8F 8274 Winter Maintenance Update

Like all the rest of our operational locos, Stanier 8F, 8274 (TCDD 45160) has been undergoing winter maintenance.  She was the last loco in service over the Santa/mince pie special season, running the bulk of the turns between Christmas and New Year.  The fact that the other locos effectively got off to a head start on winter maintenance has spurred the members of the Churchill 8F group on to catch up.  On Saturday I caught up with Mike Hoskin and his team to bring you a report on what the progress that has been made.

The first thing to note is that she is now back in her LMS guise as opposed to Turkish one.

Istanbul not Constantinople, 8274, not 45160

Aside from the cosmetic changes, the rocking grate has been removed and cleaned ready for reassembly. most bars show signs of burning but the grate has performed very well requiring only a small number of replacement segments.  Most of the segments are still the originals from 2010 when the loco first went into traffic.

Mostly removed rocking grate

Ade Showell rebuilding the grate (photo courtesy of Paul Richardson)

Paul Richardson & Chris Brooks passing parts of the grate into the firebox for reassembly

All the rods have been removed for attention to the thrust rings and new rings are being produced and to a different design to try and resist wear. Work is still in progress and will take another few weeks yet. It's quite complicated and precise work.

Removed rods

New bush on the right trailing wheel

The dome cover has been removed and the regulator valve assembly lapped in and steps taken to reduce the wear on the pilot valve seat. this has now been reassembled and signed off.

Dome cover removed

The removal of the right hand cylinder valve to replace a suspected broken ring revealed one of the ring stops had worked free resulting in not one, but two broken rings. The opportunity was taken to give the whole valve spindle a makeover, the work of which is now complete and is ready for reinsertion into the valve chest.

Valve chest awaiting the return of the valve spindle

Various other small tasks have been undertaken such as the repainting of the running plate and the inside of the tender.

Repainted running plate

The tender

For reasons that were not clear to me, 8274's tender was included in a shunting operation taking place on Foremarke Hall, every time I went near it to grab a photo it seemed to be on the move again.

Hopefully she'll soon be fully back together again and looking just as good as when she first entered traffic in 2010

Running as 45160 in the 2010 winter gala