The latest two OTPPG machines arrived at Longhoughton at the end of January.
HCT022 and 98710 both arrived into the yard on 28th January 2009 to join the rest of the group’s machines.
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Archive for the ‘New Machines’ Category
New Permaquips Arrive At Longhoughton
Permaquip High Capacity Trolley Acquired
We’re pleased to announce that a Permaquip High Capacity Trolley (HCT) has been acquired for the group this week.
HCT022 has been secured from ColasRail at Horsham following a successful bid on behalf of the group.
The machine has remained out of use at Horsham for some time but is still in very good condition having been refurbished a few years ago.
Hopefully this will prove a very useful addition to the fleet, and will be available for hire to preserved railways very soon.
It will be collected from Horsham within the next few weeks.
Yet Another Permaquip!
We are happy to announce the group’s latest acquisition today – the final Permaquip PCT on the national network – 98710 which has been residing at Andover for the last few years.
Another Permaquip!
Towards the end of November another Permaquip PCT 98707 (PCT012) moved north…
Longhoughton is becoming quite the Permaquip hotspot lately. Three more arrived in the middle of November.
Personel Carriers 68805, 68806 and Canopy Trolley 98707, formerly at Wirksworth can now be found at the Longhoughton site. They were deemed to be surplus to requirements in Derbyshire so it seemed like a good opportunity to save them from the scrapman.
98707 has been purchased by Dave Shell of Northumbria Rail while the two PPCs have been bought by a private individual connected with the Aln Valley Railway project.
98707 has sadly lost its front door but it will either have a new one fabricated or provide spares for the other two machines.
More details about 98707 can be found on it’s own page.
And Then There Were 3
We’re happy to announce the latest acquisition for the OTPPG – Permaquip PCT 98702 formerly at Paignton and latterly at Fawley Hill.
This only recently became available through Sir William McAlpine after our visit to go and see it in May 2006.
It moved earlier in September up to Longhoughton to join our other two machines. Dave will be looking after them all and hopefully they will again be made useful to someone in the future.
Late November 2004 Update
An unexpected turn of events occurred on Friday 19th November.
I was informed that it was perhaps the case that First Engineering didn’t actually own the Permaquip 68706 having apparently been sold to Elec Track Installations during the FE plant auction of January 1999. This of course was slightly worrying considering we had sent payment to FE for this machine shortly before! The transport arrangements were also in place and the Colne Valley Railway were expecting it to arrive at the beginning of December.
After a phone call from FE to ETI we received an email confirming this was indeed the case – ETI were the owners of this machine but they had never collected it from Rutherglen for the last 5 years! This was a surprise to all involved and it left us wondering what would happen next.
However this morning I received a call from ETI’s Business Development Director who very kindly offered to donate the machine to us for free! They are more biased towards road railer operations these days and don’t have any use for it so he was glad to see it go to a good home. This of course was better news than we could have ever expected as it now means we can use this money elsewhere and all the arrangements already in place can still go ahead.
We would again like to extend our warmest thanks to the guys at ETI for this very generous offer and look forward to welcoming you to the Colne Valley Railway to have a look at our machines in the future.
Delivery of the Permaquip to the CVR is expected to happen early on Saturday December 11th 2004.
No more has yet been finalised with regard to 68030 although it is now understood that Network Rail are keen to move it out of the shed at Stranraer as it apparently attracts vandals! This may help with our case for getting our track possession and of course after hearing this we are keen to get it moved before they do any more damage! Whether this happens before Christmas still has to be resolved.
The Story So Far
The whole project was born in June 2004 after an inquisitive email to First Engineering regarding an item of on track plant that had been stored inside a shed near Stranraer Town station for at least the last ten years.
After a short while I received a very helpful reply from their Mechanisation Manager who informed me they were currently looking to dispose of a number of items of plant. However they were not aware the machine at Stranraer was still present. After a few more weeks it was established it was indeed still present and a visit was organised to inspect the machine here and some others that were to be disposed at Rutherglen, Glasgow.
The machine at Stranraer is a Matisa Inspection Trolley numbered DX 68030 but it was formerly a Ballast Consolidator before its conversion. It is unique of its type in the country with the others having been scrapped a long time ago. It has spent all of its later life in Scotland after conversion – initially on the Forth Bridge but also on the West Highland Line and later down at Stranraer where it has remained ever since.
We arrived at the old Stranraer Town station on a day in early August with First Engineering’s representative and a few other people that had shown an interest in the project. The yard near the station is now out of use but had been used by EWS for freight until fairly recently. We found the shed and sure enough DX 68030 was tucked deep inside. A platform inside the shed was presumably used for loading freight at one time but it became evident as we entered how long it had been left neglected by the amount of junk covering the track!
This would obviously pose us some problems in getting it out. The machine itself had suffered from vandals with some broken windows; grease and paint had also been daubed over it on the platform side. It was also missing its gearbox but the engine and the rest of the machine were in surprisingly good condition considering the length of time out of use – probably thanks to its undercover store.
Next stop was Rutherglen yard just south of Glasgow adjacent to the West Coast Mainline where a number of FE’s stock have been stored in the open for a number of years – mainly of the TRAMM and TASC variety. Again it was most interesting to have a look at what was present close-up – three TRAMMs, two TASCs, a Schoma trolley, a Plasser RAMM, a Matisa Neptune Track Recording vehicle and a Permaquip Canopy Trolley – basically heaven for the OTP enthusiast!
All had again suffered vandalism and damage from being in open storage (some more than others) but most were still mechanically sound with a bit of work.
Since this interesting visit events have been moving along slowly but surely – our next challenge was to find a suitable base where we could move our machines to. We contacted a number of preserved railways and inevitably some came back to us saying they had no available space. We arranged a visit to the East Anglian Railway Museum and the Colne Valley Railway on August bank holiday 2004 and both were very accommodating to what we were intending to do. It was useful to see the sites at first hand and what they had to offer in terms of resources and space.
We have also been in contact with a number of haulage companies who are hopefully going to help us out and give us an idea how much it is going to cost us to move these machines from Scotland.
Over the next weeks we hope to get this information, do some sums and hopefully make some purchases so we can take the project on to the next stage!
Update: 6th October 2004
Further to our visit to Rutherglen we have now been told by FE that all of the larger machines at this yard are now likely to be scrapped by one contractor in a job lot. This is because they will get a good price for disposing of all of the eight machines in one location. However this does not include the small Permaquip 98706 and so it is only really the TASC machine we are losing. After initial disappointment about this news we were also told that machines at Perth and Kilmarnock were still available and of course there are TASC machines at these locations too. We are hopefully going to organise a trip up there again soon to inspect these machines and hopefully one of them will make a suitable replacement for us. From initial photos we have been sent it looks like they are possibly in better condition than the Rutherglen machine, but a closer, mechanical inspection will be needed – especially in the case of the Kilmarnock example which we are concerned may have been considerably robbed for spares.
This changes our priorities slightly and although we are obviously still looking for suitable transport to move the permaquip from Rutherglen it may mean that the Stranraer move happens sooner than we had thought. Watch this space!