Ray Maidstone's third visit to the Ffestiniog Railway

Dateline: 3rd September 2013

My next session at Boston Lodge began was on Tuesday 3rd September 2013 where again, pleasant weather prevailed and I was in good spirits upon my arrival. I met with Norman and Glenn, who showed me the current state of play, and it was interesting to note how different 488 looked minus her No.2 end's driver canopy. Sad to say, that the No.2 end having been removed to ship the car to Paris all those years ago - then having been cobbled together again once in Paris - had not done 488 any favours, hence this end having been found in such poor condition. It is now laying across Glenn's benches, while he takes advantage of the fully in tact No.1 end as a pattern for its remodelling.

Glenn went on to show me that the front metal surround, or 'dash' at the No.2 end had been disconnected by him and his team, so we removed it so that I could get a good look at the electrical and mechanical equipment on this end of the car. With the dash removed, just the brake handle equipment, pneumatic piping and the controller on the driver's platform remained. Glenn voiced strong misgivings that he feels convinced the car may have had some form of head-on collision during its life, judging by the sheer amount of replacement wooden structures and the varying thicknesses of timbers he has uncovered, that have quite clearly been added in later. Although there has indeed been a fair amount of rotten timber to be discarded, Glenn's firm feelings about heritage are such that he is only discarding what is unsuitable for reuse, and in fact I am happy to report that a very considerable quantity of the original 488 will be reconstituted into the car's final restored state.

Another detail Glenn brought to my attention was the amount of original lining work that he had found upon removal of the panelling and architrave of the lower deck. For example, by careful removal of paintwork, original castellated scrollwork was found around some of the corners, obviously relating to an earlier 'phase' in the car's appearance. Likewise, some of the corners of the doors, around which a thick black line had been painted, have revealed a red lining and an orange lining from a previous phase. It is intriguing therefore, to get a glimpse into factual evidence of how 488 morphed and changed as she 'grew up' over the years. A further peculiarity in my opinion, is that looking at 488 in its present state, you can see that the early [1900s] designers of the car had a certain trend for using curved and shaped plates, whereas the later [1920s] designers of the car's upper/lower end enclosures seem to have had a 'thing' about hexagons, because they have used great slabs of glass and woodwork bolted around the ends in this angular fashion, rather than considering the original curve lines of the doors, stairs, and so on.

After this general inspection of events, on Tuesday afternoon I set about dismantling all the pneumatic and electrical equipment on the No.2 end, with the aim of extracting the controller and resistor box for transport to my home workshop. Can I emphasis that while at no point am I trying to write a damning report, personally, I don't know what to make of the way that the wiring had previously been hacked about underneath the driver's platform - it simply looked like a horror story! Did they never intend this car to run at AMTUIR [and therefore it wouldn't matter] - or, were the people involved in removing the No.2 end prior to 488's shipment just very aggressive in their work? Anyhow, I spent the afternoon busily making my way through colour coding and extracting the cables, so that by the time the workshop closed up for the evening, I had stripped virtually all the wiring from the No.2 end, whereupon Antonia and I made our way to Porthmadog for an excellent tea of Fish and Chips, then back onto the campsite for a well needed rest.

On Wednesday morning we were greeted by another sunny day, and having watched the swallows flitting around in front of our camper van, I made my way down to Boston Lodge. It didn't take much to complete the wire stripping of the No.2 controller, so then off came the pneumatic piping [this is needed for the car's air brakes]. At this point I looked around for the controller securing bolts, only to find that...there aren't any! It stays on the driver's platform by sheer weight! And believe it when I say that this thing is heavy, which I found out when I removed it and put it in my vehicle to take home! I also removed the resistor box, which showed every sign of having worked very hard in its life, judging by the blistered nature of the heat deflector panels, sending the heat through grilles to the outside air. As I have said before, everything about this car looks as if it was very well built, and that it has worked very hard.

Following this, I looked into the removal and mapping of the wiring for the lamps and bell circuits. This was a less gratifying task, as all sorts of inappropriate, conventional domestic wiring had been introduced [certainly not something I would want to put 600 Volts through] - I presume as part of its past exhibition at AMTUIR. I have therefore discarded the lamp and bell wiring, as it's too heavily interfered with to make sense of; this will all be taken care of when I re-wire the car. Also in the course of Wednesday I removed the wiring from the No.1 controller, which because it had not been interfered with or hacked about, was a difficult but straightforward process. However, I would have been curious to have read the drivers' fault report sheet of the No.1 end of 488, since during my disassembly I discovered that one of the high current brass terminations had never been soldered and hence could not have conducted current! I will investigate further to find out what this terminal would have been expected to do. However, my hat comes off to the designers of these electrical connections, which in this case are brass cone press-fit lugs secured by a centre screw - as not one of them shows any signs of fatigue despite having worked very hard.

I left Boston Lodge on Wednesday evening, laden with items for my workshop, and am now in the process of organising them into my space before work here begins.




Ray Maidstone
488 Technical Consultant