During the peak summer months of May to August, 3850 has covered nearly 6500 miles in almost daily, revenue earning service on the West Somerset Railway hauling trains of up to nine or ten coaches.

The loco has only been out of service when a boiler washout has been required. However there was some panic on one day when high pressure steam was seen to be escaping from the top of the boiler. The worst fears were quickly dispelled when the fault was found to be an ill-fitting safety valve. When this had been reseated it was quickly back to business as normal.

3850 was taken out of service during April as repairs to the linkage between the crosshead and the piston rod on the right hand side of the locomotive became necessary. The work was successfully completed at the WSR's Minehead depot and the locomotive was back in operation by the last weekend of April and so was fully fit for the special operations in early May (see page 2).

At last year’s AGM a plan was announced to raise £120,000 to return 7820 to steam. By March the scheme had grown and the "New Horizons Appeal" was launched to shareholders and the general public asking for £850,000 to not only overhaul Dinmore Manor, but also to buy a third locomotive, restore it from scrapyard condition and build a locomotive shed to store the company’s fleet.

So far the "New Horizons Appeal" has raised just over £40,000 towards the overhaul of 7820.

This year’s Annual General Meeting is to be held at our regular venue, the Bell Inn, Bishops Lydeard at 2.30pm on Sunday 18^th November. Come along and express your ideas and opinions.

Funding for our New Horizons plan has started to come in, with approximately £10,000 raised from our existing shareholders, for which we are most grateful. As we are not allowed to advertise publicly beyond our own membership, we have also set up a separate fund raising body, Dinmore Manor (2007) Fund, which has been advertising for new subscribing members in the West Somerset Railway Journal, Steam Railway magazine, etc. A further £21,000 has so far been raised in this way and the proposal is that the Fund will use this money to buy shares in our Company, with the shares being held by the Fund until they can be distributed to its’ members.

Although the £30,000+ raised so far represents just over 20% of the money we are seeking for the overhaul of Dinmore Manor, it does still leaves us quite a way to go if we are to achieve all three stages of our £250,000 Phase 1 Plan. The overhaul of 7820 remains the top priority and at present, therefore, we are not really able to make much progress with the other parts of the plan.

We are still very keen to move beyond simply overhauling Dinmore Manor and lay the groundwork for our future, as soon as possible, by funding all three of the initial stages (i.e. purchasing another loco and funding shed construction as well) as we know that the second part of our plan (to bring the new loco into service and obtain our own site) can, in the fullness of time, be funded from other sources, such as donations and legacies.

We hope that we can encourage more of our existing shareholders to contribute and help to

make our plans succeed, either by subscribing for more shares or maybe making a donation to help us on our way. Alternatively, you may be

able to interest some of your friends or relatives

The return of 3850 to steam after 19 years at the Barry scrapyard and 22 years in restoration, was celebrated in the running of a 'Shareholders Special' on 12th May, leaving Bishops Lydeard at 11am and arriving at Minehead's platform 2 an hour later to stand alongside the company's other locomotive, 7820, "Dinmore Manor".

As 3850 made light work of the gradients along the West Somerset route, shareholders talked of how they had waited patiently for this day and of the future for the locomotive. They were pleased to hear of its success during its first year of operation on the WSR.

At Honeybourne, all of the brake gear has been removed from 3850's tender and work has started on overhauling these parts. They were previously restored by volunteers at Minehead, but this was some ten years ago.

The new 3500 gallon tank has been ordered from the same company who built the tank for 7820’s tender.

Work is continuing on the new dragbox and on replacing part of the tender frames.

'DRIVE 3850' footplate experience

On day one of the shareholders’ driving days, eight of us met with Martin in the WSR training cabin. Everyone came prepared with safety shoes, work clothes (cotton!) and the warnings of the Safety Instructions ringing in our ears. Luckily, Stewart Nelhams dealt with the precautions in a very informative, but non-authoritarian way, which put us all at ease.

Inside the shed, fitters were working on Peter Waterman’s ‘Prairie’ 5553, so we wandered past out into the rain to greet the rake of trucks and vans gathered for our ‘goods’ train. Actually, it wasn’t quite as straight forward as that, because the wagons were collected by a diesel shunter and we only had a few moments to heave our bags into the brake vans and get to the footplate.

Some of the shareholders are experienced (lapsed) drivers and firemen - but not the first two. Although I know the journey well as a passenger/ TTC from years ago, knowing when to add coal, where to put it and when to do nothing are totally different. Indeed, getting the coal on a shovel through a moving firehole door is a big challenge for me and I got confused between which was back and front, because we were travelling backwards anyway.

The view of the road is good in reverse and following incidents on several heritage railways it was noted that all signals, crossings and electric tokens were checked and confirmed verbally by both crew. At first the drizzle blew into the cab leaving Minehead, but it eased off around Washford and the loco seemed to steam on very little coal. So running from Blue Anchor up to Washford was no real strain, with the loco running easily up the bank. Down the other side, it was necessary to use the injector to prevent the boiler blowing off and to use the brake to avoid excessive speed around the curve at Watchet.

Just after the station, there is a pedestrian level

crossing and we blew the whistle loudly. So loudly, that the ‘middle aged’ lady pushing her bike on to the crossing looked at us, paused … and then carried on across the crossing in front of the approaching engine and stock. Not very sensible at all - just the kind of dangerous thing that ‘teenagers’ get criticised for.

Around the coast to Doniford requires patience, due to the tight curves, but then we opened up to approach Williton and the token exchange. Here I added some coal and crossed the footplate to drive on to ‘Lydeard’, with a moving token exchange and a gentle roll into the next section. The ‘gentle’ didn’t last long as I was instructed to open her up for the climb to Stogumber – and off she went…

At Crowcombe, the gradient changed and it was time to practice gentle braking with the ‘partially fitted’ stock down to Bishops Lydeard. Here we took water and I was instructed in buffering up and running round the stock.

The experience was great fun, the crew (Philip and Stewart) were great and the remaining journey was fantastic from the verandah of the Guard’s van.

A similar event, possibly in the later half of 2008 in now being planned.

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Don’t forget to let us know when you change address, by writing to Dinmore Manor Locomotive Ltd, 48 Tinkers Drove, Wisbech, PE13 3PQ or telephone 01945 587892