AGM

As usual, the year has kicked off with the Steam Loco Dept AGM, held in the village hall. It's not appropriate to reveal too much regarding what was said during the course of the meeting, however, Mark has come to the end of his one year tenure as chairman of the SLD management team, 24 months after taking it on, and has now been succeeded by John.  Yours truly had to pop up to the front and say a few words about the gala.  I noted when I returned to my seat that my phone had been rung, it turns out that Phil was trying to catch out all the speakers by ringing their phones as they were talking.  Only one person was caught out by having their phone on, our new chairman.

Ben speaks, Ade listens, Clive tucks into a packet jelly babies, out of view, Phil rings Ben's phone

The coveted annual "Percy Pig" awards for the most turns covered were awarded:

Steve (l) did the announcing, John (r) hands the second place award to Ade

As usual, 1st place award was for John P (l) who receives his award from John C.

If memory serves, John covered 43 turns in 2015.  Both recipients looked disappointed when they found out that the prize didn't include a year's supply of bacon sarnies for breakfast.

After the AGM had drawn to a close, it was off back to the David Page shed, to continue with the winter maintenance of our home fleet.

The 2807 group are working through their winter maintenance schedule, On Saturday, the hanging link bearings were coming in for some attention

A third John, with one of the hanging link bearings

Where it came from

Dinmore Manor had no less than 22 people working on it on Saturday according to Facebook.  I didn't count them all myself, but there certainly seemed to be quite a few people.

Kenneth working on the brake hangers

David, lapping in the hydrostatic lubricator shut off cock

Andy checks the tolerances on a big end journal.

Martin cleans the wheels

Mike, thwarted in an early attempt to get a photo of me for the Facebook page

Happy to be relieved of his role as chairman of the management committee, Mark assists Andy in checking various tolerances around the loco

Mark (l) and Andy

There was also a concerted effort to clear out the tubes of accumulated soot. 

Stuart (l) and Aaron feed in the cleaning rod

Aaron borrowed my camera and took this photo of Cliff in the smoke box

Cliff in the smoke box

Meanwhile, Paul was cleaning out the firebox

Rob cleaning the wheels/frames

Eleanor was delighted to find that some kind soul(s) had turned up on Wednesday to continue the needle gunning of the coal space in the tender.  It was deemed to be likely to be too anti social from the noise pollution point of view to finish the needle gunning on Saturday, so instead she put a coat of rust inhibiting primer on the bits that had already been done.

Eleanor priming the coal space of Dinmore Manor's tender

Ben, fresh from speaking at the AGM helped clean Dinmore Manor too

Mark cleaned up the boiler cladding

The 35006 group had been hard at work on their loco too, the fitting of the electric lights was the task for Saturday.

Five of the six head lights in position

The head lights are electric, powered by a generator located below the cab on the driver's side.  The lights themselves come in rather tasteful brass cases. 

Brass head light

I understand the Southern Railway used the six head light positions to indicate the route to be taken by the train, rather than what class of service the train was.  Sadly none of the codes that I could discover were to Broadway, never mind Laverton, Toddington, Winchcombe or Cheltenham Race Course. 

And finally, my appeal on behalf of a friend who wishes to model Toddington station has not fallen on deaf ears, and a number of people have come forward with signal box diagrams and even a scaled drawing.  Many thanks indeed to Graham, Anon, Neil & Mike who all provided very helpful information.   Any period photos of the cattle dock, the fruit packing shed or the yard crane (actually in the yard, there wasn't one in the cattle dock as there now is) would be gratefully received.