The last shall be first and the first shall be last

A fine red crescent moon rose above the Cotswold hills as I progressed along the M5 on Saturday morning.  After marveling at it for a while and wishing I could stop and grab a photo, it occurred to me that the reason I could see the moon was that the sky was clear.  Clear skies of course meant only one thing.... it was going to be colder than usual.  I wasn't wrong, according to others who turned up later, it was about minus 5.  Now that the clocks have gone forward, it was still dark when I arrived at Toddington, it was certainly still too dark to see what the brass monkeys might be up to.  If they had any sense at all they would be safely tucked up in bed and with their electric blankets turn up to 11. 

I had thought that cleaners weren't supposed to function as Running Shed Foreman (RSF) however I sensed an air of desperation in Ben (roster administrator) when I queried it.  Obviously he was having difficulty tracking down enough mugs to fill the rota.  I've not seen a job description anywhere, but the general idea is to make sure the locos get sorted out and leave shed on time, after which you make sure that any volunteers still daft enough to be showing their faces are found something useful to do. Turn up first, leave last and boss people about, how hard could it be!

There was only one loco turn on Saturday, 8F 8274 was assigned to cover the steam portion of the blue timetable.  Ian and Ade got on with the process of oiling up and lighting the fire, everybody else looked for something to clean... preferably something warm.  I picked on the smoke box to start off with, that's always a good bet for being warm.

A clean (and most importantly, warm) smoke box

Chris cleans the motion

Andrew after washing down the tender

 Soon enough, 8274 was sparkling and off to tackle the day's work.  Well that was the easy bit of being RSF sorted out, now to find everyone something else useful to do.  I started off with what turned out to be a popular choice of heading over to the Flag & Whistle for breakfast.... never forget an army marches on its stomach.  Breakfast eaten, there was then the pressing matter of replenishing the wood store as it was remarkably bare.  The bad news was that there was no neat pile of wooden pallets next to the wood store awaiting breaking up. I dispatched raiding parties to the far corners of the yard to hunt out any lost looking wooden pallets and fetch them back to the wood store.  A surprisingly large number were to be found scattered around making the place look untidy and soon the yard was both tidier and the wood store fuller.

Andrew & Cheyenne in the process of converting an untidy pallet into useful fire wood

Should you be the proud owner of a wooden pallet in Toddington yard and are now wondering where on earth it has gone, then don't fret, it is now fulfilling a far nobler purpose than merely weighing down a tarpaulin or such like.

Another task that needed doing was getting Foremarke Hall warmed up for a turn on the Elegant Excursions dining train on Sunday, to that end she was fetched out of the shed, a warming fire lit, ash pan emptied and a start made on cleaning her up for the next day.

Cheyenne giving the brass a bit of therapy with the Brasso

Nick & Cheyenne hard at work

Clive cleaning out the ash from the pit the hard way

Well so far so good, all was going according to plan.... well in as much as there was a plan.  8274 returned from her labours a little later and the disposal process kicked off.  That is of course when the plan fell apart.  You'll doubtless have noticed that the loco roster on the main GWSR website mentions that locos are rostered 'subject to availability', that they may be changed at short notice for 'operational reasons' and other such weasel words that effectively say that it's pot luck what turns out to be hauling the trains on any given day and that the railway can't be held responsible if what you're hoping for isn't running.  Well on Saturday, the 'operational reasons' kicked in.  When examined at the end of the day, it transpired that 8274 had broken a spring and was declared a failure.  Such eventualities aren't usually too much of a problem as the leading lights of the owning group can usually get one swapped out in just a few hours in the morning whilst the loco is being prepped for service.  On this occasion however, the relevant persons had taken the not entirely unreasonable step of disappearing off to warmer climes for their holidays and given the recent freezing weather in the UK, who can blame them.  In their absence, that left the choice of either putting out a diesel on the Sunday or getting 2807 ready.  Not wanting to let the traveling public down, a hasty shunt of locos was organised to get 8274 into the shed and 2807 out.  Being the fireman on the second shift, Tina should probably have lit the warming fire in 2807, but her dog was home alone.  In an uncharacteristic moment of chivalry I decided that it was better that my dinner ended up in the dog than her dog's dinner ended up.... well you can guess the rest!

Tina is actually 6' tall, but she looks dwarfed in George's jacket as he is 6'8"

All that remained now was to get a warming fire in 2807, a process that takes several hours. So it came to pass that everybody else disappeared off into the sunset leaving yours truly to get 2807 warmed up and ready for the following day.  

The light is fading a bit, but at least 2807 has some semblance of a warming fire in her

Getting the warming fire built up enough to be in a state where I could leave her for the night takes a number of hours and to while away the time where I wasn't shoveling coal, I soon found myself taking long tea breaks and contemplating how many other people over the intervening years since she had been built in 1905 had found themselves doing the same sort of thing.  Eventually she was in the sort of state where she could be left and I set off for the mess coach to change, only to find that Andrew Meredith was still around having been spent many hours working elsewhere on the water treatment plant.

The sun has set and the stars are out, 2807 continues to gently warm up

I had thought that to be the end of the story, but Ian Butler alerted me to an article that had just been uploaded to the news section of the main website.  Sydney Hogg, a long time supporter of the GWSR was celebrating his 100th birthday and to mark the event we even had a GWR reporting code of 100 displayed on 2807's smoke box.  Ian Crowder had been on hand to record the event for posterity and has kindly allowed me to use the following photos that he took.

2807 with a '100' reporting number

Sydney Hogg with family & well wishers

Sydney Hogg with driver Ben Evason

Still going strong at 100

It was a pleasure to have been able to have contributed something towards this event, even if it was only by making sure that Sydney ended up with steam at the front of his train as he had hoped for.  

Should anybody be able to let me know which train the reporting code of 100 would be for, then I'd be delighted to hear from you.  It's not easily tracked down on the web.

Edit:  Sean Nielsen has kindly provided a useful link which states that the reporting code of 100 denoted the Paddington to Penzance train after 1957.