A Happy Christmas and New year to all my readers.  Not a lot to report on progress with the tram body today but a lot of progress on the engineering side.

The big news is that the wheelsets will be delivered in the new year.  They were assembled at Multitech this week and looked great.

These have just been non destuctively tested for cracks and found to be good. (That's the white coating on the tread and the journal.  There are still a few adjustments to be made but I was surprised at how easily the loose wheel rotated on it's bearing.

here is a picture of the bearing area for the loose wheel with the locking collar shown.

The very distinctive 'knuckle thread' can be see.  This is the same thread that is used on fire hoses as it is nearly impervious to dirt and doesn't jam.

The Phosphor bronze bearings were also delivered for machining.

The LTHS think that this is the first time that a wheelset of this type has been designed and manufactured by a society like ours.

I also collected the trunnion castings from H Downs and sons.  These look very good and just need a small amount on machining before theya re ready to be painted and fitted.

You can see the area inside where the oiler, axle and bearing will go. One of the sliding colalrs that are designed to be scarificial is shown on the left hand side.  This will also need a small amount of machining.

The only work we got done on the tram today was to measure the wheelbase accurately so that I can finish the running gear design.  We need two tie bars making that connect the base of the axle boxes and obviously these need to have the same length as the holes that are already drilled in the solebars. Things are really coming together.  The wheelbase turns out to be 4' 9 7/8" quite how this was arrived at we don't know but two of the mounting holes are very close to window pillars so that might be the reason.

We spent the rest of the day stuffing envelopes with flyers for Leeds Transport Volume 5.  Then it was time to pack up and leave a very cold and snowy tram depot.

More reports in the new year.