Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway Steam Loco Dept Blog: Safety valves and Ear Defenders

In the world of the day job, meetings are generally to be welcomed and I consider them to be a success if the following criteria are met:

1) They last all day preventing me from doing any real work, but not extending beyond going home time
2) There is a free lunch (preferably involving free beer)
3) At the conclusion of the meeting, there are no actions on me.

Meetings related to matters on the railway of course are judged entirely differently. They should be brief and to the point. Within reason I am happy if there are actions on me at the end. The free lunch element still applies of course. A meeting on Saturday did last all day & lunch, whilst excellent wasn't free. I was reduced to taking a quick look around at Toddington to try and work out what everybody had been up to before they all left for the day.

Something that caught my eye was that a nice new display board has appeared in the car par at Toddington by the entrance to the yard highlighting the Cotswold Steam Preservation group and their lovely loco, 2807. There is a vacant spot for a board adjacent to it which I understand will soon receive a similar display for Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD and their locos.

Singing the praises of 2807

By the time that I belatedly turned up at Toddington on Saturday, most of the jobs had been completed and the various volunteers had either drifted off home or were waiting around to help dispose of 2807 (5542 was already back on shed)

Taking it easy after a hard day's work

There was a small group of people still out in the yard preparing road 7 for eventual concreting in.

Lifting out the track

Meanwhile, inside the shed, the new indoor pit had received electrical points and lighting in its recesses.

Pit illumination

The big job that had taken much of the day was painting the top coat on Foremarke Hall's tender. Note that the tender frames have gone from undercoat to a top coat of black and the tender body has received a first top coat of BR green.

Foremarke Hall's 4000 gallon Hawksworth tender

Progress has also been made on Dinmore Manor's tender too, all the wheel sets are now in grey undercoat.

7820's tender wheels

The rest of the tender frames are coming along nicely too, mostly in undercoat now:

7820's tender frames

Steve has now finished removing all the tubes from 2874. He's pretty much single handedly got the loco into a position where the boiler can be lifted when the time is right. Thank you Steve. The cab roof still needs lifting before the boiler could come out, but that is a relatively trivial task.

The last of 2874's tubes

Tube free boiler

It's nice to see the tubes are all gone at last. As it has caused confusion elsewhere, the smoke box tube plate was wasted beyond the point of being salvaged and will be replaced with a new one.

Fresh from her holiday on the Mid Norfolk Railway and freshly washed out during the week, 5542, the Planet's Favourite Prairie (PFP) relaxes on one of the pits after a hard day's work.

The Planet's Favourite Prairis simmering in the afternoon heat

Soon, 2807 returned from her travels up and down the line.

2807 back after a hard day at work

Jonathan had been out on 2807 for a firing lesson with his instructor Phil. Judging by this photo that Jonathan sent me, Phil has plenty of confidence in his ability to keep the pressure and water levels up high enough, though something suggests to me that he is not convinced that Jonathan can keep the safety valves quiet. I can't quite put my finger on what it might be though:

Phil, ensuring that he suffers no hearing damage, photo courtesy of Jonathan Perks

And finally, as mentioned earlier, 5542 is back after her outing to the Mid Norfolk Railway. I didn't make the journey myself, but Nick Jones of the 5542 group has managed to track down a number of photos taken by people who were there. Many thanks to Nick and those credited on the upcoming photos:

5542 on the Mid Norfolk Railway, photo courtesy of Gerry Balding

The PFP on the MNR, photo courtesy of Tim Grigg

Well you can just about see through that smoke, interesting to note that she was running as an express.

The final three photos all came from somebody who wished to be identified as "Wymondham Abbey Halt". My suspicions are aroused that either that's not his (or possibly her) real name or that Mr and Mrs Halt were keen to give Mr & Mrs Brunel a run for their money in the novelty name for a child competition. Regardless, thank you for the photos.