For the last few years, work at Hotchley Hill has been supported by an increasingly messy set of extension flexes and work lights in the locking room. On gloomy winter afternoons, rechargable torches are propped on every available surface. The whole setup is generally inconvenient; we think we can do better!
As luck (and a generous donor) would have it, we were able to gather a great deal of steel conduit and fittings at no cost. It is a lot more trouble than clipping a few flexes to the wall, but conduit is clearly the right choice. It gives us a tough, permanent installation, that looks right in a 1940s equipment room.
Although old 3/4" conduit and modern 20mm are hard to tell apart, we do need a modern electrical system, and that means some changes. For one, I don't believe the building originally had any mains sockets. Now we want to plug in power tools and phone-chargers. Another change is a modern consumer unit with RCBOs instead of rewirable fuses. We aren't using rubber insulated cable, either.
So, we just need to screw a load of metal pipes to the wall, right? That's easy, except the fittings all have to screw into each other too - and you have to assemble the whole thing in-situ, with the walls getting in the way.
This week, we made it halfway around the locking room on the north side. That's a short distance, but with a lot of branches to the consumer unit, the relay and battery rooms, and provision for future work upstairs.
We will be at the 60th anniversary event at Rushcliffe halt this coming Saturday the 4th of March, and would be delighted to see you there!
