No Makeup Selfie

My spy in the Dinmore Manor group let me know that test runs were being planned for late in the day on Thursday and as I had an evening engagement that would involve me practically passing Toddington, I decided to call in with my camera and record the event for posterity.  So far Dinmore Manor had only run in the yard along with a foray into platform 1 to draw water from the water crane.  This was to be her first venture outside station limits.  When I arrived, the most obvious thing to note was that she had now been hooked up to the Churchward 3500 gallon tender borrowed from The Bluebell Railway's Dukedog, 9017 Earl of Berkeley.

Dinmore Manor and the Dukedog's tender

Just about the only tender left on the railway that Dinmore Manor hasn't been rumoured to be paired with at some point or other is the Stanier 4000 gallon tender attached to the 8F seen on the right of this picture. 

A little bit of last minute fettling was going on underneath Dinmore Manor when I arrived:

Mark adjusting the valve timing

Having had a few warming fires and being kept in steam much of the time recently, even if she had only been trundling up and down the yard, meant that the ash pan was full and needed emptying out.  I was keen to discover what was involved in this process.  To start off with, there is no direct hose attachment to an ash pan sprinkler, it's just a case of getting under and squirting a hose in through the front damper until he ash acquires a porridge like texture and then open the door at the back and watch as it all tumbles into the pit before your eyes.  Well the theory was good, but the ash pan was extremely full and the hose pipe in the pit seems to be lacking in pressure:

Hosing down the ash pan through the front damper

Ben tried damping the ash through the door at the back of the ash pan as well.

As the ash wasn't keen to make its own way out, we settled for Ben hosing it down through the back door of the ash pan and me pushing it with a scraper inserted through the front damper door.  That did the trick.

Once the ash pan was emptied, Dinmore Manor was off and running up and down the main running line for a few hundred yards or so then back again to make sure that nothing was running too hot:

Dinmore Manor's first go at steaming on our main running line

Mark checking that the injector isn't running wet?

The second of several runs past.

 After several more runs of few hundred yards, they popped back into platform 1 to top up with water.  Mark shouted out that this time they would be going all the way up to Winchcombe, albeit at a very slow pace.  I took the opportunity to drive up to Hailes bridge and watch them pass before heading on to Winchcombe:

Dinmore Manor on the new track at Hailes

Next stop Winchcombe

Pulling into Winchcombe's platform 1

L - R Mike, Ben, Mark & John with Dinmore Manor at Winchcombe

Mike & Mark with their pride & joy

 At this point, it started pouring with rain, so I decided that photos from under the platform canopy were going to be a smart move.

Platform clearance checking on Platform 2.

 I curtailed my activities at this point having another engagement elsewhere to attend however Mike took some video footage of the trip into Greet tunnel as they progressed further down the line:  Apparently it was Dinmore Manor's first run through a tunnel in preservation.  I hope she's not afraid of the dark, because she'll be going through there plenty more times in the years to come.

This brings us on to Saturday, my first official fireman training turn of the year.  The rostered loco was the 8F, which was nice as it has been a fair while since I'd last fired her.  

It was nice to have a cleaner rostered as well, Ed was doing the honours on this occasion:

Ed making the 8F shine.

 Ed made the perfect start, by appearing with a tray of tea.   Ed is of course a trainee fireman himself, so there is a good chance that I'll find myself cleaning a loco for him in the near future.  I'll try to remember to start off by bringing him tea.

The rest of the crew was Ade (my instructor) and once again Paul.  Paul thinks that Ben (who does the crew rostering) doesn't like him as he always seems to get lumbered with me on my fireman training turns.  

Ade will be starting practical driver training in the near future, so Paul decided that he would give him a head start and let him help out in the oiling up process.

Paul filling an oil pot

Ade applying the grease gun to the thingamajig

Fully fledged firemen, never mind trainee ones aren't required to be able to identify all the bits of the motion, so I can safely get away with describing that as a 'thingamajig'.  Ade being a trainee driver does need to know.  I didn't think to ask him what it was though.

One of the things a trainee fireman does need to do is to check the fault report card for his loco before lighting the fire.  The 8F's mentioned three things that hadn't been attended to.  The one that was of particular relevance to me was that she was blowing off light at 215 PSI rather than the 225 that she should.  That effectively gave me a reduced range of boiler pressure to try and maintain her in.   

The water gauge lamp had lost its spindle too,  a simple workaround was to hang the lamp from the shut off lever:

An elegant solution

The lamp kept on blowing out though, sometimes you just can't win.

Just about ready to run round to the ash pit

Ed helping out with emptying the ash pan.

I'd like to be able to report that the day went off uneventfully and that it was all plain sailing steaming up and down the line, but that wouldn't be entirely truthful.  The unexpected appearance of Jeff, one of our inspectors on the footplate when we got to Cheltenham on the first trip was a little unnerving. It's the rough equivalent of having your car driving test examiner sitting in the back seat whilst you're on a driving lesson. He didn't make too many comments on what I was doing wrong, I'm guessing that he just didn't know where to start.

The team of bricklayers working on Cheltenham's platform 2 were hard at work. Their normal operations involve running trolleys loaded with bricks or mortar up and down the run around loop, which is a potential hazard.   To mitigate that, on running days they time their tea breaks according the timetable to make sure that they are out of the way each time we arrived.  I imagine that we must have been a very welcome sight then:  Checking their blog, I find that one of them was taking a photo of us.

Cheltenham platform 2 under construction

Running round at Laverton

We had been going to take water at Toddington when we got back from Laverton, but unusually we were signaled into platform 2 which meant that we were at the wrong end of the platform for the water crane.  No problem, the tender was still half full when we got back down to Cheltenham where we eventually topped it up again.  After switching on the water, Paul disappeared off to grab his lunch on the footplate.  When the water level was nearing the top, I could easily have got down from the tender and switched it off myself however one of the sprays of water from the leaking pipe was squirting directly onto the corner of the tender where the steps are.  Mercifully Paul reappeared in time to switch the water off, thereby saving me from getting wet if I'd ended up having to do it myself..

Filling the tender, note the leaking pipe.

Ade helpfully pulling coal forward in the tender.

The second round trip was a 'Fish & Chip' special and there was one portion left over to be shared amongst the crew.

Apparently there is such a thing as a free lunch

 The trick is not to put the plastic tray directly onto the warming plate as it will melt and leave a nasty brown gooey mess.  The paper was still extremely hot when it came time to pick it up and dispose of the leftovers in the fire.

There was a fair old downpour at Cheltenham as we set off on the second trip from there.  The fireman is supposed to watch the train out of the platform and alert the driver if doors are opened or the guard waves a red flag etc.  Standing in the doorway of the cab, I discovered that rain water that has collected on the gutter on the cab roof chooses exactly that point to drain down.  It's rather uncomfortable having cold rain water pour down the back of your neck.

The last drops from the roof waiting to drip.

 On the plus side, we were rewarded by some fine views of a rainbow.  No sign of any pots of gold though.

Rainbow at Bishops Cleeve

The lineside clearance gang were out in force by Stanway viaduct. A number of other heritage railways are quite lax at clearing the lineside of vegetation which is a bit of a shame, in some cases it's a bit like traveling through a green tunnel. Our lineside clearance gang do a great job in keeping the vegetation down, rewarding our passengers with fine views of the Cotswold and Malvern hills.   Too much vegetation is also a bit of a fire risk in the summer, so their work is doubly valuable. Note the chap in the hi-viz with the camera.  On their website you can find what I presume is his (Alistair's?) photo of us.

Lineside clearance gang at work

For completeness, I should mention that the Lineside Drainage Management gang was working up at laverton and the Permanent Way gang were hard at work between Toddington & Winchcombe, I didn't manage to get any photos of them, but they did of us.

As mentioned recently, I've bought a new shovel from Mark Shere-Massey, he was in flight to his new life in Canada at around the time that I took this photo of it in the tender.

New (to me) firing shovel

I have just received news that Mark is shortly to start his own blog on the trials and tribulations of becoming a truck driver in Canada.  I'll add it to the list of related links when he gets it going.

Filling up the tender again at Toddington proved to be rather interesting.  Somebody who shall remain nameless (purely to protect the guilty) found the 'other off' when asked to shut off the water supply.  Consequently I ended up with my own swimming pool on top of the tender.  Note that by this stage I'm stood on top of the hatch.

Keeping my boots dry

We had a slightly unusual, but nonetheless poignant request from Barrie Etter, one of the Traveling Ticket Inspectors who wanted us blow a long blast on the whistle when we finally got back on shed in memory of his friend Ken, an ex GWR engine man who had recently passed away.  It's always sad to hear of the passing of those who operated these wonderful machines when they were cutting edge technology.  R.I.P.  Ken.

My spy in the 4270 team (I have informants everywhere now) had led me to believe that much work had taken place on the backhead since last I had taken a look.  The last thing I did before leaving on Saturday was wander into the David Page shed and point my camera into the cab.

4270's backhead

The backhead cladding is nicely painted black and most of the fittings appear to be in place.  The injector water valves are not installed and most obviously the regulator handle is missing.  The firebox doors are short of a handle too.  Other than that, it looks to be fairly complete.  Hopefully, she won't be too far behind Dinmore Manor in joining our operational fleet.

And finally, anybody who has succumbed to getting a Facebook account can't fail to have noticed the recent phenomena of ladies of all ages posting self portrait photos of themselves without makeup for cancer awareness.  Even one of the ladies of the steam loco dept has had a go at this.  I'm not referring to Tina or Tonia now, so which lady is it?  I am of course referring to none other than Foremarke Hall:

Foremarke Hall, sans makeup.

Rest assured, she'll be fully made up and lined out by the time she next appears in public.