A Tale of Two Tenders

I received an interesting photo from Andy during the week.   He had experienced a slight mishap on Wednesday on a turn out on the PFP with Chris.

Photo courtesy of Andy Beale

It seems that one of the lamps had spontaneously combusted whilst being transported on the running board.  Fortunately, Chris is our fireman who used to be a fireman.  A fireman of the kind that slides down poles and rescues fair maidens from burning buildings.  He soon had the situation under control, though the lamp has suffered third degree burns and will require extensive reconstructive surgery.  I am assured that no fair maidens were injured in the making of this photo.

Saturday's rostered locos were the PFP (5542) and 4270, 2807 also seen in the photo below getting time off for good behaviour.

(L-R) 5542, 4270, 2807.

 Out in the yard, Andy was inducting John into the dark arts of the mechanical inspection of locos, in this instance how to check the tyres, using 35006 as a guinea pig.

John (L) and Andy

Meanwhile, elsewhere on 35006, the steam operated cylinder drain cock mechanism was receiving some attention.

Fettling the cylinder drain cock mechanism

 The track in the road 7 with the pit apparently needs a bit of work, John, Aaron and Tina attend to it, Sean provides the bunny rabbit ears.

Track on the new pit.

 Road 8 was also receiving some attention in the lead up to concreting it in.

Road 8

 Most people present seemed to spend at least some of the day working on Foremarke Hall's tender.  Although much of the main body work has been painted, there is still some work to be done beneath that level.

Sean painting on a coat of primer

Dan took over for a while

Tea break time for us, 5542 sets off with the first train

 On the other side of Foremarke Hall's tender, Andy busied himself with a needle gun chipping away any old flaky paint and rust.  It was LOUD!

Andy needle gunning

A fact that I had hitherto been unaware of is that the Hawksworth 4000 gallon tenders were only fitted to "Gran Turismo Injection" steam locos such as the Modified Halls.

Somewhere a Peugeot 205 GTi is bereft of its insignia

 Once Andy had nearly completed his needle gunning, John followed him with the primer:

Andy at the far end, John priming from where Andy had started

 Once Andy had finished the needle gunning, Paul worked back in the other direction with the primer.

Paul painting

He tried to paint my phone too.

Yes, I was reduced to using my phone for taking photos with this weekend.  I have a "ruggedised" camera on order, capable of surviving being dropped from over 7' onto a hard surface, crush proof, dust proof, freeze proof (-10 degrees C) and water proof to 50' (which is far more than I am). Absolutely ideal for taking photos in the camera hostile environment that is the GWSR's Steam Loco Dept.  Unfortunately rapid delivery isn't one of its features and it failed to arrive in time for the weekend.

The other tender alluded to in this blog's title was that of Dinmore Manor.  Ian appeared from time to time with components of the water scoop mechanism.  The water scoop won't be operational of course and will be locked up so that it can't be inadvertently lowered, but it will still be fitted.  In spite of whatever I may say come April 1st, there are no plans to install water troughs on the flat bit of line now being built between Laverton and Broadway.

Various water scoop mechanism components

 My task for the day was to get some black top coat onto the already undercoated wheels for Dinmore Manor's tender. 

One wheel already done, five more to go

 I was ably assisted in the task by Eleanor

Bespoke painting

 Apparently Tim had done much of the priming and undercoating of the wheels that Eleanor and I were painting and he came over every now and then to inspect them and make sure that there were no drips and that we hadn't missed any bits.  John had put him up to it.  I popped by to inspect his handiwork on Foremarke Hall a bit later.

Tim painting Foremarke Hall's tender

 The light was a little bit subdued in our corner of the shed, so when we finished we spent a while inspecting our work for any bits that we might have missed

I like to think that we painted everything that should have been, without creating any drips.

 Parts are sill being fabricated for Dinmore Manor's tender of course, DMLL's chairman, Kenneth spent a while working on one of the last pieces of plate work that will need to be fitted.  Apparently it was a case of do this or go to a fancy dress party at a friends house.  He chose wisely.

Kenneth with plenty on his plate

34092, Wells is still with is waiting for her move back to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.  We have a lot of upheaval at the moment inside the David Page shed and in the yard area outside, so she has been relocated onto the approach to the bay platform at Toddington where she has been drawing admiring glances.  It isn't anticipated that she will run on our line again while she is here, but Ben decided that is would be a nice thing to do to give her a clean and make her look even more presentable anyway.

Ben demoted himself from driver to cleaner and buffed up Wells

He was joined later on by Mike and Dan, Wells was looking very smart again by the end of the day.

And finally, anybody who has been privileged to crew 4270 since she entered traffic early last year will know that she has had a minor shortcoming in that she hadn't been fitted with a pep pipe.  This of course made no difference at all to the operation of the loco, but it made keeping the cab floor clean and getting the coal damped down a bit tricky.  Cleaning the cab floor never really presented too much of a problem, there was always a brush to do that with, but damping down the coal on a hot day to minimise the coal dust swirling around in the cab was more challenging.  Various techniques were tried by crews to get around this, pausing alongside the ash pit on the run around at Toddington to use the hose was popular, but the coal had usually dried out by the time you had reached CRC and were ready to come back bunker first.  Tipping the contents of the footplate bucket into the bunker at CRC was the better choice, the bucket then being replenished from an injector over flow pipe.  One crew (who will remain anonymous purely to protect the guilty) even tried to use the water column at CRC to damp down the coal in the bunker.  It can be done, if you're careful, position the delivery pipe in the bunker and give it a quick squirt of water.  Unfortunately the water column at CRC has an on/off lever inside the hut.  On being the rough equivalent of Niagara Falls.  The crew concerned over did it and ended up with a deluge of water washing half the coal out of the bunker and onto the footplate.  Anyway, such antics are a thing of the past as 4270 now has a fully functioning pep pipe installed.  

4270's pep pipe dangling from the cab