Completed in June 2010 at the National Railway Museum in York, this install required some out of the ordinary solutions! The brief for this installation was not to keep vistors cool in summer, but to keep the trains warm in winter!
It’s always a pleasure having free range of this wonderful museum, and luckily for us, we regularly do.
Torr have completed numerous maintenance visits and installed some high profile projects for the museum, but this was one of our favourites. Designing and installing a system not to keep visitors cool in summer, but to keep valuable trains warm in winter!
An obselete and bulky gas heating system had in the past been removed and interim heating was being provided by very expensive to run gas jet blowers.
Looking for a long term econimic and environmentally friendly solution, the museum decided on installing a new heat pump system.
Due to the tent like construction of the Aldek building, loading calculations did not allow for any structures to be hung from the roof structure. This being the case, we had to formulate a solution for suspending the underslung style fan coil units at above train height.
The solution was the creation of 2 ‘T’ shaped I-beam steel pods, each supporting 4 x 14kW units. The two ‘pods’ providing a combined heating capacity in excess of 112kW.
A trench was excavated alongside the railway tracks to house the ducting containing all the pipework and cabling.
Now the valuable locomotives housed inside the National Railway Museum Aldek building remain frost free during the winter months, preventing damage to the exhibits structure and paintwork.
