In the Workshop

The Herston works is open Monday to Friday. You'll generally find around 10 - 12 people there, a mixture of paid SLL staff, local volunteers and Swanage Railway staff. We also run two day workshop sessions every four to six weeks mainly for those volunteers who don't live close to Swanage. The presence of a relatively large group makes laborious jobs relatively painless and surprisingly enjoyable.

There is a wide range of unskilled, semi-skilled and very-skilled tasks which all contribute to the restoration and maintenance of our fleet of locos.

Volunteer Workshop Sessions

Dates for the first half of 2012:

Thursday/Friday 12/13 January
Thursday/Friday 23/24 February
Thursday/Friday 22/23 March
Thursday/Friday 26/27 April
Thursday/Friday 7/8 June
Thursday/Friday 12/13 July

You are welcome to visit Herston to work at other times; please let Willie Bath know when you are coming.

New volunteers

With a fleet of 8 locos and a large covered workshop there is going to be something worthwhile for any reasonably fit person to do. Please ring Simon for a chat (01474 833263) and a visit to discuss how you can help us. You do not have to be a shareholder in order to volunteer.

Workshop activities


Parts of the inner wall of the firebox have been cut out for replacement, revealing boiler stays in various condition.		To remove a stay the exposed heads are flame cut off, the surface is ground smooth and then the old stay is drilled through. Nick Wren uses a centre punch before drilling.


The spring hangers were fitted to Sir Keith Park. Note the grooved plates above the spring and below the support bracket, which allow a small amount of movement.		The internal structure of the new tender for Sir Keith Park is now complete. Note how little space the coal occupies compared with the water.


"Team Thompson" spent two days in the bowels of Sir Keith Park installing the six main springs, each of which weighs around 200lbs. Tim Cheeseman (centre) and Malcolm Garner (right) had not worked at Herston before but seemed to enjoy it.		Each set of springs needs to be man-handled into place underneath the loco, then raised into position with the help of a block & tackle, a lot of shoving, and occasional profanity.


Geoff Thompson, chairman of Southern Locomotives Ltd., makes a final adjustment to the bearing surfaces of Sir Keith Park's coupling rods.		Getting three sets of driving wheels exactly in line, joining the front and rear coupling rods, lifting them into position on the three wheel studs (with a clearance of a few thou), then doing the same again on the other side, is a good morning's work.


Derek Upshall fabricates the cross-members of the new tender tank to be used with Sir Keith Park, which is being built from original Brighton drawings.		Within the frames of Sir Keith Park, volunteer Ray Evans prepares the studs for the middle cylinder cover