The fortunes of the Beamish tram fleet seem to be improving, following a spate of bad luck recently. Grimsby & Immingham 26 re-entered service in late October following repairs to a motor defect, and this in turn has allowed staff and volunteers within the transport sector at the museum to focus their efforts on Sunderland 16, a tram which has sat idle with worn tyres for a considerable length of time.
Having had its lifeguards and a few other components removed a few weeks previously, Sunderland 16 was lifted from its truck on Tuesday 5th November. This itself is no easy task, as the museum do no possess any electric tram jacks, so the old-fashioned method has to be used – the guys at Crich don’t know how lucky they are! The truck was then rolled out for attention, and the motors have already been disconnected to gain access to the wheelsets, which are to be sent to Blackpool where they will be re-tyred before being returned to the museum. Hopefully they will be sent away next week. As mentioned before, 16 is due to receive some cosmetic addition including external re-varnishing and the application of ‘Shop at Binns’ adverts, so it should look very smart when it returns to traffic, hopefully early next year.
A close view of Sunderland 16's truck following seperation from the car body (visible behind). (Photo courtesey of the Beamish Transport & Industry Blog)
The LTHS had a set of tram body jacks, hand operated, which were stored in a cellar at Whitkirk. We gave them to Merseyside but I believe that they passed them on to a group in Dublin.
Jamie
Andrew, regards that we don’t know how lucky we are with electric Jacks, it’s not that long ago [10 ish years] we were using hand operated jacks. The memory of them is still etched in my mind especially one of the jacks which was harder to operate and in the late 1980’s we did several lifts in one day
Just a light-hearted comment there Andy, I hope no offence was caused. That said it does remind us that Crich is more fortunate than others in many respects, certainly the facilities in the current workshop are amazing!
Andrew, Never had an offensive comment by you, but some of our younger members certainly don’t know how lucky they are with the powered jacks. We still have the hand operated jacks in storage as a back up