A Surfeit of Inspectors

Photos of work that has taken place in the department are always welcome, and John has forwarded me quite a collection showing the tasks involved in removing Foremarke Hall's exhaust.  By way of accompanying text, John restricted himself to "What a messy job!!!!!!".  That description that could apply to just about everything that the steam loco dept does, but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you are:

The saddle after removal.

Exhaust box with exhaust pipes and blast pipe still in situ

Lifting the exhaust assembly out

The empty exhaust box

Martin had the messiest job, pressure washing the exhaust pipes

When each month's roster becomes available online, I scan through it to make a note in my diary of which turns that I've been allocated.  For April, Saturday the 19th was down as a fireman training turn. This time, Paul my usual driver on fireman training turns was out on the first train, yet I was down for the second one. On this occasion, my driver would be Rod.   Rod was due for his biennial reassessment though, so one of our inspectors, Chris, was also booked to join us.  Working on the principle that Chris would almost certainly only be on the footplate for one round trip and would be far more interested in keeping an eye on Rod rather than me, my anxiety level was raised from its usual default setting of 'chilled and relaxed' to no more than 'mildly apprehensive'.  Then, about three or four weeks ago, I noticed that there had been a change to the roster. Rod had dropped out as the driver, to be replaced by Jeff (our other inspector) with Chris taking over as his relief driver.  Now that Rod was no longer going to be on the footplate to distract them, I was now clearly going to be the focus of their attention.  My anxiety level was elevated to 'distinctly alarmed'.  A check of the loco roster revealed that we'd be out on 5542.  She's a wonderful loco, but I struggle with her more than the others.  She has the smallest boiler of all our home fleet, and is quicker to lose pressure and correspondingly quicker to come back round and leave you blowing off if you over compensate.  In short, there is rather less margin for error. Up until this point, the fact that this was the Easter weekend had sneaked in under my radar.  Checking the online booking web page revealed that I could volunteer for a free cleaning slot on Good Friday and hopefully get in a little practice beforehand.  When Clive, the fireman on Friday found out, he said the magic words that all cleaners like to hear "Bring your shovel".  My anxiety level dropped to merely 'concerned'.   After a bit of practice on Friday,  I'd just treat the Saturday as if it was a mock exam, and all would be well. 

Two weeks before Saturday, Sean, the senior firing instructor/firing inspector casually dropped into a conversation, "I'll be riding out with you on the 19th just to see how bad you are".  The needle on my anxiety meter instantly shot across the dial and wrapped itself around the end stop (yes, I still have an old fashioned imperial analogue anxiety meter rather then one of these new fangled metric calibrated digital ones).  To put this in some sort of context, I bumped into Mike, one of our other cleaners in the middle of the week in my local supermarket. He asked when I was next out for a fireman training turn and who with.  My reply of "Well it's on Saturday, with Jeff, Chris and Sean" caused all the colour to drain from his face and his jaw to drop for a moment before he finally recovered his composure and said "Oh I'm sure you'll be alright".   Neither of us believed him.

So Friday arrived and my pre-ordeal practice session commenced.  Unusually for me, I was on train 2 (departing 11:10 from Toddington), with Steve driving and Clive as the booked fireman.  It was a nice relaxed start.

5542 on the ash pit, whilst train 1 (Dinmore Manor) sets off at 10:00

 Once on our stock (the maroon set) we experienced a little difficulty with the steam heat:

An excess of steam twixt loco and carriage....

...shortly followed by a loud bang.

Steam heating bags parting company is a fairly spectacular occurrence.  The bang is certainly enough to make you jump and needless to say there is a fair old cloud of steam emitted at the same time. Unless you're actually between the loco and the carriage at the time, it's probably nowhere near as dangerous as it sounds though. It's a case of the bark being worse than the bite.  It happened three times in all before we finally got it sorted.  Clive wandered along the length of the train checking the steam heat connectors between each carriage.  I think that he found that one of the steam heat pipe cocks just a carriage or two down the train had been closed, causing the pressure to build up to the point where the bag just shot off from its connector.

Aside from that, the day seemed to go fairly well, if 5542 blew off at all, then I don't recollect it and the pressure and water were up roughly where they were supposed to be.  That would appear to be more than could be said for whoever was firing Dinmore Manor.  As we approached Winchcombe for the first time, Clive noticed that Dinmore Manor was blowing off in the platform and borrowed my camera to capture proof of the event:

The photo that Clive took

At this point, I was rather more concerned with getting the token exchange done and watching the train in to be concerned with taking photos myself, so it was nice to have somebody else take on the job.

 Over the lunch break, I noted a few new things around the yard at Toddington.  The most obvious thing was that 4270 was unusually out in the sunshine rather than hiding Cinderella like in the David Page shed.

4270 basking in the sun

I asked Ian who has been responsible for her restoration what she was doing out of the shed.  He replied that she was being coaled and watered prior to being weighed on Saturday.  That's not to see how much she weighs, you can look that up online or if you're 'old school' look it up in a book.  The idea is to make sure that her weight is evenly distributed amongst her wheels and if it isn't, adjust her suspension until it is.  When asked if this meant that she is near to being ready to be steamed, Ian replied "Well she's nearer now than she was before."  Ian likes to play his cards close to his chest.

Inside the David Page shed, I noticed that a trench has now appeared between roads 8 and 9, presumably for some sort of drainage pipe to be installed:

New drainage channel?

35006 has had another coat of paint applied to her smoke deflectors.  I am informed by my spy in the 35006 camp that the smoke deflectors were fitted yesterday (Monday), I'll try and get photos next week if I can.  Speaking of 35006, I have been severely chastised for an error in last week's blog, apparently the tender tank had been lifted to facilitate painting between the frames of the tender and had nothing to do with the brakes at all.  

35006 and her smoke deflectors, shortly before fitting

Howard and Dave have been busying themselves with the milk tanker, needle gunning and painting having taken place at one end of the frames.  One of our firemen who shall have to remain nameless was rather taken by the idea of filling it with cider rather than milk.

Milk and alcohol

By the end of the day, thanks to Steve & Clive, I had reasonably successfully fired a couple of round trips, picked up a few more useful tips on how to fire and was feeling a little more confident about the ordeal to come.  Anxiety level descended to 'extremely concerned'

On to Saturday morning, and once again I was booked down for train 2.  I arrived a little earlier than the booked time, only to find that Sean and Ade (my firing instructor) were there before me. It turned out that Sean was unable to join us on the footplate after all, my anxiety level dropped back further to no higher than 'concerned' once again. 

Somehow, Ade got roped into help with the oiling up of 5542

As we were off as train 2, we got to watch 7820 running as train 1 disappear off again.

Dinmore Manor making a spirited departure.  Photo courtesy Ade Showell

 George however was unimpressed as her departure caused a quantity of ash or some other unpalatable black stuff to be deposited in his cup of tea as she passed by.

The polluted tea. Photo courtesy of Ade Showell

As for the day's events, it seemed that at every turn some other department of the railway was trying to upstage us in the smoke generating department.

One of the diesel shunters was receiving attention at Winchcombe

I'm not sure what was going on with the shunter, but it did involve the creation of some rather nice smoke rings.

Meanwhile at Cheltenham, a fair amount of line side flora was going up in flames:

Smoke signals from the lineside clearance team

At one of our crossings with Dinmore Manor at Winchcombe, I noticed that not only was there a footplate passenger on board, but that the passenger concerned was Paul Atterbury, one of the experts on the Antiques Roadshow.

Paul Atterbury (L) and Mark on the footplate of Dinmore Manor.  Photo courtesy of Mike Solloway

I was hitherto unaware, but Paul is a patron of the DMLL group. 

As for me, not so good as Friday.  The safety valves were definitely tested a few times, most embarrassingly on the second departure from Toddington in front of a sizable gallery of people gathered around the ash pit. A distinct cheer was raised as 5542 blew off. For the second trip in particular, it was as if the coal in the bunker had been replaced by some sort of black stuff that was two parts napalm to three parts rocket fuel. It formed something of a black tarry mess at the back of the grate for a while and was still there at the same depth at the back of the grate when we arrived at Cheltenham as it had been when we had set off from Toddington, without me having added any more to it. I like to think that it was just due to a mix of Battlefield line coal (5542 had been away at the Battlefield line the previous weekend) and the coal from  Ffos-Y-Fran in Wales that we use, possibly just a different seam of Ffos-Y-Fran, or more likely, I'm just making excuses.  Still, if you're going to get it wrong, it's best to err on the side of a bit too much pressure rather than too little.  Once again, I came away with a few useful hints and tips from Ade, Jeff & Chris to try and remember to put into practice next time.

Ade very kindly finished off the rest of the disposal of 5542 after I had emptied the smoke box and ash pan, leaving me free to get cleaned up a bit and join in a celebratory Dinmore Manor Shareholders Special evening run. Not being a shareholder, I have no idea how I came to be invited, but I was very keen to go along anyway. There was an excellent buffet laid on, along with champagne (Don't worry, I'd signed out before boarding the train) and a celebration cake.  My anxiety level returned once more to its more usual 'chilled and relaxed' setting.

Dinmore Manor waiting to depart with the shareholders special

The rather tasty cake.

 It was noted by the passengers that the steam heating was cranked up very high, on what was already a fairly warm day.  During the layover at Cheltenham for the cake cutting ceremony, I wandered up to the loco to request that it be turned down a little.  Ben who was firing was having none of it.  He had been expecting Mark to put in a fairly spirited performance and built up his fire accordingly, only to find that Mark had driven Dinmore Manor in a rather leisurely manner.    Ben stood in front of the pressure and water gauges to hide them from me, but I didn't need to see them to know what was going on.  I'm not entirely sure that I should mention this in a public forum, but if you're a passenger on a steam hauled train in the depths of winter, and the steam heating suddenly goes cold, the reason is that the fireman is in trouble, and rather than risk having to stop for a blow up, he has just switched off the steam heating to try and help keep boiler pressure up.  Correspondingly, if the fireman has too much pressure, has run out of water space and is in danger of the loco blowing off, he'll crank the steam heating up, to try and shift some of that surplus steam into the carriages rather than have it escape from the safety valves.  This latter case was obviously the one that applied here.

Ben, smiling in adversity

 Hardly had the words "She'll not be blowing off tonight" passed Ben's lips than....

...Oops!

 There was quite a loud cheer at this point from the various members of the steam loco dept scattered around the platform.  Ben sheepishly explained that it only happened because he was distracted by a  particularly pleasing to the eye member of the opposite sex had come up onto the footplate to look around. I'm not too sure that I'd have admitted that myself, I'd probably just have blamed a dodgy batch of coal.

Waiting at Cheltenham, before setting back.

 Mark and Ben were of course isolated on the footplate for the whole trip, I'm a bit surprised that they didn't try and obtain a corridor tender for the evening, so that one of them could nip back down the train for supplies from the buffet whilst the train was in motion.

Many thanks to all concerned in the DMLL group for a wonderful evening. Everybody on board seemed to have a marvelous time, I certainly know that I did.

Finally, I was back again briefly on Easter Sunday morning to cover a cleaning turn for somebody else who couldn't make it.  As a certain driver of Dinmore Manor informed his fireman on Sunday that "She's exactly the same as Foremarke Hall", then it's time for a brief public service announcement for the benefit of any of our crews who haven't lit up Dinmore Manor yet.  She isn't quite the same as Foremarke Hall. In addition to the ash pan door mechanism described several weeks ago, she also has a drop grate fitted:

Drop grate lever in place

Lift away the floor section below the firehole door, insert the lever (which lives in the drivers side tool compartment) lift the latch and lower the centre portion of the grate by gently allowing the lever to rise up.

Centre section of grate dropped

What follows next is the rough equivalent of sweeping dust under the carpet, use the rake to move the ash into the centre of the grate, which will then drop into the ash pan. It makes cleaning the grate a very quick and easy process.  Before lighting your fire on the nicely cleaned grate, use the lever to raise the drop grate and latch it in place.  Should half your fire disappear into the ash pan, then you forgot to do that last bit.