Mr & Mrs Webber

Steam Loco Dept weddings are relatively few and far between, but in essence rather like buses, you wait ages for one then you get three at once.  Ed & Laura got married a few weeks ago, then on Saturday 23rd, it was the turn of Andy who married Alice. 

Andy...

...and his bride, Alice

The obligatory confetti shot

There was a small contingent of Steam Loco Dept members in attendance at the church (St Mary's in Warwick).  Rather more attended the various celebratory gatherings later in the day however yours truly had to make his excuses and disappear early, I had a long journey to a holiday destination to make.  From the photos that I have seen appearing on various forms of social media, I suspect that the honeymoon was spent in Winchcombe the North Pole, as Santa Claus appeared to be very much in evidence.  Don't ask why, I really don't have a clue.  Congratulations to Mr & Mrs Webber, may you both have a long and happy life together.

As just mentioned, I've taken the liberty of disappearing off on holiday and haven't been around to keep up with what has been happening in the Steam Loco Dept recently. The good news is that several people have been kind enough to send reports.  The first was from Donna, who had assisted in restocking the wood pile.  We get through a fair bit of wood in lighting up the locos, and the wood pile needs replenishing on a regular basis.  Roger and his merry team chop up the pallets into sizes suitable for putting into fireboxes on Wednesdays, but somehow the pallets have to get there for them to work their magic on. The lorry that delivers them can't get round the back of the David Page shed to the wood store, so the pallets have to be shifted the hard way.

From nearly empty, to rammed full again.

Part of the team of people that spent a day shifting pallets

John sent me a selection of photos of the installation of the new weighing equipment that is being installed on the indoor pit on road 7.  Weighing locos isn't a simple case of popping them on the kitchen scales, telling them that they are a few pounds over weight and that they should go on a diet and get more exercise.  The point is to make sure that the loco's weight is evenly distributed across the wheels on each axle, and that each axle is bearing the specified load.  Uneven weight distribution can result in broken springs, damaged track, uneven wear on tyres and possibly even derailments.  The first three pictures shown below were taken by Dan, the final two arrived uncredited, so possibly John took them himself.  As to what is going on here, in John's own words:

"The base plates have been made, combination of Machine shop and the
Wednesday gang. The 10 off 18mm holes have been drilled in the concrete
recesses and the studs installed using a resin type bonding agent. The base
plates themselves have now been refitted over the studs and the nuts loosely
fitted. P-Way have cut out the rail for us so at this time there is no
access to the internal pit. 

We have also mounted the control cabinet on the adjacent pillar, and pulled
the signal cables through. Nigel Barton Hawkins is looking at the electrical
power etc so progress on all fronts.

The next step will be to mount the actual weighing scales assemblies which
are already prepared and ready for assembly.
We have some work to do to the rail to before it is welded to the top plate
which will probably be next Wednesday task.

All in all good progress on this project."

One of the base plates in situ

Control cabinet

Overall view of the indoor pit and weigh scales

These next tow photos arrived in my in tray a little later showing more progress with the job, the weigh cells have been installed and largely set up, the rails need to be welded to the base plate once some minor adjustments have been made.

Nearly ready for use...

...and the one on the other side.

The weekend after the gala, we ran a photo charter with visiting Ivatt 2-6-0, 46521.  Knowing that I would be away at the end of July, I saved the photos from that day until now.

I was impressed to discover that the Ivatt has a tender water spray fitted to damp down coal dust... and remarkably effective it was too.  There is one of these on 35006, or at least there will be when it has been hooked up and made to work again.  I'm very much looking forward to that .

Proper job!

46521 ran with the goods train

Dan has mastered the art of generating smoke when required

A bit of glint approaching Greet tunnel

The charter ran in the evening after the end of normal services, providing ample opportunity for some sunset shots

46521 silhouetted near Greet tunnel

There was even a nice bit of colour in the sky

 A little bit later, a few posed shots at Winchcombe were organised

It was a case of musical chairs as to who did what...

...first the lamp swaps sides...

...then Dan & Ben swap locations, the lamp ended up on the ground

And finally, whilst on holiday, I went on another photo charter this time in Threlkeld quarry, with five rather nice narrow gauge locos.  At Threlkeld, they have a machine for taking in large lumps of coal (Scottish in their case) and breaking it up into smaller, more manageable lumps, suitable for the small grates in narrow gauge locos.  Essentially they just shovel the big lumps in the top, turn the handle and smaller lumps fall out into the waiting bucket below.

Coal crusher in action

This is exactly the opposite of the problem that we have, our coal turns from solid lumps into dust as it gets bounced around in the tenders.  What we need to do is get one of these, shovel the slack in the opening at the bottom, crank the handle backwards and get nice lumps of good Welsh steam coal appearing at the top.