Two in, One Out

Good progress has been made on the welfare building front:

The long arm of the concrete dispensing lorry has been (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

The concrete delivery in progress. (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

Job done (photo courtesy of Martin Ryan)

Since then, the walls have started to go up:

Breeze block inner wall in place, bricks waiting to become the outer wall

The title of this blog post refers to the locos.  During the course of this week, 6023, King Edward II has disappeared off to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway for their impending gala.  I have no doubt that she'll make a fine sight climbing up the bank towards Pickering. 

Sad to see her go (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

A new arrival is Hawksworth pannier 9466, recently purchased by Jonathan Jones-Pratt, chairman of the board of the West Somerset Railway.

9466 being delivered (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

The plan is that she will be with us for a little while, you could view her as being our first gala guest loco for 2020 if you like.

Filling her water tanks (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

All the usual fitness to run/steam tests etc have to be undertaken before she enters traffic.  All being well, she is rostered for the weekend of 26th & 27th October if you're interested in travelling behind her.  NB, rosters may change due to unforseen circumstances.  Check on this link nearer the time for confirmation.

On my last turn, the new wood store was a little depleted.  Remedial actions have been taken by the wood team who have made great inroads into stocking it.

Another barrow load of fresh wood for the wood store (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

The title of the blog says "Two in, one out".  6023 and 9466 are two of those three, what is the second arrival?  Well the answer to that is Dinmore Manor (7820) has returned from her summer holiday on the Dartmouth Steam Railway.  I had the privilege of being her fireman on her first day back in traffic on Saturday.

Sun rise over 7820's chimney

Heading off shed

4270 was the other loco running.

We had a footplate passenger for the first trip, Ian (GWSR publicity officer) brought Carol up to the footplate.

Ian (L) and Carol

Ian used to be a fireman until four or five years ago...

...When presented with the shovel, he hadn't forgotten what to do

A highlight of the day for me, was that the points at Broadway have now been fixed, so there is no more running top & tail with a diesel over our northern most track section.

Dinmore Manor running round its train at Broadway

Anthony was the cleaner for the day, he is well advanced in fireman training now, so I let him fire the second round trip.

Anthony collecting the token at Toddington

Crossing 4270 at Gotherington

The day wasn't entirely without incident, the front lens on one of the lamps came adrift from the the lamp body during the course of the day.

Ade (driver) before giving up on trying to refit the front lens

The funny thing was, that we had just bumped into Mike (who maintains the lamps) up at Broadway just before this, who was calling to check a few ladders before setting off on holiday.  Clearly it won't be fixed for a little while.

Anthony hooking on at Cheltenham Race Course (CRC)

One of the jobs any engineman needs to learn is the art of delegation.  In the case of a fireman, knowing what jobs to delegate to the cleaner is very important. There isn't usually anybody for a cleaner to delegate a job to, but Anthony managed it and had this young lady building up the fire for him at CRC.

I wonder if she wants to join the steam dept!

Eventually she got bored and Anthony had to do the rest himself

And finally, the cylinders for 3850 had meant to be machined a while ago.  The original contractor taken on to do the job ceased trading and it has taken a while for a new company to be formed from the old one.  In spite of the drama, the cylinders are are now being machined and will hopeully be at Toddington in the near future to be fitted to 3850.

Cutting one of the cylinder bores (photo courtesy of Mike Solloway)

Work in progress (photo courtesy of Mike Solloway)