Harland and Wolff making trains for the first time since the 1940s

[GSWR 90]

Harland & Wolff are currently constructing an underframe for the Downpatrick & County Down Railway's oldest coach, Ulster Railway 33.

When we got 33 in the late 1980s, it had been out of use as a railway carriage for about 60 years. The interior fittings had all been removed, it suffered badly from various forms of rot, some idiot (not me) had hit it with a digger, and it didn't have an underframe. It was wrapped in tarp and used to store seat cushions for a long time out the front of the yard, until about 2013 when the old horrible-looking fence was replaced by the current brick frontage. One of our volunteers designed a metal frame so it could be very carefully lifted onto a donor brown van underframe which was built by Harland and Wolff in the 1940s.

Volunteers removed the cushions and started to carry out some remedial work so it didn’t fall apart. The more they pulled out the fittings from its life as an office and on a farm, the more original panelling they found, and the more they realised that they had something special on their hands.

With most of the bodywork restoration completed between 2018 and now, the main problem became getting an underframe sorted. Although the original drawings for this particular coach didn't survive, one of our volunteers along with two master's students from Queen's University designed a new one from scratch, using other contemporary drawings in the hands of Birmingham City Council for guidance. They spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours measuring the coach and the parts we have, and creating and testing CAD models. I wonder what the craftsmen who built 33 in the 1860s would have thought of that?

We thought we'd be pushing our luck by asking H&W to fabricate the underframe, but the opportunity couldn't have been more perfect for both of us – they have over 100 apprentices who are constantly looking for projects to work on, so this is a perfect opportunity for them to learn unique new skills. It should hopefully be delivered for Downpatrick in the next few weeks, where the wheels, brake gear etc can be added. This is the first time that a new underframe has been constructed from scratch for a preservation project in Ireland (and we even got 3D printed H&W works plates) – and hopefully not the last...

 

 

 

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[Galteemore]

That’s wonderful. You know, I think those replica plates would sell very nicely. I’d seriously consider giving one a home.

[GSWR 90]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

That’s wonderful. You know, I think those replica plates would sell very nicely. I’d seriously consider giving one a home.

We got ours from Titan Forge 3D and you can buy them on Etsy. The older version is a replica of one supplied by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

Edited August 14 by GSWR 90

[jhb171achill]

30 minutes ago, GSWR 90 said:

We got ours from Titanic Connections and you can buy them on Etsy. We also have another version which I think one of our volunteers designed himself from an older works plate

A replica UR one would be interesting - IF they had them!

 

[GSWR 90]

Based on the drawings that we do have, I think only the wagons had UR plates (see bottom pic).

However, we are after Joseph Wright works plates to either make resin replicas of or to scan for 3D printing.

 

 

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[leslie10646]

Glad to see my taxes being well-spent - at least I'm pretty sure that the said apprentices are in part funded by Sir Keir and Co.

Well done and good luck with the project!

[gibbo675]

24 minutes ago, leslie10646 said:

Glad to see my taxes being well-spent -

Hi Leslie,

If only you knew !

Here is are excerpts from the book I'm writing:

"Therefore, in your acceptance of title you unwittingly become a servant of Crown Corporation as an administrator of the lowest rank of Crown Corporation’s holdings, and in doing so you are not any longer the administrator of your own estate. Instead you are acting as attorney on your own behalf as the Kings servant and as such you are automatically subject to all of the Civil Statutes of the Crown Corporation’s governance structure. The government that is headed by the King is actually nothing more than the CEO of Crown Corporation’s operations in the United Kingdom.

When performing to contract in acting as an administrator of the King’s will you are subject to the particulars of the contract, the government statutes. This means that you are then also personally liable to pay the charges that are levied by the Crown according to the entitlement of the rank and privilege of the title claimed. As noted above most of us claim to be of the lowest rank offered that of MR which has the lowest cost of any attorney acting in court.

Should you may make a claim against the Crown Corporation for any reason you see fit from, access to credit to fund a venture, or to settle either a civil or criminal action, then charges for your attorneys work apply to you privately for the privilege of publicly accessing the wealth held by the Crown Corporation for the benefit of all of us. These charges are in the form of taxes, banking charges, prescription fees, parking charges, council tax and any and all other associated government charges."

Gibbo.

[Mike 84C]

Well Gibbo, I read your post several times but struggled a bit because I do not know the original premise which they are written about. I thought I had a good command of English but you lost me there mate! Is this book destined to be a best seller?

  Mick

[Darius43]

And we’re off…

Cheers

Darius

[Darius43]

17 hours ago, GSWR 90 said:

We got ours from Titan Forge 3D and you can buy them on Etsy. The older version is a replica of one supplied by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

Alas they’re sold out on Etsy - perhaps they’ll print some more.

My father worked at Harland and Wolff in Belfast in the 1950s as an apprentice marine engineer when he first came over from India.  He returned to Belfast with us all in the late 70s working for Michelin.  That’s how I got to go to BRA for my education.

Cheers

Darius

[GSWR 90]

1 hour ago, Darius43 said:

Alas they’re sold out on Etsy - perhaps they’ll print some more.

They had some in stock yesterday! Hope that this story provided some good advertising for them. I’m confident they’ll make more at some point, we’re talking to them about printing some other stuff for us too

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[gibbo675]

5 hours ago, Mike 84C said:

Well Gibbo, I read your post several times but struggled a bit because I do not know the original premise which they are written about. I thought I had a good command of English but you lost me there mate! Is this book destined to be a best seller?

  Mick

Hi Mick,

It will be available freely on the internet so that we may all be benefit from what it has to say. It will be about your duties as the executor of your own will as a living man instead of acting as an attorney upon your own behalf when executing your own will. All things are done by way of consent and it is how that consent is garnered and thereafter who you are actually acting on behalf of when claiming property that is then not yours.

I am well aware that this all sounds completely bonkers but it actually most important to all of us, and also why the world is somewhat upside down generally.

Gibbo.

[Galteemore]

42 minutes ago, GSWR 90 said:

They had some in stock yesterday! Hope that this story provided some good advertising for them. I’m confident they’ll make more at some point, we’re talking to them about printing some other stuff for us too

Great. Could be a nice little fundraiser ……

[jhb171achill]

19 hours ago, GSWR 90 said:

Harland & Wolff are currently constructing an underframe for the Downpatrick & County Down Railway's oldest coach, Ulster Railway 33.

When we got 33 in the late 1980s, it had been out of use as a railway carriage for about 60 years. The interior fittings had all been removed, it suffered badly from various forms of rot, some idiot (not me) had hit it with a digger, and it didn't have an underframe. It was wrapped in tarp and used to store seat cushions for a long time out the front of the yard, until about 2013 when the old horrible-looking fence was replaced by the current brick frontage. One of our volunteers designed a metal frame so it could be very carefully lifted onto a donor brown van underframe which was built by Harland and Wolff in the 1940s.

Volunteers removed the cushions and started to carry out some remedial work so it didn’t fall apart. The more they pulled out the fittings from its life as an office and on a farm, the more original panelling they found, and the more they realised that they had something special on their hands.

With most of the bodywork restoration completed between 2018 and now, the main problem became getting an underframe sorted. Although the original drawings for this particular coach didn't survive, one of our volunteers along with two master's students from Queen's University designed a new one from scratch, using other contemporary drawings in the hands of Birmingham City Council for guidance. They spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours measuring the coach and the parts we have, and creating and testing CAD models. I wonder what the craftsmen who built 33 in the 1860s would have thought of that?

We thought we'd be pushing our luck by asking H&W to fabricate the underframe, but the opportunity couldn't have been more perfect for both of us – they have over 100 apprentices who are constantly looking for projects to work on, so this is a perfect opportunity for them to learn unique new skills. It should hopefully be delivered for Downpatrick in the next few weeks, where the wheels, brake gear etc can be added. This is the first time that a new underframe has been constructed from scratch for a preservation project in Ireland (and we even got 3D printed H&W works plates) – and hopefully not the last...

 

 

 

Outstanding! Excellent!

[Killian Keane]

Absolutely lovely to see this vehicle get some well earned attention, the third oldest passenger carriage in the country, would you have a length and width over body to go with that lovely drawing perchance?

[GSWR 90]

1 hour ago, Killian Keane said:

Absolutely lovely to see this vehicle get some well earned attention, the third oldest passenger carriage in the country, would you have a length and width over body to go with that lovely drawing perchance?

It's amazing how far it's come from being a container to store seats not so long ago.

Length of underframe is 7045mm, width is 2285mm. If you are planning to make a model of it, please let me know, as we've done quite a lot of research into what it should look like

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[jhb171achill]

1 hour ago, GSWR 90 said:

Length of underframe is 7045mm, width is 2285mm. If you are planning to make a model of it, please let me know, as we've done quite a lot of research into what it should look like

When it was built, measurements would have been in inches, groats, roods, quarts, perches and cubits...... and other such medieval nonsense!

[Broithe]

24 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

When it was built, measurements would have been in inches, groats, roods, quarts, perches and cubits...... and other such medieval nonsense!

I spent my teenage years dealing with both imperial and metric at school, and the old Ottoman system out in the real world...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_units_of_measurement

[jhb171achill]

1 minute ago, Broithe said:

I spent my teenage years dealing with both imperial and metric at school, and the old Ottoman system out in the real world...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_units_of_measurement

Ah, them oul Ottomans!

[GSWR 90]

37 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

When it was built, measurements would have been in inches, groats, roods, quarts, perches and cubits...... and other such medieval nonsense!

In 1862, when 33 was built:

• They stopped making groats in 1855 so they probably still used them in 1862
• Bismark became PM of Prussia and Germany hadn't been invented yet
• Italy had been unified the year before, but it didn't include Rome yet (which was still under the control of the Papal States)
• The American Civil War was still going on, and the US emancipation proclamation hadn't been made yet
• The famine was closer to 1862 than the troubles is close to now
• The first confirmed landing on Antarctica didn't occur for another 30+ years

Funny enough, if they had measured it in mm they might have noticed that one side of the coach is 12mm longer than the other!

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[jhb171achill]

5 minutes ago, GSWR 90 said:

In 1862, when 33 was built:

• They stopped making groats in 1855 so they probably still used them in 1862
• Bismark became PM of Prussia and Germany hadn't been invented yet
• Italy had been unified the year before, but it didn't include Rome yet
• The American Civil War was still going on, and the US emancipation proclamation hadn't been made yet
• The famine was closer to 1862 than the troubles is close to now

Funny enough, if they had measured it in mm they might have noticed that one side of the coach is 12mm longer than the other!

True, and amazing!

 

[Tullygrainey]

Towards the end of my career, I shared offices with folk who were too young to remember imperial measure and were baffled by it. I felt I ought to provide them with guidance. I'm not sure it helped.

 

[airfixfan]

14 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

True, and amazing!

 

Germany and Italy both unified by 1871

[Westcorkrailway]

Most importantly in 1862 the kinsale Branchline was still under construction

 

somone should do an 1862 map of the rail network 

[jhb171achill]

21 minutes ago, Tullygrainey said:

Towards the end of my career, I shared offices with folk who were too young to remember imperial measure and were baffled by it. I felt I ought to provide them with guidance. I'm not sure it helped.

 

SUPERB!!!!!!   And 17.5 Fumpers  = 1 Gricer.........

Edited August 15 by jhb171achill

[GSWR 90]

By the way, if anyone has any Ulster Railway railwayana I'd be very interested in speaking with you. Some of us have discussed turning one of the toilets into a small museum about the Ulster Railway, as very few people know much about the UR even though it was the first railway in what is now Northern Ireland. However, it can be very difficult to get artefacts from a railway that closed 150 years ago

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[Westcorkrailway]

26 minutes ago, GSWR 90 said:

By the way, if anyone has any Ulster Railway railwayana I'd be very interested in speaking with you. Some of us have discussed turning one of the toilets into a small museum about the Ulster Railway, as very few people know much about the UR even though it was the first railway in what is now Northern Ireland. However, it can be very difficult to get artefacts from a railway that closed 150 years ago

You’d probobly need to put on a much larger search to find much 

[jhb171achill]

IRRS archives will have some stuff. I had a couple of UR Boardroom Miunute books from 1876/7 some years ago but I'm afraid I either sold them or donated them somewhere (IRRS? DCDR?)

UR Luggage lables turn up on fleabay now and again.

 

[GSWR 90]

15 minutes ago, Westcorkrailway said:

You’d probobly need to put on a much larger search to find much 

I will start going to greater efforts to get UR stuff once we have agreed that the toilet is becoming a museum... Would be a pain to acquire stuff only to have nowhere to put it

1 minute ago, jhb171achill said:

IRRS archives will have some stuff. I had a couple of UR Boardroom Miunute books from 1876/7 some years ago but I'm afraid I either sold them or donated them somewhere (IRRS? DCDR?)

UR Luggage lables turn up on fleabay now and again.

 

I think we'd mainly be looking for non-paper items, as the humidity in the workshop and the gallery unfortunately tends to make paper go soggy after a while

[Mayner]

1 hour ago, Broithe said:

I spent my teenage years dealing with both imperial and metric at school, and the old Ottoman system out in the real world...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_units_of_measurement

I was trained in construction surveying in the 70s by an engineer who calculated levels and grades in imperial units and then converted the results to metric as we used a metric levelling staff. At the time architectural and engineering drawings were all metric and he had no problem with using a metric tape for setting out horizontal dimensions, but had a psychological barrier about calculating levels and grades in metric units. One of our engineers made an expensive surveying error on one site which my boss blamed on the engineers use of metric calculatations

[jhb171achill]

5 minutes ago, GSWR 90 said:

I will start going to greater efforts to get UR stuff once we have agreed that the toilet is becoming a museum... Would be a pain to acquire stuff only to have nowhere to put it

I think we'd mainly be looking for non-paper items, as the humidity in the workshop and the gallery unfortunately tends to make paper go soggy after a while

Do you mean making the loo IN the coach into a museum?

 

[GSWR 90]

17 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Do you mean making the loo IN the coach into a museum?

 

Yes! Just an idea that has been batted about – it had two toilets, so one would be a (non-functioning) toilet and the other would be a museum. I think that would be more informative/interesting/better use of space than just another toilet.

Even if we don't do that, would still be nice to have some more UR artefacts.

Edited August 15 by GSWR 90

[Galteemore]

Would certainly be convenient 

[Killian Keane]

4 hours ago, GSWR 90 said:

In 1862, when 33 was built:

• They stopped making groats in 1855 so they probably still used them in 1862
• Bismark became PM of Prussia and Germany hadn't been invented yet
• Italy had been unified the year before, but it didn't include Rome yet (which was still under the control of the Papal States)
• The American Civil War was still going on, and the US emancipation proclamation hadn't been made yet
• The famine was closer to 1862 than the troubles is close to now
• The first confirmed landing on Antarctica didn't occur for another 30+ years

Funny enough, if they had measured it in mm they might have noticed that one side of the coach is 12mm longer than the other!

- The death of Goethe was more recent than the death of Freddy Mercury is today

- Puffing Billy was still at work at Wylam colliery

- The Charge of the light brigade was more recent than the death of David Bowie is today

-The Battle of Rorke's Drift wouldn't happen for another 17 years, and the gunfight at the OK Corral for 19 years

Edited August 16 by Killian Keane

[Northroader]

Just looking at the drawing of the coach (which is very helpful to a modeller) it strikes me that there’s a central toilet/s fitted with a roof tank above. This must be very early on in the development of this facility, or was it a later addition? Got an end elevation? The photo shewing it lifted on slings looks like the end panel mouldings are missing.

oh, and thanks for giving a van drawing, that’s magic.