Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway Steam Loco Dept Blog: Ongoing Winter Maintenance

There have been one or two casualties in the steam loco dept lately. I understand that the oil drip catcher below was a little too tall to be fit for purpose and managed to come off second best during a recent shunting manoeuvre.

Shunter 1:0 Drip Container

One of the yard hose pipes was busy spraying water everywhere.

Competing with the Stanway Fountain

It wasn't frost damage as first feared, just one of the joints was rather loose. It was soon fixed.

There is still a fairly long list of winter maintenance activities taking place on Dinmore Manor at the moment. Now that her rods are back in place, she was able to be shunted out into the yard and onto a pit.

Out in the sunshine for the first time in a while

An advantage to being outside was that needle gunning the coal space in the tender could take place... it would have been rather anti-socially loud to have done it in the shed. Paul and his son Dan took on the task.

Paul (l) needles guns, Dan sweeps up the debris

Later on, Dan painted rust resistant primer onto the newly needle-gunned section of the tender. Apparently he took great delight in painting his dad into a corner and was disappointed to find out that Paul could just step out over the back and get off that way. I fear that Dan's pocket money may well be in jeopardy!

Newly primed section of the tender.

Something that had been noticed, after just two seasons of use is that over-enthusiastic use of the whistle chain on the driver's side of the cab had caused the chain on fireman's side to rise up and clout the cab roof, thereby removing a fair bit of paint. More primer was applied to the affected area.

Working on the chain gang

The vac pump has now been fixed, reassembled and is fit for further service.

Mike, next to the newly renovated vacuum pump.

There was still a little tidy up work to be done with the rods, Roger went round inserting split pins in all necessary locations.

Roger taps in a split pin.

Mark was at work in the firebox fabricating the ash pan sprinkler

I don't think that Mark wanted his picture taking at first...

...but he soon bowed to the inevitability of appearing on this blog.

Piping for the ash pan sprinkler appearing in the firebox

Mark provided the following two photos from the inside of the firebox:

The rocking grate mechanism (photo courtesy of Mark Harding)

One of the pipes, progressing towards an entry hole cut in the ash pan (photo courtesy of Mark Harding)

Being stuck indoors for a while has prevented any cleaning underneath Dinmore Manor for a while. Fresh from fixing the vacuum pump, Mike took the opportunity whilst it was on a pit to scrape off some of the worst of the accumulated grime.

Mike at work

Meanwhile, 2807 progresses well, the last few items of the valve gear are re-installed:

2807 valve gear reassembly in progress

Whilst underneath 2807, a disembodied hand installed split pins/lock nuts under the recently reattached pony truck.

Thing at work

Meanwhile, Ade and Steve were working on fixing a steam leak from one of the piston valves, they were awaiting the arrival of some tools and didn't want to be pictured stood around doing nothing:

They moved so quickly to escape from being photographed, that they were a blur

Needless to say, more cleaning was taking place on 2807 too:

Alex makes 2807's tender shine

35006 is still awaiting the actuating rods for her tender brakes to be machined, so whilst that is taking happening, other tasks are being ticked off the list:

Somewhere under the floor, the boiler keys have been installed

There is also a troublesome leak from one of the oil feeds. It is troublesome in as much as the joint that is leaking is nigh on inaccessible. Somewhere up above, Steve is reaching through a gap in the frames with a spanner, to a location that he can't see. John and Andy advise from the outside as to whether or not he is in the right spot.

Andy (l) and John directing Steve (out of view)

"Ergonomics" and "Ease of maintenance" are not words or phrases that featured in the lexicons of steam locomotive designers.

The boiler of 3850 has been almost entirely de-tubed now, however a lot of accumulated scale remained in there. Pete and myself set to removing it:

In need of a clean out

Pete, removing scale that I had swept up to the scale to the smoke box end

Once the scale had been removed, there was still the little task of cutting up the remainder of the tubes to be small enough to fit in the scrap metal skip. It would have taken a fair while with a hacksaw, so we decided to cheat a bit and use the band saw.

Pete, happy that he's not doing it the hard way.

The larger tubes for the superheater elements took a little longer, but were still cut up fairy quickly.

Setting up for a large tube.

Needless to say, the weather turned to the usual heavy rain in the afternoon and we had to relocate indoors... electricity and water are not a good combination.