11th ANNUAL TRA DMU EVENT
9th & 10th September 2006 Battlefield Railway
Report and pictures by Paul Moxon

Introduction
The Railcar Association’s Eleventh National DMU Convention, organised by Ritchie Marcus, was held this year at Battlefield Railway on 8^th, 9^th & 10th September 2006.  Our thanks go to Ritchie and his team for a well organised and interesting event.

	Friday saw two people experiencing the delights of driving the line’s resident “Bubble” (55005). A smaller number than previous of about seventeen delegates attended the formal annual meeting on the afternoon of the first day, there being competition from events at other railways that weekend.
The special attraction laid on for delegates this year was E79960, the Waggon und Maschinenbau rail bus, brought across from the North Norfolk Railway for the event, running alongside the resident DMU’s 55005 and 51131/51321 the 116/118 hybrid high density unit.

Railcar operation – both days

The event opened with the bubble car (55005) towing a full brake “swinger”. When this formation reached Shenton, the guard had quite a job preventing members of the public from joining the railcar as it prepared to run round the BG. All of the home fleet were in evidence over the weekend, the final public working being a 3-car formation that departed at 16:00.

A nice touch was the “dual personality” 116/118 set that was all blue on one side and blue and grey on the other.

Sunday followed a similar pattern with the rail bus making the first departure for Shenton and then single, two and 3-car formations working throughout the day.

FORMAL MEETING

Ritchie Marcus opened the meeting, held in the spacious Shenton station building which was relocated from Leicester Humberstone Road, and welcomed the delegates to the official part of the proceedings. 

Due to family matters (impending grand fatherhood?) Tony Fox was unable to give his yearly review of DMU events, but we hope he will be back next year to round up two years.

Arriva “Bubble” 55032  

Graham Thornton, (looking quite dapper, as he was also attending a non-DMU function later that day) gave an illustrated talk on the preparation of the second single unit (121032/55032) to be restored for main line passenger service with Arriva Trains West in Cardiff. I am fairly sure that all of the TRA members will now be keen to fit OTMR and TPWS to their units, following the detailed description of the (many) processes involved! A reminder of how a small fault can prevent 1st generation units from working was highlighted with Graham describing the AWS push button problem that had prevented the “bubble” from working the Cardiff Bay services for a week.

Graham then brought us up to date on the progress of the Cravens twin at the East Lancashire railway with a selection of slides. The ever present problem of asbestos was mentioned with white asbestos having been found in the Bubble (121) and blue in the Cravens (105).

Ownership issues

Ritchie Marcus then gave an illustrated talk on the ownership of DMU’s, covering aspects such as;

·        Who owns the DMU? – If you form a Society you need a constitution, membership cards and allow equal voting rights.

·        Limited Company? – The cost of setting up a company, involving solicitors and there is are annual running costs involved

·        Charitable Status? – Exemption from tax, claim back VAT on certain items, but you can’t trade or distribute profits. (Although you can    maintain a second company for trading purposes)

·        Insurance – Are you sufficiently covered for fire, accidental damage, and Public liability?

·        Ritchie stressed that owners and groups should get written details of insurance from their companies or operating railways.  

Maintenance This item had been mooted at last year’s convention; Evan Green-Hughes led a discussion on the development of national maintenance standards for the benefit of railcar groups.  In line with last years comments Evan went on to outline the following;   The starting point should be the 1994 VMI manual. ·        Regular inspection of units would be the norm. ·        Record maintenance dates and examinations. ·        Record provenance of parts fitted.

Comments were offered from the floor on the topics Evan had raised and lively discussion ensued about the following;

·        In the case of a reportable incident HMRI would try to prove negligence rather than competency.

·        The TRA should have a standard maintenance regime.

·        UAT and how often should they be performed.

·        If we don’t do maintenance properly then HMRI could possibly enforce a draconian regime that may well be inappropriate for the mileages some of our vehicles run.

Competency was defined as being proved by the time you had been doing the examination work, and that ultimately DMU examiners would have to be passed as being competent.

Any work on a DMU should not be signed off until you had tested it and proved that it worked.

Actions resulting

·        Need to get permission to use the 1994 VMI manual

·        To transfer the VMI onto some from of media such as a DVD or CD.

·        Evan agreed to start the work and report back via the 1st Gen E-group

A.O.B.

It was reiterated that the 2007 Convention will take place at the Churnet Valley Railway, which currently is set to be over the 28th, 29th 30th September (subject to CVR confirmation)

There were no volunteers to host the 2008 event.

– Ritchie closed the meeting to allow delegates to travel back to Shackerstone on the train.  

Ritchie laid on a tour of line in the rail bus after the public service had finished. There were several photo stops, and the delegates got the chance to view the station buildings & impressive collection of shunting locos awaiting restoration at Market Bosworth Station at their leisure.

The Saturday was rounded off with an excellent BBQ on the platform (with a choice of two puddings!) and most of the delegates managed to gather for the obligatory platform end group photograph or “seminar” (as I am told it is called!)

Tales of railway work and DMU issues were swopped as those that were not driving that night sampled the beer. Dusk fell, and with it came the opportunity for some night photography.

Further pictures from the event:

	The first four are by Ritchie Marcus.
	The next seven pictures were taken by Stuart Marlow on the 9th September.
	And four pictures by Paul Moxon on 9/9/06.

To view details of previous galas:

10th 2005 Llangollen Railway
9th 2004 Railcar50 Severn Valley Railway
8th 2003 Chasewater Railway
7th 2002 Swanage Railway
6th 2001 Mid-Norfolk Railway
5th 2000 East Lancs Railway
4th 1999 West Somerset Railway
3rd 1998 Llangollen Railway
2nd 1997 Midland Railway Centre
1st 1996 Dean Forest Railway