Hug a Hoodie?

Winter has arrived on the GWSR, there was a light covering of snow on the ground at Toddington and even more visible up on the nearby hills.

If only it had been like this for the Santa Specials back in December

 A mini-360 degree excavator was busy clearing out ballast on road 8 for more floor concreting to take place.  Much more work is planned for concreting the floor in the coming months.

Clearing out the ballast

You'll note that an interloper has appeared in the shed, it must have been cold out there if the diesels want to come indoors.

Work continues on Foremarke Hall, one of the connecting rods was refitted on Wednesday, today was the turn of the other one.

Refitted, oiled up to prevent rust and covered to stop dust accumulating

The first task was to manoeuvre Foremarke Hall into a position such that the crank pin was in the correct location.

John shunts Foremarke Hall the hard way.

 Next job was to fetch across the nicely polished con rod.  I've seen old video footage of 8 or 10 people picking con rods up by hand and shuffling it into the right position.  We used a hydraulic table to do all the hard work, "Work smarter not harder" is a good maxim.

John picks up the con rod.

 It was then just a simple case of wheeling it into the right position.

Getting the con rod where it wants to be

 And after lubricating the crank pin with motion oil, sliding it into place.

Sean popping the con rod onto the crank pin

Looking good at the big end

The little end is still to be connected to the cross head

Persuading the cross head back along the slide bars far enough to engage with the little end was achieved by way of a wooden lever.

John encourages the cross head to meet the con rod

 Amusingly, although not in any of these photos, the 35006 gang appeared and took notes on how it should be done.  It seems that they are not too far from refitting their three con rods.  I suspect that refitting the middle cylinder's con rod will be an interesting exercise.

Needless to say, getting the cross head in exactly the right position for the gudgeon pin was a slightly protracted process, as we went too far and had to go back a bit several times before it would fit.

Nearly there.

Finished job

 Refitting the big end nut and the little end gudgeon pin was followed by cleaning and then oiling the rods prior to covering with sheets to keep them clean and rust free.

 Another job that wanted doing was insulating the steam heat pipe.  Unsurprisingly, they get rather hot when in use, so lagging them with insulation prevents them wasting a lot of energy by heating up the area under the loco and also preventing crews inadvertently burning themselves during disposal.

John lines up the insulation, Sean holds the roll, Jeff (out of sight on the left) rotates the pipe.

Finally at  the far end, John clamps it in place with a jubilee clip

 In an attempt to bind the insulation together and prevent it slipping on the pipe, a coat or two of gloss black paint was applied.

Sean painting the insulation.

 Later on, Aaron helped Sean out. 

Aaron and Sean

 You will note that Sean has taken to wearing a hoodie to avoid being identified in photos.  Various reasons as to why that might be were put forward by others present.  My favourite was Crimewatch the Prime Minister's relatively recent advice to "Hug a Hoodie".

4270 will be disappearing off for a while to star in a couple of galas at the Llangollen Railway and the West Somerset Railway.  A few details needed attending to before she went.  It seems that a GWR shed code of NPT for Newport is incorrect. There were two sheds in Newport, EBBW and PILL, and EBBW is the one that she should have.  Andy set to correct this anomaly.

Andy marks out the "EBBW" on each side.

Ready for painting

And here is the first coat applied.

 The route indicator disc and power classification were also applied

Andy paints in the route indicator disc

 This indicates that she can only run routes that can accept an axle weight of up to 20 tons and that she has a tractive effort of between 33,001 lbf and 38,000 lbf. 

 Dinmore Manor is off for her holidays on the Great Central Railway for their gala.  I wasn't able to attend myself, but others who did make it have kindly provided a selection of photos.

Dinmore Manor on the GCR, photo courtesy of Mike Solloway

Photo courtesy of Mike Solloway

Photo courtesy of Mike Solloway

Photo courtesy of Dan Wigg

Photo courtesy of Dan Wigg

Photo courtesy of Dan Wigg

Photo courtesy of Kieran Hardy

Photo courtesy of Kieran Hardy

Photo courtesy of Kieran Hardy

Photo courtesy of Kieran Hardy

Left back at Toddington was the skeleton of Dinmore Manor's own tender.  Work has continued on that.

Some of the recently inserted rivets

Some lengths of angle bracket were required to support a replacement section of the frames.  The frame section was not parallel to the others though, offset from the others by 7 degrees.  This required lengths of angle bracket to be created set at 83 degrees and 97 degrees to support it in the correct plane.

Jeff cutting some angle brackets

Here's one that Ian prepared earlier

And here is another one being finished off

Mark looking very pleased at the trial fitting of the frame section

Also in the machine shop, a bit of welding was taking place on the brake rigging of 35006's tender.

And finally, I don't think that we've had had any cartoons on this blog before, but here is one.  Apparently sometime last year, one of our number decided to descend from the running plate of Foremarke Hall by jumping down rather than walking back to the cab end and using the steps.  This amused those who observed this unexpected feat of athleticism as all they could see of him when he landed was his head and boots, thus prompting the cartoon.

He'll be using the steps next time I expect.