‘Getting railway wheels built was the hard bit’
Road/rail Land Rover S1 Mark Saville, Northamptonshire
When did the idea come to you?
While leafing through a well-worn 1957 Eagle Book of Cars and Motorsport as a kid. It had a photo of a WWII Willys Jeep equipped to run on the Burma railway. My uncle had a SIIA Land Rover at the time, and we borrowed it and his American-built camping trailer for a family holiday one year. I was hugely impressed by both ‘vehicles’.
It’s been a long gestation, then.
Yes. I finally made a start in April 2016 after getting some key contact information from David Conroy of Contracked Lands. We'd featured his commercial rail de-icing and weeding Land Rovers in Land Rover Owner
International a few times.
Who made the railway wheels?
It was the hardest part, but as soon as I spoke to Dennis Hewitt Casting Services, it became perfectly straightforward. He acted as an agent and arranged for C&K Casting of Coventry to make them from a wooden pattern Dennis designed, and for David Wright of Locomotive Maintenance Services, Loughborough to machine them.
They must be heavy things to fit.
Ingeniously, they're made of LM25 – an alloy of aluminium and magnesium. After casting, it goes through a heat treatment process. It's kept just below melting point for 24 hours, then quenched – then the same again for 12 hours. After that, it's as hard as an iron wheel but a great deal lighter, although they still weigh 33kg each.
Do you get to use it much?
The trial run was just 10 feet at Loughborough in early September 2016. By the end of the month, I'd graduated to a full test on the steep inclines of the Foxfield Railway, in Staffordshire. The following February, it went the length of the North York Moors Railway and later that summer covered the Severn Valley, both ways, from end to end.
What do railways say when you ring up?
It varies a lot, but sometimes it’s them who ring me! I've visited the Foxfield Railway, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. I’ve got an appointment with the Severn Valley again on August 11 (I have already done the length of the SVR) and I've been invited to the Tanfield Railway near Gateshead, too. There’s also talk of a visit to the Nene Valley Railway in August and you will have seen the adventure on the Wensleydale in the last issue. Keep an eye out in LRO! We will! Good work!