Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway Steam Loco Dept Blog: Henry, the Green Eyed Monster

Last Monday saw the Queen's Award for Volunteering ceremony take place at Toddington, amongst others, Chris was on hand to capture the proceedings for posterity.

35006's footplate was open for inspection

The GWSR's chairman, Alan Bielby, was besieged by photographers...

... and a step ladder!

The previous photos, all courtesy of Chris Crump.

The award ceremony spilled over into the David Page shed for a while, where concreting had taken place. It had started before the dignitaries arrived, but had to pause while the guests came round the loco yard. Dame Janet Trotter saw the volunteers standing by the freshly poured concrete wearing boiler suits, leaning on their shovels and came over, asked us about them and shook their hands. I'm not sure that shaking hands was entirely advisable, most of our volunteers wander about with extremely grubby hands whilst on the railway at least.

Another section of concrete successfully poured

Last Friday’s Fire & Drive day, saw the last coach unhitched for maintenance (brake cylinder problem?). There was a delay while a spanner was brought along from 2807 to adjust the vacuum pipe alignment of what was now the last coach, which the participants enjoyed witnessing.

Coach being removed from the rake

The previous two photos and report, courtesy of Peter Gutteridge.

Newly arrived on the railway is 3850, owned by Dinmore Manor Ltd. Her home railway, the West Somerset have kindly agreed to allow us to use her for the last couple of weeks of her boiler ticket (expires Sept 30th). She will be in traffic every day from Tuesday Sept 22nd until the 30th.

Mark prepares 3850 for a steam test on Saturday morning

You may recollect that 3850 was one of the guest locos at our 2014 Back to Black gala. She will be overhauled at Toddington over the course of the next few years and I dare say that news of her progress will appear in this blog on a regular basis. At this time it is uncertain where she will run when her rebuild has been completed.

Last weekend was the second visit this year of that "Really useful engine", Thomas.

Paul gives Thomas an early morning shower

3850's older cousin, 2807 was running on Saturday as Henry, the big green engine as usual.

Cliff oils up Henry, Andy demonstrates how to lean on a shovel & loco simultaneously

The weather was extremely nice on Saturday, with a little early morning dew making the cobwebs around the place glisten.

We're not very good at, dusting away cobwebs.

Thomas came with a really useless lamp. It may have had a lens at both ends, but it had no burner inside.

You won't find a genie in this lamp, or a burner come to that.

I did what any self respecting fireman would do and "borrowed" a set of lamps from the lamp store, 4270 being the unwitting donor on this occasion. The nice new lamp prep table had been used to stash a barrel of kerosene, leaving precious little room for the lamps.

Ho hum!

Thomas arrived in a fairly filthy condition, meaning that Paul had a considerable amount of work to do.

Paul washing behind Thomas' ears!

Thomas lived up to his reputation and made himself "really useful". Before setting off shed, Thomas shunted 3850 and 4270 around, so that 3850 was now on a pit and 4270 wasn't. Thomas' fireman was grateful for the opportunity to use up a bit of steam.

Shunting 4270 & 3850

The 04 diesel shunter that normally runs as Mavis on these occasions has been nobbled by the troublesome trucks. She is awaiting the delivery of a new fuel pump and was unable to run, but at least she sat in the parlour road and looked the part. Thomas kindly went over and kept her company for a while. Rumours that they may be more than just good friends have been circulating for a while now.

Thomas chatting up Mavis

Thomas and Mavis seemed to be getting on a bit too well as far as Henry was concerned and in a fit of jealousy he came over and enveloped them both in a cloud of steam.

Henry sneaking up on Thomas and Mavis

Henry the ~~green eyed monster~~ big green engine strikes again.

That's dampened Thomas & Mavis' romantic encounter

Thomas retreated into the station, where his crew had a very welcome breakfast.

Thanks Paul.

Ian and Paul get cracking on the most important meal of the day.

As usual, although Thomas and friends were present and ready to entertain the children, one of the stars of the show failed to put in an appearance. We have this problem every year, getting the celebrity concerned out of her dressing room and into the limelight has proved a challenge in the past. This year, we were defeated and her understudy had to be summoned at short notice to stand in.

The fat controller introduces the understudy

The understudy put in an excellent performance and her big scene with Paul went off without a hitch, rave reviews have followed from all the critics present. The missing star was of course the fish from the stream that gets caught in Thomas' tank, giving him boiler ache. The stand in, was a small plastic whale, which wasn't quite the same thing visually, bit the children didn't seem to mind.

Never work with children or animals, especially fish.

Once Mavis had been left behind in Toddington, Henry refrained from the jealous behaviour of earlier and was quite friendly to Thomas again.

Henry and Thomas, friends again

As several people asked after Thomas' health in view of the fact that he had been very poorly earlier in the year, I am pleased to be able to report that his boiler seemed to be in good order, no sign of boiler ache at all. Thomas' driver had a few words to say about Thomas' ejectors though which struggled to pull the brakes off. The nought to twenty inches of mercury time seemed to be about a week. Twenty one inches? Don't hold your breath.

The troublesome ejectors

Getting Thomas' injectors to run cleanly was a black art as well, sometimes they would, often they wouldn't. The clack valves appeared to leak too, but that may have been related to having the ash pan sprinkler on.

Steam where steam should not be.

Speaking of the ash pan sprinkler, leave it on for too long, and you end up with an embarrassing puddle under your loco.

Oh dear Thomas!

Enbarrassing puddle or not, Thomas was the star of the show, and people thronged the line side as well as the stations just to see him being really useful.

Thomas' fan club cheering him on.

Thomas' driver (Ian) helps Thomas to whistle back at them

Henry's day is quite a long one, without any real breaks. Henry's driver (Cliff) had arranged with Jamie to split the shift. Jamie came down to Winchcombe on our train to meet Henry and very kindly unhooked Thomas from his carriages too.

Jamie.

Steam loco dept member, Pete was the compere at Winchcombe

Thomas was relegated to hiding in the sidings at Winchcombe whilst the other trains came and went. Blackberries are in season again, and there are plenty growing down there. I helped myself.

Blackberries & steam

I was very nearly caught ~~red~~ black handed by the Permanent Way team.

Mercifully, Thomas didn't give the game away.

Another part of the proceedings is to fill up Thomas' tanks using plastic buckets of water delivered by the children. It takes forever and gets precious little water into the tanks.

Paul on bucket duty

We still need to do the job properly of course, so frequent water stops at one of our water columns was in order.

It's much quicker and easier this way

Once all the children had gone home and Thomas had been safely tucked up in bed for the night, it was time for me to have a quick check around for signs of life. The most striking thing was Dinmore Manor's tender has made further progress over the weekend and is now nearly back on its wheels.