Youngest Crew

There was plenty happening in the steam loco dept on Saturday.  For a start, the 35006 team were hard at work on the tender brakes.  The brakes feature automatic slack adjusters, which maintain the brakes adjustment regardless of the wear on the brake pads.

Adjusting slack automagically

 It wasn't just the tender brakes that was receiving attention, one of the steam pipes had corroded in the salt air at Barry Island, the section inside the smoke box being in good nick, the external section that had been exposed to the sea air was corroded beyond acceptable levels.

The corroded steam pipe

The repair for the steam pipe will be to remove the corroded end and get a replacement section welded in.

The newly shorted steam pipe

The steam pipe will need to be sent off site for the replacement section to be welded in.

I joined in with the team at work on Foremarke Hall which is now parked up on the newly concreted section of road 8.

Tim applied primer to the driving wheels

 I'm not sure why, but the piping for the steam heat had been removed at some point recently and a new section was being plumbed in.

John & Steve creating the new steam heating pipe work

Steve welding a flange onto the steam heat pipe

 It would be a terrible state of affairs if Foremarke Hall was to return to service without functioning steam heating.  What on earth would firemen do to get rid of any surplus steam they might have inadvertently created?

Speaking of firemen who might be tempted to lose surplus steam into the steam heating, I spent the day polishing up Foremarke Hall's coupling rods:

One finished one on the right, the rest yet to be done

Four finished coupling rods

 I say finished, they will still need a final bit of attention with a fine grade of wet and dry paper.  The connecting rods have yet to be started.

As usual, several infrastructure jobs were on the go as well.  Preparing road 9 for the laying of the next section of concrete floor was well under way:

Mark, Tim & Steve excavating road 9

 That all seemed far too much like hard work and they eventually switched to using power tools.

Neil at work on road 9

 Another infrastructure project that is underway is to install a water column in the yard

Trevor painting the stand of the water column

 I was curious to find out why 2807 was running with a "Cheltenham Spa Express" head board and the express headlamp code.  That may well have come as an unpleasant surprise to passengers wishing to alight at Gotherington for instance.  It turns out the the head board was a replica which has just been donated to the GWSR.  You'll be pleased to know that all stations were called at regardless of what the headlamp code was saying.

2807 Express

No such confusion with 4270

 Meanwhile, the Cotswold Diesel Railcar group have a need to replace some of the 19 core electric cables that run between their vehicles.  The correct kind of 19 core cable is apparently only available on 1 km drums, which is a bit of a pain as they only want about 20 metres of cable.  Ian has just created his own proof of concept cable using 19 individual cores through an outer sheath and checked that it is fully water tight.  Next stop is to make the full length cables.

Ian and his test cable

 The decision had been taken to run 2807's tender down a bit, to get rid of all the slack that had built up in the bottom of it.  By the time it got back at the end of the last trip, there wasn't much left at all.

Just about out of coal

 Running the tender down so far meant that there was a lot of coal dust flying around, as witnessed by Chris' face when he got back

Chris, begrimed but happy

 Next Sunday (7th September), we will be running the freight train for a full round trip of the line (including Laverton).  The footplate rides have sold out, but there are still plenty of places available on the brake vans should you wish.  More details can be found here.

And finally, on Tuesday, the GWSR fielded its youngest possible steam loco crew, Dan and Ben having a combined age of just 45, less than half of that of the loco they were crewing (2807).

Dan(L) and Ben.

I dread to think what the combined ages of the oldest possible crew would be.