Over the last few months, apart from general maintenance, the railway has been working on the Western that was at Brooklands Park, near Worthing in Sussex. This locomotive arrived at RVR from Joe Nemeth who had started to work on the bogies (the first photo shows the bogie as it arrived at Joe’s).

The complete rebuild was started in 2009 and it is anticipated, if everything goes to plan, that it should be running sometime in 2010. As can be seen from the selection of photographs, the bogies were stripped down and the frames re-machined to take our style of hydraulic motor. As with our original blue diesel ‘Maurice the Major’, both bogies will be motorised with disc brakes on each, thus giving 12 wheel drive and 12 wheel braking. The photograph of the engine compartment shows the new 3 cylinder Kubota diesel engine and the modern hydraulic drive system that is in use on all our locos. This will make the locomotive a much more useful unit particularly on damp/wet mornings.

The front end around the buffer area has also been remodelled to match David Curwen’s style thus making it more in line with the original full size Westerns of the early 1960’s. Some of the bodywork panels have also been renewed. When completed it will be numbered D1002 and named ‘Western Explorer’, painted mid-brunswick green with a small yellow identification panel on the front. The route indicator will show 1A-19, which was the ‘Merchant Venturer’, running from London Paddington to Weston-Super-Mare.