Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

There has been some good news on the sponsored walk for Broadway station.  I noticed one day last week that there had been a late flurry of online sponsors (I get an email every time there is a donation).  I had no idea what to put this renewed interest down to until I caught up with the other blogs.  The "Steaming to Broadway" blog had mentioned us and the publicity had summoned up more sponsors.  Shortly after I noticed this, the online sponsorship total was sat at £876 (not including gift aid).  I had set what I thought was an unrealistically high target of £1000, and some kind soul anonymously donated £124 to bring the pre-tax recovery amount to exactly £1000.  Thank you very much to that person and indeed to everybody else who has sponsored Tina and myself.  I am pleased to be able to report that cheques and cash posted to the railway for the appeal amount to £214.20 and the current online total including recovered gift aid is £1,277.50, making a grand total of £1.491.70. That's a very worthwhile sum which I'm sure will go some way towards getting Broadway station resurrected.  Thank you very much to everybody who has contributed.

I had planned today to write about the process from start to finish of becoming a volunteer on the GWSR in the steam loco dept and the steps you would take to get passed out for footplate duties.  That was plan A, but whilst formulating the things I was going to say and checking for corroborating information on the main GWSR website, I realised that it had already been done.  There isn't much point in reinventing the wheel, so I'll settle for plan B which covers the last bit of the process of passing out as a fireman.  The actual passing out bit itself depends on not only having made it onto fireman training, but having fooled enough people into thinking that you have become sufficiently competent that you get recommended to go forward to one or other, or sometimes both of the inspectors for final assessing.  In my case, last week I managed to fool Cliff into thinking that I could do it and he put me forward. Thank you Cliff.  Being put forward for assessment isn't a formality, a number of people have dropped out of fireman training part way through in recent years. Even when you get to the day of assessment itself, it is still very possible to fail.

The inspectors wasted no time and it was arranged that Dan would forgo his firing turn on train 2 on Sunday and that I should be assessed instead.  It was very kind of Dan to make the slot available, and I am pleased to be able to report that he found something else extremely interesting to do with his time which will feature in a soon to come blog report.  Step number one of course was information management, the last thing I needed was to put more pressure on myself by letting everybody know that I was about to be assessed.  Best to keep it very quiet to save embarrassment when I failed. Fortunately as I'm the only person with the password for this blog, I felt reasonably confident that the news wasn't going to escape that way.  When good luck emails started arriving in the middle of the week, I knew that my information suppression plan wasn't working.  It turns out that somebody had amended the roster in the mess coach to say that I was being tested. 

You get no choice in which loco you are to be assessed on. Currently serviceable and on site, we only have the three, 4270, 2807 and 8274.  In my case, it just so happened that I got 4270.  At first I was quite pleased with that, however after a bit of thought, I worked out that I had only been out on her once for a fireman training turn and I think once as a cleaner with Derek as fireman when I would probably have fired for half the day.  Of the other running locos, I had only been out on 2807 once in the last year, which had been a bit of a mixed bag when it came to the firing.  I had spent much more time on the 8F, including the past two weeks, with fairly pleasing results, so I'd probably have done best on that.  Regardless, 4270 it was going to be, which to be fair had several benefits.  The biggest benefit as far as I was concerned is that the injectors on 4270 pick up very cleanly, the injectors on the other two available locos are running rather wet at the moment and it's quite a job to get them trimmed when on the move. 

Preparation for the exam starts well into the week before, amongst the things that are inspected is your footplate uniform.  My blues were freshly washed and ironed, my shirt had never been worn on the railway before so there were no oil stains from coupling/uncoupling and the collar didn't have coal dust ingrained into it.  My boots had been polished to within an inch of their lives.  I usually favour wearing a neckerchief as it can double as a dust mask when emptying out the smoke box, but on this occasion I wore a BR tie for the first time.   When it came to it, I was marked down for having boots that were shinier than the inspector's and for wearing a BR tie rather than a GWSR tie.  I considered mentioning that we were supposed to be recreating the past in a "living museum" and therefore my BR tie was more appropriate, but I took the view that if I did, I'd only get docked even more points for being a smart arse.

Sunday morning arrived and I set off earlier than I would usually do.  It hadn't been lost on me that not only was I supposed to be firing 4270, but I was still rostered as the cleaner as well. Mercifully 4270 is fairly quick and easy to spruce up, but even so, I knew that I'd need plenty of time as I'd effectively end up doing both jobs.  I also knew that questions would be asked about the notices at the signing on point and 4270's repair log.  Few of the outstanding repairs were of interest to a fireman, but the one that said that she was blowing off light at 190 PSI caught my eye along with the fact that the baffle plate apparently fouls the fire hole doors. Mercifully, neither seemed to be true, I had no problems with either. 

Finally arriving at the loco, I ran through all the pre-light checks and found nothing amiss. Usefully she still had 40 PSI on the pressure gauge however the water level was only just below the top of the glass.  By the time that she was up to working pressure, the water would have expanded enough to take up all the remaining space, it was going to be a very tough call to get her ready to leave without blowing off.  Being mid August, the weather is still warm enough not to require steam heating, which would otherwise have been a very handy way to have disposed of any excess steam.

40 PSI and no water space

4270 now sports a cover to dampen the sound of the whistle in the cab

One of her lamps has a broken catch, still worked ok though

Ok, so pre-flight checks done, it was time to start the light up.  I wanted every bit of help that I could get, so I didn't bother using a fire iron to sort of clean the grate, I just let Jonathan (who was there for a fireman training turn on 2807) know that I was going into the firebox and dived in to clean the grate from the inside.  A bit later, with a good fire going, I started on the cleaning.  I had been given the hint that the inspectors like to see a clean cab with the plenty of attention paid to the back head, so that is what I did.  Only when the cab was as good as it was going to be, did I venture outside and give the paintwork and brass some therapy.  Somewhere along the way, Neil, the driver for the day turned and got on with oiling up 4270, later again, inspector Chris Irving appeared and went through the process of checking that I'd read the notices and repair log as well as checking that I had the things I was supposed to have with me such as rule book & work permit etc.

 
Trip One:

    We moved onto the stock over an hour before we were supposed to set off.  You'll remember that we had no water space when I lit her up, well we still had none.  I had long since made my excuses to Chris hopefully preparing him for the inevitable blowing off that was to come.  I discovered that given no dampers, firehole doors open and the merest hint of the blower to keep the smoke out of the cab, she'd sit quite happily at 150 PSI.  For that last hour I was reduced to occasionally sprinkling on a few lumps of coal wherever the fire bed was starting to turn grey, just to keep the fire alight and amazingly she just sat there good as gold.  I managed to build the fire back up at just the right time and when it was time to go, 4270 was sat nicely at 190 PSI (red line is 200), still no water space, and with a good fire.  We were off to Cheltenham and we still hadn't tested the safety valves once. Nobody was more surprised than me. The trip to Cheltenham turned out to be uneventful, pressure and water always where they should be. The Signal and Telegraph team were working on various bits of equipment up and down the line just to catch us out.  For the first couple of trips that meant that Gotherington signal box was open and that we needed to perform a token exchange there even though we weren't crossing another train in the loop.  There was also a team of S&T people on the platform at Cheltenham, including Bill.  Noticing that Chris Irving was on the footplate with me, he put two and two together  and asked "Are you being assessed?".  I sheepishly admitted that I might be.  He smiled and wished me good luck.

The return to Toddington was fair, pressure was well up, water probably slightly too far up, but still no blowing off.  Arrived at Toddington with plenty of water space for the lengthy wait until the next trip.  Lunch was kindly provided by Chris who fetched over burgers for Neil and myself.

Trip two:  

    Having had little first hand experience of 4270, I found myself bearing in mind the reports of other firemen.  Two different firemen had recently confessed to having had bad trips on 4270, with the pressure dropping to 140 PSI before they managed to recover it.  I was determined that this wasn't going to happen to me, and it didn't, far from it in fact.  Let's just say that the safety valves finally got a bit of a testing between Toddington and Winchcombe on this trip.  As we were approaching Cheltenham I had to demonstrate that I knew how to stop the train in an emergency.  This time there was no amateur dramatics, Neil just stepped back and said "Off you go then".  Chris took over the injectors and dropping off the token.   Knowing that you're supposed to slow down to 10 MPH for the station is all well and good, but if you don't have a speedo, how are you supposed to tell?   Neil asked me how fast I thought that we were going.  I didn't have much idea, but decided to answer with the speed that I knew that I should have been going, 10 MPH.   "This is more like 5 MPH" he said, which I took as a cue to speed up a bit.  Better to be a bit too slow than a bit too fast.  We managed to stop somewhere in the platform and make the train safe.

At Cheltenham, Chris got off and made the return trip on the cushions, I think that was mainly because he wanted to put some distance between himself & the safety valves. This meant that for the first time I was out on the running line with just a driver in the cab, nobody else at all.  It felt both rather strange and I have to say rather good.

Neil seemed to be fairly relaxed about it though

I haven't mentioned it so far, but the weekend was one of the "Real Ale" events, with beer tents at both Winchcombe and Toddington.  Derek had been firing on Saturday and therefore had to miss out on the beer, but today he was back and not on duty.  He wandered up to wish me good luck whilst we took on water:

Derek with the beer, Neil makes do with the water

The obligatory hand shaking shot with Chris in front of 4270

 Trip three:  

    Chris had decided that he'd seen enough, or to be more accurate heard more than enough and beat a hasty retreat to the mess coach for a cup of tea, leaving Neil and me to it.  Needless to say, from a firing point of view, this was the best of the lot, I managed to avoid blowing off at Toddington even though the station master and the guard conspired together to send us off five minutes late.  I'm sure that they have secret web cams set up in all of the loco cabs, if the fireman is out of water space and the needle is on the red line, hold the train up for ten minutes, on the other hand if the fireman is in trouble with no water, pressure or fire, blow the whistle and wave the green flag bang on time if not a few minutes early.

One of the duties of the fireman is to keep the cab clean and tidy, the floor should be swept free of coal dust and the pep pipe should be used periodically to wash the cab floor and  dampen down the coal in the tender/bunker to keep the coal dust down.  4270 was rushed into service just in time for the gala, and thus far, no time has been found to catch up on some of the jobs that haven't quite been finished.  One such job is the pep pipe, which is yet to be installed.  From the cab floor point of view, just do your best with a broom.  Dust suppression however is a different matter, there's not much you can do with a broom in the tender or bunker to keep dust down.  Neil had a cunning plan.  On each trip so far, when we'd got to Cheltenham, we'd stopped at the water crane and dribbled some water into the bunker to damp down the coal in readiness for the return journey.  It had worked fairly well it has to be said.  On trip three, for a change, Neil clambered up into the bunker and it was me that operated the water delivery lever.  It turns out that I was a bit too heavy handed with the water.  The result was that enough coal was washed out of the bunker and into the cab to completely cover the floor.  As a technique for pulling coal forward, it was remarkably effective, at keeping coal dust suppressed it worked a treat.  As far as keeping the cab clean and tidy, it left quite a lot to be desired though.  I spent the run around shoveling some of it into the firebox, leaving Neil to shovel the rest back into the bunker whilst I went under to do the hooking on.  Getting the cab floor swept clean again after that took some doing.

After disposal, I had been intending to take a photo of an L plate on the shovel, about to be dispatched  into the firebox.  I was just a little slow on pressing the shutter, and Neil opened the regulator a moment to soon.  If you look carefully, you can just make out the L plate up at the front left of the firebox having been sucked off of the shovel by the draught. 

Too late.

 Anyway, that was it, somehow I have managed to get passed out as a fireman.  I'd best learn how to do it now.  The list of people to thank includes just about everybody in the steam loco dept for words of advice and encouragement, so I won't even try to give a list of their names. Ade of course ought to be singled out for thanks as he was my instructor, and clearly a man of great patience.  He still has a 100% record at getting students passed out, which speaks volumes for his ability to teach people how to fire.   

Sometimes the advice from various people was contradictory, but always well intentioned.

"Don't panic fire"

"If the pressure's falling and you've got a hole in the fire, don't waste time looking, just spray coal everywhere."

"Big lumps travel furthest"

That last one was from the days when I struggled to get coal up to the front of the firebox and it came in very handy for a while.  It's not a problem I have now, in fact quite the opposite, stopping coal just a foot or two short of the front is the challenge.