I caught up with Jason and escorted him direct to Ilkeston. Adam and his men dropped everything when we arrived and in an hour and a half had effected a repair which neccessitated taking a pair of wheels off, some welding and changing a brake chamber.

But the delay had cost us dearly and by the time we had unloaded it was all too apparent that we wouldn't get the second wagon collected that day.

So the second was loaded on Tuesday and as the Fire Brigade were by now rescuing volunteers from cars carefully placed under a rail vehicle in a simulated accident, unloading at Barrow Hill was out of the question and the last wagon had to be left. I got a bit of a balling out by certain MoD personnel but they agreed to us picking it up the following Monday. Jason therefore set off for Scotland, returning in time to fulfill the promises he'd made to take part in Tideswell Well Dressings.

Andrew meanwhile had taken the family to Wales for a long weekend and asked us to dog-sit Buddy the Dachshund, which I think both human and dog enjoyed. Largely on my own at Darley, I spent some time on the WARN winch with some maintenance jobs and refitting parts we had hurriedly taken off. The Deutz agent had woken up about the minilok, and instead of issuing me with a spec for a potentiometer to become the throttle, gave me the voltage range. Andrew had presented me with a power supply from one of his recent auction successes, so having found it had a duff fuse, I put a new one in, set it to exactly 5V output and measured the voltage returned by my throttle pedal. The Deutz spec said over 0.5V and below 4.5V, moving outside this range, especially the top end, might be problematic. My tests revealed that my throttle pedal returned 0.86V constant at 'idle' and 4.3V (+/- 0.02) at full travel, so once again, having checked that my wiring was correct to the pins in the plug, I set up to run the engine. This time I left the fuel rack in the shutdown position, so when the engine fired, and yes, went straight up to full engine revs, it did prove that the actuator was live and that the Engine Management unit was doing something, but not actually governing. I reported back, with the added deduction, that maybe the EMU was not seeing any feedback from the engine so it didn't know whether the engine was actually running, and had their lap-top trials up at Darley (months ago now) verified that there was a mag pick-up signal to tell it what the engine was up to? So far, all is quiet.

Monday, June 30th. I'm getting fed up with these 04.30 get ups, least of all after a hot night with sleep below 100%. I got to Bicester for 08.30 but Jason didn't arrive until five past nine. I wanted to get loaded before the hottest part of the day but by 10.15 the gauge in the van says 30 deg C (probably a bit high from standing in the sun, it dropped to 28 when I started moving) but the last(?) MoD wagon finally left Bicester.

Tonight it is somewhere, I suspect, north of the border. And with that, I'll sign off this edition. The next will be in a week or two's time, when the muse takes me. See ya then.