GOING UNDERCOVER
Nick Brodrick lifts the lid on the Bluebell Railway’s new carriage shed
Sixty years ago, the Lewes & East Grinstead Railway was eking out its final months in a most undignified fashion. The ‘Sulky Service’: single coach trains, often carrying nothing but fresh air, ran at inconvenient times to fulfil the obligations of an original Act of Parliament that briefly reversed its initial 1955 closure. Today, however, things are much brighter along this delightful string of steel rail, albeit restricted to the 11 miles of line south of East Grinstead to Sheffield Park. One-coach trains are now frequently supplanted by six well-laden carriages, capturing the imagination of day trippers. But that doesn’t quite reveal the entire picture of the Bluebell Railway’s carriage story. That’s because it has amassed more than 70 passenger-carrying vehicles; 53 of which pre-date the ubiquitous BR Mk 1. The dream that is gradually becoming ever more a reality is the ideal of matching these priceless gems with appropriate locomotives: LBSCR four-wheelers to match the ‘Terriers’. SECR-liveried vintage stock to be hauled by a Wain wright design engine. Metropolitan ‘Cheshams’ for the occasional visit of ‘Met 1’. An ex-SECR trio set with the Billinton ‘E4’ or Wainwright ‘H’. Corridor Maunsells to run behind the ‘Schools’. Bulleids and Pullmans for the Southern ‘Pacifics’. …The tantalising list goes on. Some of this is already possible, but the all-too apparent, dominating reality is that the Bluebell’s Carriage & Wagon department already has its hands pretty full just keeping the wheels turning of the carriages already restored, let alone the many other deserving cases. Furthermore, the unrestored examples are – like so many others scattered around the British Isles – outside. Outside storage for wooden-bodied antiques such as these means rot. And the worse the rot, the more extensive the restoration will have to be in terms of manpower, time and money. In the worst case scenario it means deterioration beyond viable repair. It’s as big a problem as it is an opportunity. Thankfully, the Bluebell hasn’t buckled under such pressure and since its earliest days has been slowly establishing undercover storage for its treasures: a project coined… Operation Undercover. This strategy has given rise to a four-road rolling stock storage shed (half of which has since evolved and been extended to form a large C&W workshop), established at Horsted Keynes in the 1970s and, at the beginning of the new millennium, a carriage shed at Sheffield Park with capacity for 17 vehicles.
COVER STORY
But even those measures haven’t entirely stopped the rot. Nor has the railway’s latest preservation accomplishment – an enormous 18,000sq. ft shed extension at Horsted Keynes – but it’s a giant leap towards fulfilling the dream. It’s been accomplished with donations amounting to £350,000, together with a grant from the Bluebell Railway Trust and further pledges totalling £200,000. Two large pitched roofs, supported by steel A-frames, were built during 2016-7 to provide shelter for 25 vintage carriages and passenger-rated vans, none of which are currently in running order and most of which have been parked outside for years (even the ones that have been wrapped in tarpaulin won’t have benefitted, owing to the ‘sweating’ that the non-breathable material causes). Known as Operation Undercover Phase 4 (OP4), the new structures are an add-on to the already established
C&W facilities in the former goods yard on the east side of the expansive country station site. The narrower of the two roofs covers a single-track maintenance road, incorporating inspection pit and lifting gear, bringing this vital work area – and the staff and volunteers who use it – under cover for the first time. Alongside, is the ‘biggie’. Four roads wide and 360ft long (at its longest point), the trapezoid-shaped building is now gradually being filled with an assortment of rolling stock picked out from the rows of sidings at Horsted Keynes that, perhaps prophetically, once served as the LBSCR’s withdrawn locomotive dump. Two of the four tracks have already been laid since the basic structure’s 2016 completion, re-using second-hand track panels from the railway’s ongoing ‘main line’ re-laying project, although only one has been connected to the rest of the Bluebell network. It is this siding (F Road) that was opened in a small ceremony on November 30, when the unique 12-wheel LBSCR Director’s Saloon was the first of three carriages to be propelled into ‘OP4’. Which brings us back to the ‘dream’. If each of the 22 carriages were overhauled and restored (in addition to what is already in traffic or in the works) it would enable the completion of: a five or six-coach Pullman train, a four-coach LSWR-design train, a five-coach train of LCDR/ SER carriages in SECR Purple Lake livery, a five-coach LBSCR Stroudley train, an SECR ‘Birdcage’ trio set, a seven-coach Maunsell set, and eight operable Bulleid-design carriages. That doesn’t mean that it’s all guaranteed to happen. After all, not all dreams become reality – especially with finite amounts of money, time, works space and labour – but the provision of such
a shed won’t do the chances of these historic gems having a bright future any harm at all. Even still, there is plenty still to do on ‘OP4’: more cash is needed to fully clad the building in pseudo-Southern green and cream clap boarding, doors and internal walls, together with a high-tech Heritage Skills Centre, which will incorporate offices, workshops and a training area. And because any preservation site – like the proverbial model railway – is never finished, thoughts are already turning to the possible development of an accessible rolling stock museum, to properly display some of the restored carriages… but that’s for another day.
For more on the Bluebell’s C&W, visit www.bluebell-railway.co.uk