The Williton Diesel Depot was open to visitors on all four days of the Autumn Steam Gala and we recorded over 600 visitors who generously donated their small change in appreciation of our efforts in preserving the best of the heritage diesels.
Steady progress has been made with the fitting out of the new Depot Messroom and we hope to have it ready to welcome staff and visitors by early November. In the meantime the Team have enjoyed the extra room provided in the temporary messroom we created in the Heritage Diesel Visitor Centre. In fact some of the Team have expressed the view that we should be staying in the Heritage Centre and use the proposed new messroom to create a new Heritage Centre. Needless to say these views have been noted and disregarded by Project Manager, Graham Perry, whose plan is to deliver a “First Class” messroom.
For the “Somerset in Autumn” Gala the DEPG provided four diesel locomotives, Class 14 D9526 for the Minehead-Blue Anchor shuttles, Class 33 D6566 on Saturday morning only, Class 42 “Warship” D832 “Onslaught” and Class 47 D1661 “North Star”. Sadly D1661 failed to start on the Sunday morning after performing faultlessly all day on Saturday so the Gala Control dispatched Class 25 D7523 from Williton to Bishops Lydeard to takeover the Class 47 diagram.
On the Monday morning after the Gala, a 40 ton road mobile crane supplied by South West Cranes arrived at Williton ready to lift the rebuilt Maybach MD870 engine into Class 35 “Hymek” D7017. The lift was undertaken outside the Minehead end of the Diesel Shed and once everything was ready to the satisfaction of Project Manager Paul Tucker and his team it was all over in 25 minutes and then time for a team photograph in front of the carne. A start has now been made on completing the numerous fitting out jobs before we can begin the start-up check procedure as laid out in the Maybach Engine Technical Manual.
At the end of the week, on the last day of October the DEPG hosted another WSR Mutual Improvement Class Williton shunting day when steam crew and guards enjoyed, I think, a day learning the “ins” and “outs” of shunting the Williton yards. In preparation for this event we used the Class 25 D7523 to go from Williton on the Thursday morning to collect the Civil Engineers five ballast wagons as past experience has shown these vehicles to be ideal for the shunting course. May we at this point thank the P.Way Team for allowing us to use their wagons to “play shunting games” for a day. We also used D7523 to tow our Class 47 D1661 home to Williton from Bishops Lydeard so a start could be made on trying to establish why she would not start on Sunday morning. In preparation for that investigation the batteries were inpscted and no fault found by Ian Robins, who then placed the batteries on charge in readiness for the arrival of loco engineer, Neil McCannon, on Saturday, the first day of November.
Finally, we would like to thank all those who visited the Diesel Depot during the Autumn Steam Gala and the Somerset in Autumn Weekend and gave generously to support our work. The total collection was over £400 and that will be used to fund some more spares.
(John Cronin)