FOUR-CAR ON THE CAMBRIAN COAST: Transport for Wales Class 158 Nos. 158822 and 158823 pass the Talyllyn Railway’s station at Tywyn Wharf on July 3. While pairs of ‘158s’ are a common sight on the Cambrian lines as far west as Machynlleth, four-car trains are generally split or formed there, with two-car units operating to and from Aberystwyth and Pwllheli. The Class 158s pictured were running as the 2I12/07.24 Pwllheli to Machynlleth/Birmingham New Street, an identity and path usually used by a timetabled two-car service. TfW is working with Network Rail on a plan to run some four-car trains all the way to the coast, providing additional capacity at peak times this summer, but neither organisation was able to confirm to The RM the reason for this particular movement, stating that route testing was yet to take place at this point.
OWEN HAYWARD
SUMMER 2022 saw the culmination of more than two years of planning by the Ivatt Diesel Re-creation Society (IDRS), with the lifting of the frame from the donor Class 58 locomotive (No. 58022) that will be used in the project to re-create pioneer LMS diesel No. 10000.
The lift involved the stripped frame being lifted from its bogies, inverted, and placed onto the group’s‘Sturgeon’ wagon to allow modification work to commence.
Since then, the team at Centenary Works (Wirksworth, Ecclesbourne Valley Railway) has stripped off the remaining components, taken measurements to progress the design of the new bogies centres, and prepared the frames for fitting new pieces. The traction cables were left in place for the lift and, once the chassis was inverted, these valuable and very-heavy cables could be recovered from the frame. The next stage is to prepare the chassis to be modified to fit the ex-EM2 (Class 77) bogies.