A62 Stock Tread Plate

Unlike the 1967 Stock tread plate, this tread plate has seen many years’ use and its appearance is evidence of this. The plate came from a scrapped A62 car (number not known) and was picked up during an arranged visit to the famous C F Booth works in Rotherham (where the majority of redundant A Stock cars are taken for scrapping after being decommissioned) in October 2011.

The plate measures 4.87 ft (1483 mm) long × 3.6 inches (92 mm) wide.

The three pieces of text that are cast into the plate are spaced some distance apart; on the plates installed in single doorways, the same text is employed; however, it is spaced much closer together due to the shorter plates installed at such doorways.

The Cravens logo and year of manufacture is displayed centrally - the most prominent position on the plate. As a means of making certain people feel very old, 1962 was also the year that Telstar, the first communications satellite, was launched. A month after this launch, an instrumental song of the same name would be released. How "space-age" must the then-new A62 trains have appeared, in their gleaming unpainted aluminium finishes, in comparison to the outgoing trains they were replacing.

The Cravens factory was located in the Darnall area of Sheffield; the company was absorbed by Metro Cammell in 1966. Ironically, the factory was located only five miles away from where the trains are now being scrapped.

Unlike the 1967 Stock plate, the channel for the door runners is located within the plate itself. After almost fifty years of having the doors roll up and down the plate, this channel is now very smooth indeed!

At the other end of the plate, a trace of blue paint can be seen. This will date from when the A Stock trains were refurbished, and suggests that the plates may not have been removed during the repainting stage.

The rear of the plate incorporated several strengthening ribs for all but the outer two fixing holes.

A small amount of dirt existed on the other side of the plate; behind what would have been the step.

After the above photographs were taken, the plate was given a thorough cleaning using a pressure washer.

Although the cleaning didn’t quite return the plate to "as-new" condition, it did succeed in shining up the aluminium somewhat.

The small channels that are positioned perpendicular to the main door runner channel would aid in draining water from the plate - they still undertook this task perfectly after the cleaning ceased!

The plate’s underside also cleaned up reasonably well. Notice that there is slight damage to the third screw hole from the left - this must have occurred during the plate’s removal but doesn’t detract at all from the plate’s overall appearance.

Further cleaning to the plate occurred just over a year after its acquisition, on the 10th November 2012. This time, the surface was treated with a mildly acidic aluminium cleaning solution, before being scrubbed with a "Brillo" pad and polished with "Brasso", to further improve the natural shine of the material.

Particular attention was paid to the lettering. Attempts to remove accumulated dirt (and discarded genuine London chewing gum - lovely!) from between the characters proved reasonably successful.

The cleaning also revealed a number of horizontal scrapes along the front of the step; presumably these were caused by the accidental scraping of platform edges over the course of the plate’s life.

Although the rear of the plate was not similarly smartened up, I spotted this almost invisible text moulded into the casting - the first line is ‘Noral’, or ‘The Northern Aluminium Company’ of Banbury, Oxfordshire. This company produced many of the aluminium components that were used in the construction of fighter aircraft during the Second World War, including the iconic Spitfire. Sadly, the factory closed in 2008, with the loss of over 300 jobs. The second line appears to be a part code, and consists of the digits 28829/1.