While most of Europe and much of the United States swelters under unnaturally high temperatures, the British climate never fails to deliver the goods: changeable weather with the possibility (absolute certainty) of heavy showers.
Fortunately however, this typical British summer weather didn’t prevent our having a lot of visitors to the railway and this was reflected in the sales figures for the long weekend which included a thoroughly miserable wet Friday.
The Friday numbers were staggering, being better than many ordinary weekend operating days and with a fair chunk of catering (good margin!) revenue as part of the takings. But it was Saturday that knocked things out of the park. In the evening, we ran a private charter service that had passengers not only travelling the line but then lingering at Wirksworth station into the evening, making very good use of the Apollo bar (see header photo).
Now, this is absolutely lovely but it took a team of nearly a dozen people to operate the train, man the bar, provide food and – importantly – tidy-up afterwards and leave the station ready for trains to start running again less than twelve hours later.
At this point, I want to pay tribute to our paid staff. We have six permanent staff and a variable number of casual / part-time staff, mostly in catering.
Now, one might say “what’s the big deal, they’re paid to do it, aren’t they?” Fair enough, but a lot of this work isn’t 9 to 5. Some of the staff on Saturday would have worked on the regular services first, then stayed-on for the evening special. In turn, some of the team are then back, bright, and early the next morning.
It’s easy to take our employed staff for granted and without our volunteers we would be nothing, but I do raise my hat to our dedicated team.
Meanwhile, down the yard…
Another locomotive came to life on 8th July when the newly-refurbished engine for D9525 was started in the loco and was found to work perfectly.
This loco came to us last year and the driving force behind its restoration is most definitely Chris Baily, who rebuilt the engine at his works at Crewe, arranged for its shipment to Wirksworth, installed into the locomotive and then got it running. Now, Chris will be the first person to tell us that he is just one of a team, but there is no doubting that Chris is a ‘doer’ and without his drive, this would not have happened so quickly.
Here is a video from the first day of engine running.
Next year we will be holding a large celebration of the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the Class 14 locomotive, which D9525 is an example. This is not the only Class 14 at the EVR, D9537 ‘Eric’ is also based here and is presently having a seaside break at the North Norfolk Railway. We shall have several other representatives of this class visit the EVR as part of the celebrations and you can find more information here:
This hasn’t been the only progress in our workshops. Dan Smith unhurried painter extraordinaire has recently completed a repaint of ‘Bubble Car’ M55006. I have a particular fond memory of this railcar as it was the first DMU to visit Wirksworth and my first trip down the line in a ‘proper train’ was on this unit on 15th February 2004.
Dan gets a lot of stick for his style that is unaffected by deadlines but nobody can deny this results are spectacular. He never skimps or takes shortcuts and the finished result is superb.
Hers is another of Dan’s masterpieces. LMS Brake Third Open no. 27001. The paint finish is undimmed after several years of operation: a testament to his skill.
By the way, here was my very first glimpse of W55006 ast Idridgehay on 15th February 2004. I had just arrived home from a business trip to the United States and persuaded my wife to run me to Idridgehay where I was able to hop on board for an unofficial survey trip down the line.
But it’s not all glamour. As was pointed out to me quite firmly in our Annual General Meeting yesterday (more in next post), we need to ensure our fleet of engineering vehicles used to support our infrastructure are at least as important as our passenger rolling stock or locomotives. No engineering vehicles, no maintenance, no maintenance, no train services. However, under the management of Joe Marsden, we have an excellent team who can repair and maintain our equipment. the problem we have are a combination of funds to source spares and specialist services with available space in our maintenance facility. There, Parkinson’s Law applies: no matter how much additional capacity we build, it gets filled almost immediately. This is another subject I shall return-to in the future.
In the next episode…
We have our Annual General Meeting, Neil gets worked-up over beer and we have our best trading month ever.
From the 54th Floor 
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