Boiler crisis at the Bure Valley

THE Bure Valley Railway (BVR) has been making headway with an appeal to raise £25,000 to build a new boiler for 2-6-2 No. 7 Spitfire.

In January 2020 the BVR ordered a new ZB-type boiler from North Bay Engineering in Darlington as a spare to facilitate quicker turn-around of 10-year locomotive overhauls. However, the order has subsequently had to be increased to three boilers.

During the course of its overhaul, last autumn several problems were encountered with the boiler of Winson Engineering 1994-built Spitfire, which is based on an Indian Railways’ 2ft 6in gauge ZB class.

The cap welds on the stays within the inner firebox showed signs of deterioration. The problem was tackled with all the stay welds being ground out to good metal and rewelded, together with replacement of the washout and fusible plug bosses.

Unfortunately, when the boiler was presented for Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), the inspection highlighted hairline cracking radiating from the tell tales on the bottom two rows of stays.

Accordingly, the bottom two rows of stays were required to be cut out and replaced.

In view of the issues encountered on No.7, it was decided to inspect the boiler on No.6 Blickling Hall, which was found to be in an even worse condition. It needed a new inner firebox wrapper and therefore a full re-tube.

With in-house capacity focused on No. 7, the decision was taken to send No. 6 to North Bay Engineering for the now complete new boiler to be fitted, ensuring that the 15in gauge line had sufficient available locomotives to reopen the railway in the spring. Work would continue on No.7 in-house.

With the work required on No. 7 and the new ‘spare’ boiler used on No. 6, the decision was taken to order another boiler from North Bay Railway Engineering Services of Darlington.

The railway’s focus therefore returned to No. 7. The bottom two rows of stays were cut out and replaced and further NDT testing undertaken.

All looked good, but in the course of the subsequent hydraulic test, one of the side stays snapped and the test was immediately abandoned, with the boiler inspector requiring the removal of the inner wrapper and its replacement, together, of course, with all stays.

After careful consideration and with the work already undertaken and money spent, it was decided that such a move was uneconomic.

The decision was taken to increase the order with North Bay from one additional boiler to two, to be built in tandem and therefore achieving significant cost savings.

After a year in which revenue has been at an all-time low because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the line was left having to buy three new boilers in order to have locomotives available to reopen once lockdown ends.

The boilers are outside the scope of the available grant aid funding and have therefore been underwritten by two directors and the Friends of Bure Valley Railway.

The £25,000 appeal at had raised about £12,000 as we closed for press.