The Coach Now Arriving.

So here is a little bit more about the latest purchase and arrival at Oswestry.

The coach was built in 1955 to Lot 30045 at York as a Brake Second, this is a BR Mk1 design and spent it's working life on the East side of the country, working mostly local services.

From being released from BR in the 1970's it spent it's life at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway where it returned to service and ran for many years.  More recently it had been side lined and used to store leaflets and various boxes.  Externally the condition had become a bit run down and the paint had started to disappear under a covering of moss.

Following an agreement the coach was purchased for use on the CHR as a stop gap until the C&W team complete more of their restorations of current stock.  The restorations at Llynclys start from stock in far worse condition and the results are a real credit to the team.

This coach is planned to have an external restoration and tidy up so that it can be used during the building of the Weston extension, with that in mind here are a couple of pictures of arrival and touch down at Oswestry.

Here is the low loader arriving with our Christmas present, you can detect the green tinge.

A ramp was quickly assembled and with a few sighs of relief the coach touched down at Oswestry, ready for it's new life.

The first job was to have a good look over the coach, here it is blending in to the background.

Work has already started on a wash a brush up so that we can see the overall condition, under the flaking paint there is evidence of it's previous life as a Kings Cross Suburban coach.  Though highly unlikely that this particular coach ever visited our line before, this type was used extensively on local services around Shropshire.

There are always volunteers ready and willing to test the seats and here we can see the internal condition.

Here the team start the clean up, removing the green tinge.

Thanks to Andy G for the pictures

Future posts will be catching up with work done around Christmas and also take a look back over the last year. Going forward we have the regular Thursday Gang and planned working weekends.
Last weekend was spent clearing the embankment south of Llynclys before the bird nesting season starts.  Here is a work in progress picture.  Thanks to all who turned up.

Until next time.