Restoration

Page Four - A little help from the Heritage Lottery Fund

The HLF awarded the DLPG £49,000 towards completing the power car. The work was split between the full time MRC C&W staff, and Stuart Mackay, a full-time specialist DMU restorer. 

	The vehicle entered the shed on the 28th November 2004 for the weekend to allow the volunteers to start the project off. One of the essential jobs was to remove the halon filled fire extinguisher bottles, which were banned from the end of the year. A start was made on fitting the glassfibre insulation to the interior
	Monday 1st December, and Tony Wilkins is seen extracting old fastenings from the newly found original van partition. Phil Strong continues fitting the glass fibre to the ceiling. This material fits in between the vehicle framework, so there was lots of cutting different sizes. On the far right Lee Sharpe, Phil & Tony at the end of the weekend.
	All the wiring for the cab desk was layed in and tagged, running in the original conduit underneath the floor, and joined into the junction box behind the drivers seat. Being Yellow Diamond it took quite a bit of getting used to all the circuit numbers being different, and trying to figure out the purpose of the "throttle one" circuit! (more on that later). Everything in the front was cleared out ready for the removal of the ex-108 solid wood partitions, and floor.
	Original style steel partitions were fitted, which were ex-79900 Iris. The floor is made of two 1/4" ply layers, the top layer being cut around 1/4" steel plates where the seats bolt onto. Quite a transformation on the previous picture!
	Thanks to the Wickham Railbus lads at the Middleton Railway (see www.wickham-railbus.org.uk), were had an original style Derby Lightweight seat. We did some experiments with Class 101 seats retrieved from Immingham and found that if we got new backs made we could recreate the look very well if we got new backs made. So the original was stripped down to examine it's construction, and we found a contractor that could make these, and they also took the Class 101 frames, welded in a footrest bar and had then shotblasted and powdercoated. Meanwhile in the vehicle a start was madeon fitting the ceiling panels. These are white faced hardboard, which were later painted with off-white eggshell paint to recreate the original finish.
	The work continued down the vehicle, again replacing the partitions, floor and fitting ceilings. The "armchair" is an ex-Class 124 Trans-Pennine unit first class seat.
	The ceiling in the cab (and later the van) was a little more complicated. It predated the glassfibe versions, and is made out of six pieces of hardboard. We had none of the framework from behind, so this had to be worked out and made first. In this unit the air and vacuum gauges are mounted quite high up! The first of the panels are seen being fitted. These are hardboard covered with vinyl. The ceiling panel for this vestibule was left of at this stage as the lighting wiring runs up the partition pole (yet to be fitted) to a junction box into the white conduit that can be seen.
	In-between the interior going-ons one side was sanded and etch primed where required. This stopped though as the vehicle was moved to the other side of the shed and put up on jacks.

Page five - the HLF work continues