Up-date and appeal to create a committee

by | Jan 31, 2022 | Uncategorized

Hello Valued supporter of Project 22

When this project was started in 2014 we were full of excitement and optimism at the thought of building another Class 22 locomotive. A committee was quickly formed through a Facebook group and a Society formed. The level of interest and positive support was encouraging and P22 when on tour on the Heritage Railway circuit, it was very interesting and the membership grow very quickly.

A lot of work was done with a small committee of 7 people. Over the next 2 years, the committee was reduced to only 4 active members and the realisation dawned on us that P22 was formed with nothing that was technically tangible other than an initial feasibility review and it was going to take years of work to complete the technical and design requirements required to take the project forward.

Being a society with membership required a lot of work a hundred members paying £15 a year needs a lot of attention for very little return, so In 2018 it was decided to put the Society aspect of the group on hold, no longer have members, and only ask for Investors to make a monthly contribution to help fund the technical work needed. This was successful and the income increased from £150 a year to £5000 a year of donations. We managed to buy an engine, hundreds of drawings needed for the design and fund the website. We also purchased some unique Class 22 memorabilia for the stand, including a builder’s plate and set of gauges from D6319. Other than this spending P22 funds does not happen we just save. As of today, we have nearly £20,000 saved from donations and sales of our two Class 22 books. We do have 2 loans, which are long-term and would only be paid up if the project stopped, to the value of £4000.

So today we find ourselves in the difficult position of deciding what to do next. With people expecting regular up-dates, which isn’t unreasonable if you are making donations to the fund, we find that we don’t have the people to produce the “Lister” Journal. The technical design work is progressing but only at the pace that would be expected be from two people doing this as a hobby, even though it is being done very well, it is impossible to forecast a time scale of when the project could be relaunched and make substantial progress, other than to say we are almost ready to get quotations to build the mainframe with all of the CAD and design work completed. (This has taken 3 years to complete)

We were able to locate a Voith transmission, the exact type needed for the project from an Italian Company, Dinazzano Po. Unfortunately, we were not able to raise the funds needed because we have stopped proactively fundraising, our marketing has stopped. It’s a shame because we spent 3 years locating it by making contacts across Europe. However, we now know that transmissions are available and what they cost, leaving us in a better position. We have always believed that the only thing that would stop this project is us deciding we didn’t want to do it anymore. It’s still feasible if we could find the right people who would want to see a Class 22 built, but more importantly, would have the times and skills needed to really re-launch the Project?

We have had a number of people offer to volunteer but we struggled to find something practical to do, especially without the stand visiting shows. So this small group has a decision to make about the future where we don’t want to waste the good work already done so far. We have an excellent springboard for a great project, if we had what we had today when we started things may have been very different now. This up-date is also an appeal to see if any people would like to come and take this forward as it would need a committee, there are only a few left from the original organisation.

We know that we can find the right committee of dedicated people, it just takes time.  The positions we are looking for include, Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, Website Manager, Newsletter Editor, Archivist, Education Officer, Membership Secretary, and Project Leader. We need ideas and a new plan going forward and create a new proactive committee. The eventual aim is to create a Charitable Organisation to take over our society so that our committee will become the trustees. This is a big step but needs to be done if a Class 22 locomotive is going to be built.

Please contact us if you would like to take up one of these important roles on the committee so we can all make the right decision to go forward. If we can get enough interest we will organize a meeting where we can meet and discuss plans for the future.

Dough Parfitt and Richard Benyon

 

September 2018 News update

by | Sep 27, 2018 | Uncategorized

September 2018 News Update

Project Update, September 2018

 

Progress has been steady as much of the background work progresses. We decided, as mentioned in earlier updates, to concentrate on the practical aspect of the project. This covers the design and development of the locomotive.

Our main areas of activity have focused on:

* Computer-Aided Design
* Purchasing drawings
* Research into documents and manuals
* Compiling a components’ list
* Locating critical components

COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN (CAD)

In September 2017 we gained a new Committee Member, Andrew Thomas who is a full-time CAD engineer working in an industrial business. Andrew has taken on the role at Project 22 as Head of Design Engineering.

Andrew’s work is intense and time-consuming, and provides Project 22 with the critical drawings needed to gain the costings for specific aspects of the project.

PURCHASE OF DRAWINGS

Doug Parfitt, our Project Manager has been working for 3 years to list and locate the relevant drawings needed to provide Andrew with data needed to produce the CAD drawings.

We have a fully-catalogued list of all drawings needed and are methodically locating them and purchasing both hard and electronic copies. It will take another 3 years to collect all the drawings we need, which are purchased in order of priority.

Getting drawings is not as straight-forward at it seems. We have listed those we need but it takes several weeks to locate batches of 20 at a time. We have purchased 350 of the 860 required.

RESEARCH INTO DOCUMENTS AND MANUALS

In addition to the multitude of blueprints we need there are many other documents needed such as component manuals, brake and wiring diagrams. Much of this information is available from the National Railway Museum, and regular visits have been taking place with many more planned for the 2019.

COMPONENT LIST

A critical area of development is the completion of a complete component list for a D6300 locomotive. The list will identify the components used in the original locomotive and cross-reference with those available and compatible that can be recovered from existing locomotives, where components may be available from preservation groups or industries in the UK. This list will also identify what new components can be used as replacements, an option preferred by Project 22.

This is a massive job which is progressing slowly.

LOCATING CRITICAL COMPONENTS

As we have already located and purchased an NBL/MAN power unit, the next task is to find a transmission. We have located several around the world. This is the “holy grail” of the project – the Voith LT306R – as it is the defining diesel hydraulic component.

Due to the complexity of negotiations we choose to not provide any detail or specific information until we have some actual information to share, other than saying we have located two transmissions that could be made available to us in the future, and we are confident that we will secure one for Project 22.

THE FUTURE

There are many other projects going on within the group and we are still spending many hours slowly moving forward. Our policy is still to keep our heads down and work on the important design and development work before we rush out making announcements. Project 22 will come back to the public eye when we are prepared.

We think our decision to reduce the level of marketing was the right move, as we were very much in danger of peaking too soon. Project 22 become very public before it even got started, which gave the impression that it was for more mature than it was. It is going to take us a few years before we realise the real potential of the project. Slowly but surely a strong sustainable structure is developing. We still have a long way to go before we can really start the actual stages of costing the build in real terms and setting out to raise the funds needed to build and maintain a locomotive.

We still need to recruit working members who can help use reach our aim, of the first stage of assembly by 2022. There are many projects as shown above where we need more people to help. We are not at the stage of needing a great deal of manual help, but this project is bigger than the six active committee members currently working on the project.

Donate and Invest in Project 22

Become and Investor and donate to Project 22! We won’t get it built without the commitment of people like you!

Download the form from the ‘Button’ below, print the last page and post it to us; or go to menu and select ‘Become an Investor’ and use PayPal.

For a small monthly amount you can support Project 22 and help us achieve our aim of building a D6300 locomotive.

All donations are currently going into our Transmission Account to be used as match-funding when we apply for grant to help secure to purchase of a Voith LT306 R transmission at some point in the future.

Investors form download