Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway Steam Loco Dept Blog: Foremarke Hall Steam Test

Saturday was another busy day at Toddington:

4270 seemed to be getting a lot of TLC, with a sizable number of people making themselves busy.

Clive was polishing the boiler barrel

Sean wasn't to be moved from cleaning the smoke box door

New starter Alex, was polishing the water tanks

Stuart polished the bunker

It wasn't just the outside of the bunker that was getting all the attention either, bitumastic paint was being applied inside:

Chris (l) and Andy apply bitumastic paint in 4270's bunker.

Meanwhile, underneath 4270, Phil and Steve were at work on the injectors and brakes.

Phil cleaning up a mating face on an injector

No photo of Steve I'm afraid, but he was under there too.

Dinmore Manor was getting plenty of attention as well:

Another new starter, Ian got to grips with cleaning Dinmore Manor's wheels and frames

David cleans up one of the faces of an injector

Andy fettles a big end journal

Somewhere inside the frames, Nigel cleans the axle boxes

Dinmore Manor appears to have got a bit peckish and decided to eat Mark

More good progress has been made with 35006, the last major job being the fitting of the brake mechanism to the tender:

Dave (l), John and Steve (r) raise one of the brake beams into place...

...there were still a few more to be fitted though

As mentioned last week, 2807's leading wheel set has been returned from the South Devon Railway and was ready to be refitted to the pony truck:

It had even been painted black (cue the Rolling Stones)

The only problem was it was on road 6, whilst 2807 was on road 7... and blocked in behind 4270, Dinmore Manor's tender and a starfish wagon. 4270 and the tender were shunted, whereas the starfish was shifted the hard way:

Who needs a shunter!

Chris used the FLT to transfer the wheel set from road 6...

... to road 7...

...from where it could be rolled along to 2807.

That wasn't all, a nice shiny new bush was fitted into the pony truck pivot

Bush installed

Axle boxes were placed on the axle

Note for drivers; the axle boxes now have two filler holes

Springs fitted

And the pony truck lowered into position

The pony truck is now largely complete, spring adjustment and fitting of the under keeps was still outstanding at the close of play. Hopefully the pony truck will be in a position to be re-installed soon.

A little more work has taken place on 3850 over the course of the last week, with Ian making a start on removing the boiler tubes:

The smoke box tube plate was beyond repair, tubes are starting to emerge

Martin cuts the pipes in two to allow them to fit into the metal recycling skip

Curiously, I received an email only today regarding 3850, it turns out that one of its original cabside number plates exists in the collection of M Shed, (better known by its previous name, Bristol Industrial Museum). The cabside number plate isn't ordinarily on public view unfortunately, but is held in the "Large Objects Store" in the nearby L Shed.

Photo courtesy of Alisdair McNicol

For completeness sake, 5923, Colston Hall, was built 31/05/33 and cut up at Cox and Danks 31/12/63. 5191 was a large prairie, built 31/10/34 and cut up 31/10/64 at Birds, Risca, Newport.

And finally, it gives me great pleasure to be able to pass on these photos of Foremarke Hall's boiler undergoing its out of frames steam test last week at Tyseley. Needless to say, it passed with flying colours. From here, the boiler will be painted in heat resistant paint, before being reunited with the frames and returned to Toddington. All photos from here on, courtesy of John Cruxon.