A dark and stormy night

Quite a wild night for my first venture down to Östra Station this year.  Not much snow yet but blowin g a wee bit.  While the standard gauge seemed to be sufferig a bit, the narrow gauge Roslagsbana appeared to be running without problems. Still, a good night to work inside.  Here you can see the station throat of Stockholms Östra (east) Station, with our two sheds either side.

And, as usual for a Tuesday, the warm welcoming glow from our workshop.  You can see No33 lurking inside.

The main focus right now is fitting and wiring in the radiators.  Almost all are now in place in both saloons.

We have one seat sitting loose in place to show us where we are going with this. You can also see the earth wire, now correctly run in from the wall side of the radiator ...

The last pieces of trim are also being manufactured from new wood.  You can see these, as yet unpainted, above.  These fill the angle between the wall and the covers for te cable runs below.

Elsewhere Mike was manufacturing something out of insulated material and Lasse was cleaning up a couple of additional wooden components.  A-end cab was the first to be renovated.  There are several aspects, especially regarding the paint, that contrast with our later work.  I have started to bring everything up to a uniform standard.

Wishing everyone an excellent new year from Stockhom, George!

No.33, doors seats and radiators

The current focus of activity is on fitting out the interior.  All but one door has been hung and work is focused on door furnature, making sure everything swings or slides smoothly, and glazing.  For what was a very basic 3rd class commuter railcar, there are still some nice ornate touches.

We have also test fitted one radiator with all the associated blocks, channels and spacers.

Spot the deliberate mistake?  No, we didn't either ...

The attachment point for the earth cable is at the other end of the radiator!  We will need to cut back the new cables and drill a new hole at the other end of the cable channels.

Everything in place, gives an idea of how things will look.  Trim to be added along the edge of the cable channels that run along the base of the walls, you can see the new wood on top.  The blocks on which the seats sit date from before our restoration at this end.  In the other saloon they are missing and we will have to make new.

Micke tests ot the newly installed seat.  We hadn't told him they were not screwed down yet ...

best regards and God Jul from Stockholm, George!

Catching up - again, the running fleet and other news

Our running fleet continues to operate satisfactorly.  Both railcars, carriage 880 and the f-class van were out on public service several weekends during the summer.  We then teamed up once more with the historic steamer Blidosund to provide a vintage round-trip with 35, below, providing the first leg, after which passengers transferred to a vintage bus before returning to Stockholm on Blidosund while eating dinner.  Once more I beleive these were well patronised trips so hopefully this arrangement will continue.

35 seems to have survived the year with minimum problems, not bad for a railcar over 80 years old!

Micke and Soren testing 35 during routine maintainance.

Despite being our youngest railcar, only 79 years old, 37 has the oldest electrics.  Both 33 and 35 were rebuilt in the 40s when the line voltage was upped from 7500 to 1500volts.  37 was new-built when this process was started and was built duel voltage, a capacity it still has but which can cause some problems.

One of the jobs carried out on 37 was to replace the emergancy lights.  I don't think these have ever worked under our stewardship.  They sit behind the panels over the sliding doors (you can see the slider at the bottom of the recess).  Originally they were connected to the rest of the carriage by the brass contacts on the left.  You can see the new wires coming in along the roof panel on the right and appearing around the right-hand piller.  We have left enough slack in the wires so the contacts are not necessary, and new LED emergancy lights are now fitted.

Our parent organisation has lost its home in the 1950s bus depot at the east end of Södermalm.  Unfortnatly their noew home is not yet started so the collection has gone into store out at Bromma airport.  They closed at the end of October and had to vacate the site by the end of November when the delevopers moved in.  We had a number of large electrical spares stored in a service tunnel under the museum so 4 of us spent an evening helping the museum staff out by moving them up to where they could be collected and moved to the new storage.  as you can see, clearance was a little limited!

We also rescued the original 1950s clock from the depot! Lasse fettled it up and we discovered the bolt holes on the clock lined up perfectly with a pair of bolts set in the wall of our workshop!  We think they originally carried the water supply from when this was a steam shed.  Some careful measurement to make sure we could still get No.33 out, then up it went!

Next up, some current progress on No.33.

best regards from Stockholm, George!

Catching up - again, No.33

A gentle prod from Pete Briddon (see links) reminded me that it has been over a year since I last updated this blog!  Thanks Pete!  All the usual excuses, a 14 month old child, a 109 year old ship and, of course, work on our 99 year old railcar. So, what have we been up to in the last 12 months?

Bengt and Lasse finished applying an 8th coat of varnish to the exterior, this railcar is going to glow when we get it out in the sunshine!

I moved on to the ceiling in B-end saloon, the last major area of the interior to require painting.  Note also that we have covered in old floorboards with a skin of hardboard in order to provide a clean and level surface to apply the lino.

Once I had finished throwing paint around, we refitted the luggage racks that Micke had been cleaning up and painting on the other side of the tracks.  This did require a little routing of the trim I had fitted between the wall and the ceiling.  The wall boards are new in this renovation, replacing 50s hardboard (as seen in B-end saloon) while the ceiling is original with hardboard removed.  Trying to line up the new trim with the surviving trim in B- end and the drivers compartments ment the luggage racks didn't line up with the 50s vintage holes, something I didn't spot at the time.  Easiest solution was to rout out a recess in the new trim

Luggage racks in place in A-end.

Exterior doors have been refitted with new rubber seals and new or renovated metal strips.



Lasse reattaching a renovated metal shield to the base of the door.

Interior doors are also being worked on.  Here a new (salvaged) oak strip at the base of the door.





In order to both expedeite  process as well as ensure a top quality job, we brought in an outside contractor to lay the lino throughout the railcar.  The results are well worth the expense. We are now under strict instruction to only step on the protective paper from now on! Henrik is refitting the last of the light fittings.

Interior doors going back in as well.  This is the door to B-end drivers compartment.

Passenger doors also being re-hung, here one of the NW corner (B-end) doors,

and here, complete, the SE corner pair.

Lasse and myself have been making up these oak blocks, again from salvaged timber, to space the radiators off the floor while others have been renovating, repainting and setting up the wiring for the radiators.

About those distractions.  I am also involved in the group that maintains and operates Constantia, a 109 year old Danish built schooner based in Stockholm.  Last winter saw the ship in dry dock for an extended period while we replaced a number of planks in the hull as well as renewed all the bulwarks.  We also re-caulked many of the seams, renovated the foremast and many of the blocks, had the propellor built-up with new bronze and machined back to size, and generally repainted and fettled the ship. Here she is under full sail doing approx. 11 knots during her first run out of the year in the outer Stockholm archipelago.

Myself at the helm, one of our regular captains looking on.  All the crew are professionally qualified and we even get paid to sail her when we are doing charter or kids sail training trips.   Not much but pays for the days we sail for ourselves! Note the T-shirt supporting another heritage sgip still in active service, the Glenelg Ferry, the worlds last turntable ferry

So I leave you with a picture of Constantia moored up for the night against a rock outcrop in the Stockholm Archipelago and a promise of more frequent updates!

best regards from Stockholm, George!

Running fleet maintainance and further progress on No33

I arrived last Tuesday evening to find No.37, our youngest railcar (1938) ticking over outside the railcar shed

One of the heating circuits had developed a fault, the tracing of which involved leaving the railcar outside with one circuit powered for a while and then seeing what worked and what didn't!  Here a modern service train passes.

Inside I found a pair of legs sticking out of No.35!  A nasty accident?

Actually it was Soren and Daniel measuring and checking the carbon brushes on the traction motors.

In front of No.35, Micke was painting the luggage racks for No33, a local band (ABBA) playing on the stereo.

Back over on the other side of the mainline, Bengt and Lasse were busy adding a final layer of varnish to No33 while I was adding another layer of paint to the saloon ceiling

 (photo by Henrik on my camera!)                                         

Henrik meanwhile had finished off painting more of the internal doors, which now await refitting of glass and metal fittings.

 No.37 still sitting outside, ticking over as the mist rolled in.

 

 

A wintery November Tuesday

November and December are normally the grey months in Stockholm so, for me at any rate, the arrival of snow this week has been very welcome!  It has been snowing gently for almost a week now, not much, but enough to cover everything and make it sparkle.

Anyway, back to No.33.  After a month away due to the rather dramatic arrival of our first child, it was good to get back on with this project.  Unfortunatly no-one had finished painting the ceiling while I was gone, so it was back to that task.  The first top-coat had gone on a bit rough - end of an old can of paint, so a good rub down and the first half up to second top-coat.  I think one more and this will be declared finished.

While I was away, Lasse and Bengt have been busy rubbing down the exterior for its last coat of varnish.

More fittings continue to be added to the exterior, the various protectors for the brake column at B-end as well as the gate on the end door are recent additions.  Valves and airbrake pipes (2 at each end) have also made an appearance.

Hopefully this post should herald somewhat more frequent posts on the progress with No.33, especially as our sailing ship is in dry dock for some fairly extensive timber replacement this winter, that's her at the end, beyond Sunbeam, an old Lowestoft trawler, so she will prvide less of a distraction for a while!

best regards from snowy Stockholm, George!

Summers Activities

After some gentle prodding from the UK (Thanks Pete!) the blog is back! 

It has been a busy summer for the operating set, fortunatly with few problems

Every weekend in July, we ran specials in association with the steam ship Blidösund: http://www.blidosundsbolaget.se/en/

We provided vintage transport from Stockholm Östra up to Lindholmen using No.35 

 

Here passengers were met by a vintage bus that took them over to the coast

Passengers then boarded Blidösund, which would convey them gently back to Stockholm serving them a classic Swedish dinner along the way.  All in all this proved very popular and I believe was fully booked for every run.  Hopefully something we can repeat in the future!

 

Built in 1911 in Göteborg for traffic between Stockholm and Blidö in the Stockholm Archipelago, she is in very good original condition, including her original steam plant.  She is now owned by an association who preserve her by operating her for day cruises and charters in the Stockholm area.

For me, a significant part of the summer was spent on another vintage transport project of mine, the 1908 built 2 masted schooner Constantia.  This year we took her through the Göta Canal (she only just fits in the locks, with 10 cm to spare at each end!) for a summer on the west coast

 

We took part in two traditional ship races, the first from Hobro in northern Denmark to Kragero in southern Norway via Göteborg in Sweden.  We won the first stage in that race.  We then took part in another race around the Danish island of Fyn, winning 4 of 5 stages and therefore the race as a whole!

Back in the Stockholm area I have also been crewing on quite a few of the charter trips that we do to fund her preservation and operation.  OK, so thats my excuses, or some of them anyway, for not keeping the blog up to date!

 

 Back on the Roslagsbana, our full operating set (one carriage, one full brake top-and tailed by electric railcars) continued to operate every weekend in August with our traditional summer public running.  Here is the interior of our 1914 built carriage 880.  A bit tired, and more or less as left commercia service but still in reasonable condition.

 

For the mechanical group, most of the work was keeping the set clean and maintained, and fixing the few problems as they came up.  One report from the operating crew was that the jumper cable on 35 was a bit tight and difficult to operate.  We dealt with that with a sanding disk on the angle grinder.

Well ... Micke and Daniel delt with it, Soren and I stood arouond adding helpful comments such as  "shall I fetch you the metal polish ... "

Work continues on 33 within the workshop.  I am now painting the final part of the interior, the ceiling of B-end saloon while Henrick is painting doors.  Lasse and Bengt have commences giving the exterior a final rub-down.  The double glazed windows had aquired a significant amount of grime between the two panes of glass so we have also been dismantelling, cleaning and reassembling those one at a time.  Once painting is finished, the lino can go down on the floor and the interior can begin to come together.

Hopefully more frequent updates to come, as well as reports on a couple of trips to other narrow gauge railways in the area.  as ever, best regards from Stockholm!