Welcome to a more relaxed June Edition of the Daresbury Gazette – the pandemic has slowed and we still have to be alert, working activity has stepped up a little at the Daresbury Track – whilst we are still officially closed, maintenance work continues – following social distancing guidelines at all times

Patrick here, hope you are well and keeping safe – we hope you have been keeping busy, as we have reported some members projects in the previous Daresbury Gazette posts for April and May.

Sadly we can announce that Outdoor Shows have had to cancel the Cheshire Steam Fair 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic. We shall keep members informed of any further developments.

Let’s rewind a little back to March 16th – My wife and I were on a Shearings holiday to Devon. Whilst there we took a cruise down the River Dart. On arrival back at Dartmouth we left the ferry as we got to the exit a lady was pasting a poster explaining as from this minute the cruise company was closing down. We then boarded the steam train back to Paignton and on arrival that too closed down. As we boarded the coach for our return the Hotel closed down. On arrival back in Warrington ‘you guessed it’ Shearings closed down! We thought we must have the kiss of death about us. But even worse was to happen our beloved track closed down. What a start to the year – even our Model engineering exhibition was cancelled!

The lockdown period has had it’s effect on our track with trespassing and vandalism up at the track almost on a daily basis. Because of the lax security around Richards property it was felt we must now start locking the middle gates to stop people who in the past who had access to the property from driving over to our track to use it for social purposes. A new lock has been purchased and we now have our own code on the gates.

Throughout the lockdown maintenance ie grass cutting and tree lopping has continued by a small number of members ad hearing to the lockdown rules laid down by the committee.

A partial reopening of the track saw a flurry of engines for boiler testing the testing being carried out by Andrew Marsh. The testing has proved that an engine must be fully maintained if it has been laid up for a length of time, clack valves and injectors the main culprits but in one case the safety valve refused to open causing the failure of one of our celebrity engines. No names to mention here! The track at Daresbury still remains officially closed.

Our chairman arranged the purchase of 15 tons of good quality topsoil to be delivered to the tunnel site for the landscaping of the tunnel sides – Paul Caldwell has offered a couple of loads of cinders as infill.

After work completed on Wednesday 17th June, we can now confirm the Tunnel Completion, and we would like to thank all members who have helped and supported the project from start to finish. Over the next 12 months (with a little help of some grass seeds) the tunnel landscaping shall blend itself with the rest of the woodland, ready for the next 2021 Steam Fair.

You can check out all the photos in the latest Gallery update

Talks with our landlord about drainage around the car parking area have resulted in Craig’s idea of a french drainage system will be adopted this work will commence once we have finished the tunnel as we don’t want to have two major jobs on the go at the same time.

One last thing as we have experienced trespassing and damage to our property we are now fitting camera surveillance to the site actuated by motion sensors in an attempt to catch the culprits..

No doubt we will be receiving further updates from the committee regarding security arrangements, official track reopening and subscriptions etc and when and where we will all met up again, so until then: Stay Alert, Control The Virus, Save Lives.

Patrick

 

Other related Daresbury Gazette articles:

• Lockdown Project, Glow Plug Part 2 – May Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• Lockdown Project, Glow Plug Part 1 – April Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• Virus Forces Temporary Track Closure – March Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• The Big Time – February Edition – Daresbury Gazette
• WDMES Committee Minutes – 11th February 2020

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Welcome to another Lockdown Edition of the Daresbury Gazette for May - uncertain times with Covid-19, forcing model engineering clubs and tracks to close temporarily across the world, but allowing for lots of tinker time in our workshops - a silver lining during a worldwide pandemic Nothing much to report at the Daresbury track, due to government guidelines the track is closed for the foreseeable future until the situation improves with the pandemic During the lockdown however, model engineers across the world are finding more jobs to do at home in the workshop. Club President Henry Wood has started a brand new lockdown project - Glow Plug Engine, here is part 2: Since the lock down I was looking for something to get my teeth into in the workshop. With having no room for any more locos, my thoughts turned to having a go at making another Glow Engine, these ...
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Welcome to a very windy February Edition of the Daresbury Gazette - as its a leap year we take a rare opportunity to release this on the 29th February! Thursday March 5th from 8:00pm we have our final WDMES Talk of the season about the “History of WDMES” by Club Member: T Taylor (at the St Mary Magdalene's Church Hall, Appleton) - we hope to see many members at this event - More details of this event and future events can be found here Storm Ciara has been and Storm Jorge is howling all around me so I decided to take a trip up to Daresbury to make sure everything is in the right place happily all is fine. This is largely due to excellent tree management by Andrew Marsh and tidy work onsite by club members on a Wednesday. Since the last Gazette, we as a club have really hit ...
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