2975 Restoration

Status: Restoration will begin once 3916 is complete. Preventative maintenance occurring as required currently

Location: Wansford: Part of Nord Express line up by Main Entrance

2975clean

History

The restaurant car, no. 2975, was built in 1927 in Italy. It is currently painted in the Pullman colours of cream and blue livery.

In its service life, this car spent most of its time in Switzerland. This is a major reason why the coach survived World War 2 while many other Wagons-Lit's carriages were not so lucky.

Restaurant cars were usually attached to the back of other regional expresses and then removed at the country's border.

2975 is actually the heaviest coachin the UK, weighing in at 55 tons.

2975posh

The coach was withdrawn from service in 1977 and moved to the railway in 1978 after being purchased by Thomas Cook and used for dining trains on the NVR.

The car is now located in the entrance of the car park at Wansford, as part of the Nord Express display. It requires a substantial 6 figure sum to get it into running condition again however. This will be our next project after the Sleeping Car.

September 2011

As the previous update suggested, a top coat or two of paint would be added to the coach roof when volunteers were available.

Fortunately there were two or three on hand during september to get the roof well and truly protected.

Here is a recent photo showing the finished job:

2975roofpaint2

June & July 2011

Despite the roof of 2975 being in good condition structurally, it still looked worse for ware. A few days were spent giving the whole roof a few coats of grey paint. The top coat will be applied over the coming weeks depending on availability of volunteers.

The top coat has now started to be applied.

2975roofpaint1

February & March 2011

Since 2975 has been moved into public view as part of the 'NORD Express' display, we felt the need to make it look more presentable.

The first step was to wash the whole coach down and clean off the less stubborn rust marks. The before and after photos below show the extent of the dirt we had to remove.

2975dirt1 2975dirt2 2975roofb4aa 2975roofb4aa2 2975cleaningroof 2975roofdirt

We recently began to remove the worst of the rust and cut out any corroded metal plate. The plan is to cover the worst parts with new plate as a temporary measure.

2975hole 2975wirewheeling

As for the surface rust, our young volunteers have been carefully removing, rust treating and priming along the length of the coach.

2975primer 2975paint

The interior of this coach had been been untouched for years, so as you may have guessed, it required a thorough clean. So we used one Sunday morning to wash the whole coach from top to bottom, sweep the floors and give everything a good dusting.

Pictures of the clean interior can be seen below:

2975interior20112 2975interior20114 2975interior2011 2975interior20115 2975interior20113

Keeping with the interior theme, there are plans in the pipeline to split off the pantry & kitchen area from the rest of the vehicle. As the condition of the two areas is terrible and they contain asbestos it would be in the public interest to isolate this area.

However, we intend to allow public access to the Saloon area subject to Asbestos and air quality checks.

This area will contain information boards & display cabinets to add interest and explain the history of 2975 and Wagon-Lits in general.

We hope in doing this, that visitors will be encouraged to donate towards the project.

The first step in allow public access to the interior was to construct some steps, which can be seen here:

2975steps

The Stove

In its early days at NVR the original kitchen was removed along with the Anthracite stove. We had assumed that all of the kitchen equipment from 2975 had been lost many years ago.

However, parts of the stove have recently been found in the tunnel. The search for the remaining pieces will continue but we are not expecting to find it all.

Below you can see the doors from the original stove:

2975stovedoors

The parts that are still missing will be manufactured using original drawings.

January 2011

The car was moved to form part of our Nord Express Line up in January 2011

2975 after being moved to platform 1 to allow the shunting of other stock at the NVR

2975farside

Some of the damage the coach has sustained over the years.

2975brokenwindow