WYTHALL’S WINTER
Once upon a time, the Museum used to call its last event of the season ‘Pre-Hibernation Day’. Perhaps in those days this was true for the Museum site, but nowadays, whilst our visitors may go in to hibernation, activity continues apace at the museum. A recent trend has been for there to be more people working at the museum on weekdays than at weekends, particularly Sunday.
When I last reported on site developments, the ‘Blueline’ building for spares had still to be delivered. It - or rather the component parts - arrived in mid-November and a strong team was soon employed in erecting it. There were 48 loops to assemble for its 96-foot length and, with a lull in activity over Christmas, all are now in place. As I write, the two end walls have yet to be assembled and various other tasks to be completed before we can bring it in to use. Nevertheless progress is good and it should be possible to transfer spares to it over the summer. One of the incidental jobs to be done was reducing the height of the hedge between the new building and the adjacent caravan club site. This was largely done by myself, precariously balanced on top of a ladder, while Malcolm Keeley attacked the lower branches. The debris was then carted off to be shredded by a team including Ray Ward, Fred Withers and others.
Not to be outdone, our colleagues in the Elmdon Model Engineering Society have their own construction project; they are rebuilding the viaduct near their clubhouse, the wood having gone rotten. The new one is of brick construction. The track remains in place and they were able to celebrate New Year’s Day by running trains for their members.
Another project involving some construction work has just started. The decision was taken last year to take the carriages out of use as an exhibition area and relocate the small exhibits and pictorial display in the largely unused end of the café and shop. In clearing this space for the exhibition, the opportunity is being taken to reorganise the shop and move the cafeteria counter. As well as this planned work on this building, unplanned work has had to be done to renew the floor near the fire exit and to try to stop leaks into the kitchen area. Further work will be required on the latter when the weather improves.
Parking the buses for the winter in such a way that as many as possible are inside and those that are to be worked on are accessible is always a major logistics problem. After agonising about what goes where on the magnetic board we now have to assist with planning, the move was done for real in early November. Notable are the return of Leicester 60 to the museum site (in exchange for the Royal Blue Bristol RE), the Tilling moving to the centre of the Shire Hall and Dick and Fred’s Leyland PS2 vacating the slot behind the door pillar it has occupied for many years. That space is now occupied by D9, 4871, work upon which has been restarted by Kevin and Alex, with the intention that it is restored in West Midland PTE livery. There was even a change in the electric vehicle section with the Midland that has been in position for a long time being parked alongside the Land Rover and the resulting space allowing work to progress on the Graiseley.
Work on buses has largely been continuation of existing projects rather than anything new to report. The Midland Red Fleetline, which suffered from a common Fleetline problem of severe corrosion to the chassis over the rear axle has been stripped inside to allow Pete Murphy to do the same repair job as previously applied to James Munro’s East Lancs bodies WMPTE Fleetline. So far, Pete has done the nearside on the Midland Red bus. The arrival of the LS18 on site has been recorded elsewhere and there is no immediate intention to do work on it but to make it look more complete. Seats are being fitted by Tom Couling. A by-product of this decision was that to get at the required seats, the seat store D9 had to be made accessible - this involved severe pruning of a hedge!
One of the scruffier areas on the site is the ‘brickyard’ by the roller-shutter doors to the Electric Vehicle Hall. Some materials have recently been used and with others moved out of sight behind the railway tunnel this is being greatly improved. Hopefully the coming summer will allow the grass to recover.
Phil Ireland
Chapel Lane, Wythall, Worcs B47 6JX
Tel : 01564 826471 e-mail us
A registered educational charity no 507191
