Lea Bailey Light Railway

The other Forest of Dean September Open Days were lower-key than in 2013 as the Alan Keef works was ‘between projects’ and the Vintage Train had left Perrygrove. Nevertheless, a constant stream of visitors arrived at Lea Bailey many directed from our stall at Lea Lines which was much busier than the pictures suggest — you can’t take photographs while you are  talking to potential visitors. The numbers at Clearwell were a little disappointing and next year we shall probably only operate there for the Summer Open Day.

At Lea Bailey, the W&R battery loco blew a fuse and retired, but the centre of attention was the newly restored Eimco rocker shovel which was taught how to throw bricks using a specially hired compressor. On the Sunday, we were very pleased to welcome some of Alan Keef’s weekend guests, maybe next year they will bring one of their steam locos with them. As the picture shows, they had to work for their entertainment as the Eimco derailed itself.

Apart from the very welcome publicity which will raise our profile, we collected some £300 in donations and sales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcflwgDwm-s

This was the first  time we had given an advance public invitation to the railway and we had no idea what to expect in terms of visitors. Apparently there were enough that those who might have counted gave up. The car park was full most of the time and it will have to be extended before the September event. We collected almost £200 in donations which we shall have no trouble spending. There was a full turnout of volunteers who were keen to demonstrate ongoing and completed projects and refreshments were available courtesy of Jen Clifford.

Apart from our own locomotives — the Simplex has been given a spruce up and now you can see it coming — we had a Clayton battery-electric on show; it had been collected from Alan Keef at Lea Lines on the Saturday. The mine was open and illuminated by a small generator. Thanks to Rob and John Needham for supplying some of the pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_nvryc1jHY

On 18th September enlarging of the car park at Lea Bailey was completed. It looked enormous — an estimated 16 cars could comfortably be fitted in. Way too large, surely? But on Saturday 21st, it was full to overflowing, with at least 7 cars parked on the edge of the road. So the sales team on the stand at Alan Keef had obviously been very persuasive, helped no doubt by the flyer handed out to visitors to Alan Keef’s site.

What did they see at Lea Bailey? Not as much as we had hoped, as the Hunslet (HE7446) refused to start. One of the group, Pat Clifford, who stopped off for the day on his way home to Devon from a holiday in Scotland, spent all day working on it. He attracted quite an audience at times, particularly when he used the compressor to charge up the loco’s air reservoir and then the air starter to try and get the engine going. After checking over the fuel and the exhaust systems, he decided that the problem was the exhaust conditioner, which was out of water and also heavily sooted up. At least at the end of the day we knew what needed doing.

Meanwhile the Simplex was as reliable as ever, driven by Ben Elvey who was shunting wagons around. And at the end of the day the new run-round loop proved its value in enabling the loco to take wagons one or two at a time to their correct locations for the site to be secured.

While all of this activity was going on, Jen was doing a brisk trade providing refreshments, handing out leaflets, selling booklets — and bricks! Several visitors were interested in some of the old bricks lying around the site (having been brought in some years ago as hardcore). So they were told that there was no charge for the bricks, but a donation to Society funds would be appreciated.

Our volunteers seemed to spend all day talking to many interesting people, telling them what we had done, what our plans and hopes were, and answering their questions.

For many years on a Saturday in the second half of September, the workshops of Alan Keef Limited at Lea Lines have been thrown open to the public. The Keef specialty is narrow gauge steam overhauls but they also do repairs, rebuilds, new construction, rolling stock and internal combustion locomotives — they have acquired the business and goodwill of Motor Rail (UK Simplex).

This year the Open Day fell on 21st September and the evening before, some half-dozen of us from the LBLRS attended the associated quiz and curry evening at Lea Village Hall. The participants were almost entirely those who were exhibiting, we weren’t totally humiliated and it was a thoroughly enjoyable social evening. Possibly the best part was the local Mitcheldean Bespoke Ale at a mouth-watering £2 a pint.

The event was originally intended as a public relations exercise for Lea residents which raised money for local good causes. These days it attracts large numbers of enthusiasts who come to see the steam locomotives which are going through or have just come through ‘works’. This year there was a particularly interesting set which apart from the Welsh Highland Railway’s ‘Russell’ included a WW1 Baldwin and a German tram locomotive which was rebuilt as a fireless and is now to be fitted with a new boiler and returned to its original condition.

Like the two Krauss locomotives which had come over from Holland for repair, the tram was metre gauge. As usual, there were two small 2′ gauge steam locomotives giving rides on the demonstration line. Inside the main workshop apart from the temporary metallic residents there were stands from narrow gauge railway societies and book sellers.

We had our stand here (barely visible in the second picture) and apart from the model inherited from Clearwell, we had booklets, leaflets, post cards and a display of photographs. For two and a half hours, we fielded numerous enquiries, encouraged visits to our own open day and took donations from visitors.

The pictures above (courtesy of James Waite except picture 2) show:

1. (top of page) Andrew Barclay 610mm gauge ‘Jack’ (1871/1925) worked turn and turn about with ‘Peter Pan’ on a passenger train on the U-shaped demonstration line.
2. Graham Morris’s 610mm gauge Kerr Stuart 0-4-0T (4256/1922) ‘Peter Pan’ shunting two locomotives at the back of the works. On the left is Patrick Keef’s Bagnall 0-4-0ST ‘Woto’ (2133/1924) with its unusual marine boiler, current under a slow restoration, on the right is Alan Keef’s vertical boiler 0-4-0T ‘Taffy’ (30/1990).
3. Harrogate Gas Works 610mm gauge Thomas Green 0-6-2ST (441/1908) is under restoration for the South Tynedale Railway. Our stand is behind on the left.
4. Welsh Highland Railway 597mm gauge Hunslet (901/1906) ‘Russell’ is under long term restoration.
5. This metre gauge 0-4-0 tram loco (Henschel 5276/1899) 4 ‘Rur’ is a new arrival.
6. Four locomotives were in steam, the two behind are metre gauge Krauss Munich 0-4-0Ts 5472/1908 (front) and 3142/1894 (rear), both of which were restored here. The others are ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Jack’.