L & Y Carriage Door Vent Covers

When you look at a restored railway carriage or engine, sometimes it is hard to appreciate the hours of work that go into every detail to create the overall gleaming finished effect.

There are hundreds of such examples with our Rolling Stock, but this is just one of them.

Replacement Vent Covers

A little while ago, Gerry, our resident metalworker was asked if he could make a replacement vent cover for the missing door on our 1890 first class L & Y Carriage.

Seven of the original vent covers and doors have survived in various conditions, but one door of the carriage is missing completely, along with its vent and cover.

With most of the original covers battered in different places, our joiner used the best two existing ones to produce a wooden former over which to shape the metal.

Although the originals are made of copper, Gerry chose to make the new one in aluminium as we'd had some donated.

The aluminium sheet provided was harder to work than it might have been, as it was a slightly heavier gauge than the copper original (18 gauge).

Annealing / Shaping

The process of creating a replacement involved annealing the aluminium to make it easier to work.

Heating the metal to a specific temperature to soften it and relieve internal stresses caused by hammering, bending or rolling.

Annealing involves heating the aluminium above its recrystallisation temperature, leading to a change in ductility, before then allowing it to air cool to room temperature.

The work piece was then clamped up to the former and the aluminium was hammered over with an "improvised" wooden mallet.

A process that was repeated until the desired hardened form was achieved.

Note, we're very much "old school" at Poulton & Wyre Railway Society. In one of the photos above, Gerry can be seen using a simple matchstick technique to check the temperature doesn't get too high.

Fitting

The very impressive end result will be stored safely until the time comes to fit it on the replacement door.

Where it will become one of the hundreds of details on our L & Y Carriage restoration project.

To see where the vents will be fitted, take a look at the early photos in our L & Y Carriage Gallery or you can see completed examples on The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society website.

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