Chairman’s Chat – June 2025

By Neil Taylor

A very good morning to all supporters of 82045,

We have “LIFT OFF”… or more appropriately “LIFT ON”

You will all be delighted to know that this week saw the boiler fitted to the locomotive. With a great deal of logistical manoeuvring, we managed to extract the loco from the engine shed take it to the boilershop, drop the boiler in and return it to the build location in a matter of a few hours.

This is a great credit to the organisation powers of trustee Brian Malyon and the Severn Valley Railway team. More importantly, the operation went without a hitch, which bears the fruit of our trial fit over a year ago. The loco can be seen here emerging from the boiler shop.

The loco will now continue to be prepared for its appearance at the Rail 200 event at Derby, The Greatest Gathering. We will be making a press announcement in the next day or so to support this. After much debate, we will be displaying the loco with only one tank fitted (the driver’s side), such that the public can get a good view of the completed boiler in the frames.

Photos: John Padgett

82045 Goes Digital

For some time now we have been pursuing the idea of cashless donations. As a result, we have decided to team up with “Give A Little” to develop a few cashless options. This approach will hopefully allow people to donate with ease wherever they are in the world and at any time they feel they can donate.

If you follow the link below you will be able to make an easy donation to support this final phase of our build. We believe that £300,000 will ensure the completion of the locomotive and support the initial running in period, whilst providing a contingency fund for any unplanned spend in the first period of operation. Give a Little

In amongst the various deliberations around this process we have also managed to acquire our own email address. I am not sure how we got 20 years into a project without an email address, but here it is. Please feel free to use it, but appreciate that it will be monitored intermittently: 82045steamlocomotivetrust@gmail.com

82045 Limited Edition Prints

As featured in the recent Member's Newsletter, the 150 signed prints of the John Austin Painting have been completed. They will be delivered by hand to us in early July. For those of you who elected to pick your copy up at the Autumn Gala, we are definitely going to be able to do that. For those people who elected to have the painting mailed we are waiting for specialise packaging to arrive. We have ordered 4” diameter tubes, as recommended by John. The postal packages will be despatched towards the end of the second week of July, via Post Office tracked 48 delivery service.

If you do have your print delivered by post, please ensure that it is flattened well before framing. A friendly framer that we will be using for display copies, has suggested that they probably need 3 to 4 weeks under some books, or similar, to fully flatten.

One more thing

As a follow-up to last month's pictures of Southern 82xxx in action, Malcolm has found another picture from his archive. It was actually filled under “Nine Elms”, The picture shows 82012 with, now preserved, Battle of Britain 34072 in the background on the 5th September 1964.