No. 6 Blickling Hall emerges from North Bay Railway Engineering Services on March 30 to return to the Bure Valley Railway following fitting of a new boiler.The loco is being loaded onto the novel transporter developed by NBRES last year (RM, November 2020). The vehicle is available for hire to heritage lines for movement of comparatively small locomotives.
NORTH BAY RAILWAY ENGINEERING SERVICES
AN order last year for North Bay Railway Engineering Services (NBRES) to construct a new‘spare’boiler for the Bure Valley Railway’s (BVR)‘ZB’type locomotives has become an order for three new boilers to keep BVR’s Winson-built‘ZB’ 2-6-2s No. 6 Blickling Hall, No. 7 Spitfire and Winson/Keef 2-6-4T No. 10 Mark Timothy (which has the same type of boiler as the‘ZB’ pair) operational.
Following extensive boiler work on No.7 Spitfire last year, testing of weld repairs around stays cleared the work undertaken but revealed hairline cracks radiating from the bottom two rows of stays.
During a hydraulic test, a stay broke and the insurance assessor deemed that all stays and the inner firebox had to be replaced.