The Basingstoke Canal Railway

At ASH LOCK yard Being now redundant for bankside support of the dredger at Swan Cutting, the locomotive and all railway material had been moved to the yard at Lock 29 (Ash Lock). There was no rail laid, all the track was stacked. Ash Lock yard in 1996 While here the opportunity was taken to refurbish the locomotive for use somewhere else - we weren't exactly sure where, but we thought we would be using it on the canal somewhere, and so it was being fitted out with headlights, a horn, a dynamo, and a battery, and also at this point, the engine itself was overhauled as well. [photo: Stan Meller]

The cylinder head of the engine was decarbonised at this time by John Peart. We found when we took the head off that the engine was very severely coked and John spent quite a few hours decoking the engine before we got it back in service again. We then had it firing happily on two cylinders - which it hadn't been doing very well before..... [photo: Stan Meller] John Peart replacing the cleaned-up cylinder head onto the cylinder block of the diesel engine of the locomotive. [photo: Stan Meller]

What size are your wheels Sir? Some bloke came who owned a machine shop the other side of Farnham: "Anything I can do for you boys, give me a shout!" "Do you think you could take these two axles off this loco and skim the tyres?" (Being hollow they had worn badly). We jacked the locomotive up on piles, bricks and whatever, got the axles out and 'Matey' sent one of his men to collect them and he rang John up a few days later saying: "What size do you want me to turn them to?" So John said: "Effectively the size they are". But he said: "One set of wheels is an inch bigger than the other...." As they were both being driven from the same shaft and gearbox, they'd be running at the same speed, and that wasn't very profitable...... That's why they were worn, because all the time one pair of wheels was slipping (being of a different diameter). So 'Matey' turned them to the same diameter for us and it's signifcant that when at Swan cutting we were operating the locomotive on bankside support for the dredger we were using 5 gallons of diesel a day. When we got to the Deepcut flight and put the locomotive back into service we were using only 2 gallons of diesel a day. That's how profitable the wheel turning was! We did notice that one of the axles had had a bad accident and had been repaired, and 'Matey' put a new sleeve over that pair for us. So that was a great improvement.....

Andy Meller working on the personnel carrier. Ultimately he built 3 altogether, and he built these onto old skip chassis which were not fitted for carrying a body, However these personnel carriers were such that it was possible to seat 6 people and move them along the track to save walking - and time. [photo: Stan Meller]

The locomotive still being worked on and the skelpings truck being improved. A lot of the railway equipment was dumped into Lock 29 until we came to use it somewhere else. Frank Jones is there (on the left), probably asking us if we can use the railway on the Deepcut flight..... [photo: Stan Meller] (Based on an interview with Stan Meller, November 1998) NEXT - End of the project BACK

Last updated February 2000