Topic: 43003

Midland to Manchester DVD

Posted by Admin on Wednesday, April 29, 2009

We're pleased to announce that we've reduced the Rio; Midland to Manchester DVD to £12.50 for a limited period. This is a reduction of £5 from £17.50.

To take advantage of this, visit our Online shop here.
 

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Preservation Progress

Posted by gary on Tuesday, March 25, 2008

And so to the next exciting instalment of our preservation procurement programme…… and probably the most nerve wracking so far! We had arranged that we would take Valenta S499 from the re-engineering programme at Brush and were waiting on various bits of paperwork and payment to progress. Then we had a call from a friend of a friend that some Valentas had been spotted at a well know scrap yard in Yorkshire. So at the end of September 2007 a team of 5 intrepid members turned up at the yard, armed with many spanners and hammers of increasing size.

Imagine our horror on entering the site to find a great big yellow Valenta with “S499” written on it! And alongside it another Valenta with “S380” written on it. A short session of guppy fish impersonations then ensued, followed by mobile phones smoking under the number of calls being frantically made. It turned out that someone was keen to clear space at Brush and had indicated that all the Valentas “in the way” should be disposed of. This wasn’t quite the case and after some negotiation with the scrap yard and Porterbrook we managed to secure both engines from the imminent cutters torch.

And so on 1st and 3rd October respectively, S499 and S380 were removed from the scrap yard and taken to our secure site, safe from any further damage. Luckily the engines were still very much OK: S499 had sustained a broken oil filler neck and slightly bent fuel rack arm on ‘A’ side, but other than that was fine. S380 had been robbed (by us!) but other than that was intact. S499 is our very best engine (still to date) as it only had about 9-12 months cumulative work post overhaul. Both it and S380 have NA256 turbochargers.

Click here to view Valentas S499 and S380 shortly after arriving at our site

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