March 2019

Apologies for late publication, but even steam tug crews deserve holidays!

Another month and work on the re-treading of boiler tube holes continues, but we are over halfway towards completing this phase of the Boiler re-tubing. The replacement tubes have now been ordered and following their manufacture in Germany, they will be delivered to Swagemasters of Wolverhampton for swageing before the treads are cut ready for screwing into the boiler. All sounds very simple, but there is still a long way to go with this project.

One job that has moved on is that of the Wheelhouse. Following completion at the Swinton premises of Moorside Joinery, this was loaded in sectional form into a Luton van and transported, along with the constituent parts of the Forward Cabin timber bulkhead, to our berth at Sandon Dock. It was back in 1977 that the previous Wheelhouse was erected, and my memory tells me that erection and assembly was a reasonably straightforward task. That was 42 years ago, and the new components are of hardwood rather than softwood. On this occasion five men were required just to unload the individual sections which leads me to believe that hardwood is much heavier than softwood, and we are not as strong and agile as we were in 1977! We have engaged the services of professional joiners to help in the onboard fitting as we cannot afford to botch this rather expensive structure. Away from the vessel new navigation light boxes have been manufactured, as the originals were getting a bit chatty and we don’t want to spoil the appearance of the renovated Wheelhouse.

Good progress has been made in the Forward Cabin, where the port and starboard sections of the timber bulkhead have been affixed to the square section galvanised steel frames by ingenious clips, which can be easily removed in the future should the need arise. We are now left to fit the door furniture and hang the door itself before final painting and varnishing of the upper bulkhead sections. The lower sections are to be carpeted to match the seat backs. All looking good already, so it should finish the cabin off nicely.  

With much regret I once again have to end this bulletin on the saddest of notes.

No sooner had we said ‘Goodbye’ to one of our founders, Phil Magin earlier this month than we received the devastating news that another one of our group, Dave Lowndes died suddenly on 26^th March.

Dave joined the group over 20 years ago, having known a number of us through the shared interest of model engineering and steam traction generally. A gifted precision engineer who had travelled the world to fit and work on complex machine tools, Dave had built a number of prize-winning live steam railway locomotives, and was our ‘go-to’ man if we needed any precision machining. He was a generous, good humoured and funny guy who bore the butt of many a joke and taunt in good humour with a big grin on his face. He loved to have the mickey taken out of him, often in these pages, and would play along for the laugh. Never afraid to quietly get on with the job and put in a shift for the benefit of the vessel, he was a regular Saturday and Tuesday volunteer who did huge amounts of good work aboard and at home in his workshop.

He will be greatly missed by us all.