Over the summer period we started planning the next jobs on the loco restoration to complement the tasks we are undertaking as part of the Heritage Lottery Funded training.  We want to see a rolling chassis as soon as possible and this means having the tyres replaced on the wheels and getting the axleboxes overhauled.  The image shows our loco (almost) attached to a tender – but we do have a few bits missing yet!

We did not include these items within the HLF work as we need to employ some specialist contractors for the work as parts are outside our scope – re-tyring and profiling of journals requires some extremely large and specialist equipment and we need some new underkeeps manufacturing.

Our friends at Dinmore Manor Locomotive Ltd have provided the new tyres at a very considerable discount to price of new and these are already on site at South Devon Engineering.  You, our very generous members have contributed to our funds through donations, membership fees and sponsorship and we are ready to make a start of these projects.  However, with the overall cost of these two items at over £60,000 we decided to try to raise some additional funding from a number of grant providers.

We identified a number of funders whose criteria for donating matched our objectives and put together five bids amounting to requests for £22,500 – the targeted organisations were:

  • The Garfield Weston Foundation
  • The Pilgrim Trust
  • The Rowlands Trust
  • The Swire Charitable Trust
  • The Veronica Awdry Charitable Trust

All of these organisations have, in the past, made donations to organisations similar to ours or to heritage projects.

We are very pleased to be able to announce that all of our applications were successful and we have been awarded a total of £18,000 – four of the five have already passed over the funds and the fifth will do so when we have incurred the relevant costs.  The shortfall between the requested amount and the grants will come from our reserves unless we can secure further external funding

 

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