STILL WAITING… NO DATE FOR ‘GRESLEY’ WORK TO RESTART
You have to feel for Sir Nigel Gresley’s keepers. While many of Britain’s railway workshops may now have opened up, the guys looking after No. 60007 are still awaiting news of when they can return to work on their charge.
The blue ‘Streak’ is the final engine to go through the National Railway Museum’s workshop before planned conversion of York’s facility into a ‘Wonderlab’ for kids. But while the museum itself reopened to the public in August, spokesman Simon Baylis said a plan for the workshops in both York and Shildon “won’t be ready until September at the earliest”.
“We’ve only just reopened the Great Hall this week so we’re proceeding cautiously in stages,” he explained on August 7, “opening on certain days and with reduced opening hours to test how people respond and whether we need to make any further changes.”
Since lockdown in March, work on No. 60007 has basically been limited to what people can do off-site – things like outside orders and fettling of parts in people’s own homes. And, as of August 10, the Sir Nigel Gresley Locomotive Trust was “awaiting further details from the NRM”, explained chairman Nigel Wilson – albeit while working on its own procedures.
What does all this mean for a completion date for the Gresley ‘A4’? That, Nigel says, will be reassessed “once work has restarted.”
Whenever the new finishing line comes though, it seems clear that earlier thoughts are already chip paper. When the deal for the engine to work Saphos
Trains trips was announced back in early 2019 (SR489) – a time when the word ‘pandemic’ blessedly still seemed confined to academic papers – the hope had been for the Doncaster engine to run this year. Still, when No. 60007’s current limbo does finally end, at least there shouldn’t actually be that far to go: the boiler has been back in the frames since November.
● As the UK economy slowly emerges into some kind of light, the East Lancs Railway’s Tracey Parkinson is looking to fetch Union of South Africa over to Bury ASAP. John Cameron’s No. 60009 – now out of its main line ticket – has been at York since its final charter in March. Assuming conditions allow, the ELR is planning October half term as a “door wedge fest”… which is one way to refer to a shindig with a ‘Streak’.