Alan keef Open Day

[philthehill]

It is the Alan Keef Open Day at Lee Lines Gloucestershire this coming Saturday 21st September.
A not to be missed opportunity for all you NG railway buffs to see what is happening and under repair/construction in his workshop.
Alan Keef specialises in the repair of NG steam and diesel engines and on his open days he usually has several NG steam engines including a vertical boiler De-Winton in steam with rides over his multi-gauge NG track.
See http://www.alankeef.co.uk/open_day.html for details.
Plenty of views on you tube if you want a taste of what happens at the open days.
People travel from all over the country and further afield for this.
The catering isn't bad either and there are usually a few interesting cars in the car park
I shall be going as usual.

[bmcecosse]

Sounds interesting! But I will be firing a std gauge loco that day...can't really get myself too excited about NG, although anything 'steamy' does obviously interest me.

[Matt]

Interesting... but I play with Narrow Gauge stuff every week anyway.

BMC just to give you an idea... the Locos I am working on is physically bigger than some standard gauge ones!

[irmscher]

Roy! anything steamy Where is the railway Matt ?

[Matt]

There are 2 lines, one goes from Caenarfon to Porthmadog, the other Porthmadog to Blaenau Ffestiniog.

When I was there yesterday the loco we are restoring (well its chassis) was up on ex channel tunnel jacks to re-fit the axles

This is one of the smaller passenger hauling locos (K1 - The first Garrat)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... narfon.jpg

Limited to 8 sets of coaches (approx 30 per coach)

And here is one of the bigger passenger locos (a Garratt NG16)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... tt_143.jpg

This can take 13+ coaches, which is more than the railway infrastructure can handle (due to run round loops and platform lengths)

And this is what we are restoring (an NG15) - same tractive effort as the 16, but 6ft longer with the tender

http://www.whrsoc.org.uk/WHRProject/1999/133-030599.jpg

If you are interested its a 2ft gauge (for scale).

These locos are South African and were designed for hauling a significant amount of freight across the dry areas of South Africa. It wasn't unusual to have them double headed with another loco in the middle of the train somewhere!

[MarkyB]

The l was missing off your link;

http://www.alankeef.co.uk/open_day.html

[philthehill]

Many thanks
Phil