All change

As you may recollect, there was a bold plan to swap the wheels of 3850 and 2874.  The reason being that 3850 (a Collett 2884 class loco) had the earlier Churchward 2800 type of wheels and 2874 (a Churchward 2800 class loco) had the later 2884 type.  Confused, you should be.  The tyres on 3850's wheels were life expired (new tyres waiting at the South Devon Railway for fitting), the tyres on 2874 simply need turning. The precursor to all this activity was that the recently refurbished lifting jacks would need to be installed on the specially strengthened area at the north end of road 7 of the David Page shed, which in turn required that the adjacent road 6 should be concreted.  Well road 6 has been concreted far enough, the jacks installed and the process of swapping wheels could begin.

I wasn't able to be around at the time the work took place, so many thanks to Roger Tipton who provided the following photos of the work.

Mark setting up the jacks... under the gaze of the three wise men.

3850 is slowly lifted off of its wheels

daylight at last

3850 lifted clear of her wheels

With the wheels rolled out of the way, 3850 was lowered onto accommodation bogies

3850's pony truck

3850's frames in the yard on accommodation bogies

The axle boxes that came off needed a substantial amount of cleaning before they could be placed into storage, Alex tackled the task with the jet wash, assisted by Tony.

Alex with the jet washer, Tony with a scraper

The following day, it was 2874's turn.  Ostensibly a similar job, however 2874 hadn't been off of its wheels in a very long time indeed, predictably it put up a fight.  The right hand trailing axle box didn't free up and pulled the wheel up with it as it went.  The solution was to use a small jack positioned between the top of the axle box and the frames to provide gravity with some extra assistance.

2874 on the jacks

Pony truck freed

2874, finally off its wheels...

Road 6 in the David Page shed is still not quite complete, however one of the remaining sections has been prepared for a concrete pour later this week.

The next section awaits the concrete mixer's arrival

 Another item of note is that 3850's smoke box door & chimney have been sent away from shot blasting and have returned in a coat of heat resistant primer.

3850's smoke box door & chimney

Congratulations to John who has passed out as the GWSR's newest driver.

John (r) with inspector Lacey (photo courtesy of Neil Carr).

And finally...  The bride & groom on the wedding special that ran on the evening of the 29th of October would like to convey their thanks to all the volunteers at the GWSR who helped make the day so special, footplate crew (Neil & Aaron), signalman, stationmaster, guard, TTI, OTC (all seven of them) and the staff at the Flag & Whistle who did the catering.