Bank Holiday weekends can be dull. In order to alleviate your boredom we've used all of our skill in order to keep you occupied for 2' 15".

Years ago - literally - we started to think about an efficient means of providing a hand (parking) brake for D5910. It had to work, not be innovative, look like the original and be maintainable. We dismissed all of the modern ways of doing this - hydraulic, electric, spring apply, spring release, the whole lot. We settled on something which was all-but original. The handbrake on the original locos (and all other locos of that generation) was applied by turning a wheel in the cab which through a series of gears / chains / screws / levers and rods applied the brake blocks to the wheels. The problem we had was that the screw on the donor loco moved in the wrong direction, it moved towards the nose to apply the brake and we needed something which moved away from the nose to apply the brake. The only realistic solution was a new screw and trunnion, all mounted in the original frame and using the original levers / cranks and rods, albeit modified.

We've posted updates from time-to-time but for the first time the whole arrangement can be seen working in the video below.