Dinmore the Red Nosed Manor

I've often mentioned that in the same way that an army marches on its stomach, the steam loco dept marches on tea... well it makes a change from walking on water.  If it marches on anything else other than tea, it would have to be cake & biscuits... we take our healthy eating seriously around here.  John's good lady wife sent him along with a large Christmas cake as a thank you to us for keeping John out from under her feet so often.

John cutting the Christmas cake. Photo courtesy of Chris Blake

The cake arrived on Wednesday, but I am pleased to report that there was still some left for the crews on Saturday morning.  Many thanks Margaret.

I have also received a selection of photos from David Staniforth of the elves at Toddington, a shy bunch who usually run away as soon as a camera appears.  You may have noted that I only managed to catch two of them last week.

Elves running away from a camera

 I don't know whether or not David lured these elusive elves out with the promise of tea and biscuits, but somehow he finally persuaded them to line up for posterity.

There's at least one snowman in there too...

... the one that got away!

Of late, light up teams have been organised to put warming fires into the steam locos on a Friday, so that Saturday's firemen don't have to.  Most weekend firemen are afflicted with day jobs that require them to have their noses to grindstones elsewhere on a Friday, so this departure from previous practice is very welcome.  My day job on Thursday had been to attend the office Christmas party, the Friday was effectively written off as a bad job, nobody was expected to do anything, so I called in to Toddington as it was on my way home and found Chris & Richard (under Chris' instruction) putting in warming fires as advertised.  Being extremely grateful, I fetched them out some tea.

Richard (l) and Chris

Fridays are normally a fairly quiet day, but Ian & Alex were to be found riveting some of the Broadway roof sections

Alex(l) & Ian heating a rivet...

...rivet inserted...

...and pressed.

The roof supports had initially been assembled with nuts & bolts, which were being replaced by rivets

Neatly pressed rivets..

Quite a stack of roof supports already done

2807 is in the shed too receiving attention as part of its winter maintenance programme, I noted that there is a DMU seat nearby and wondered if the owning group had taken the view that there should be more creature comforts for the crew in the cab.

What would Churchward have made of that?

Fans of 2807 may be interested to know that the Christmas Cracker on December 28th & 29th is currently expected to have 2807 and 7820 running... a perfectly confusing combination for the numerically dyslexic!

Foremarke Hall is also well into its winter maintenance period now, I noted that the driver's side con rod and cross head had been removed for some attention.

Cross head & con rod removed

Some work taking place on the clack/safety valves too

There is a starfish ballast wagon in the David Page shed, which is being restored from the wagon equivalent of Barry scrapyard condition.  What was essentially rust on wheels is well on the way to being transformed into as new condition.  Hopefully it will be taking a place in our heritage freight train in the not too distant future.

Starfish, looking much improved

Saturday morning arrived, and as usual at this time of year, the crews clocked on long before the sun came up.  Being on train 2, I arrived at "stupid o'clock", the poor crew of train 1 arrived at "even stupider o'clock".  They already had a good head of steam up by the time that I arrived, and had no shortage of steam at all before leaving shed.

4270, ready for action...

...OK, nearly ready, a top up of water required first.

 Yours truly paid a visit to a garden centre a week or so ago to buy a Christmas tree.  I hadn't intended to purchase anything else, but on my way to the till, I spotted a Manor sized set of antlers and red nose.  I have no idea what you're really supposed to do with them, but I did know of a perfect place for them:

Dinmore the red nosed Manor

 Rudolph famously gets through Santa's Christmas delivery schedule on a diet of carrots and water left out for him by children around the world.  Dinmore Manor too needs water, but probably won't get very far on carrots.  Coal is her preferred delicacy, and good Welsh steam coal at that.  Unfortunately we had precious little more coal in the tender than carrots.

That won't get us to the North Pole!

 The good news is that John turned up and volunteered to use the new telehandler to load coal into the tender, the bad news is that he wanted my credit card details as he has decided that the fireman should pay the coal bill.

Alex, fresh from her day yesterday riveting Broadway station's roof supports, was rostered as cleaner today.

Alex getting busy with the Brasso (other brass cleaning products do exist)...

...the just finished nameplate looked rather splendid as the sunrise reflected off it

 We had quite a good turnout of cleaners, as well as Alex, we had Angela, Tom & Tom all cleaning Dinmore Manor

Tom & Tom applying the finishing touches to Dinmore Manor

4270 setting off, Dinmore Manor awaits her turn

 Once again, Toddington station was alive with various Elves and other mythical creatures

Chris... man or myth?

 As Alex will be going forward for fireman training, it seemed only fair that I should let her have a little experience in coupling and uncoupling the loco to the stock.  "Have you got any tips on how best to do this?" she asked.  "Get somebody else to do it" was my reply.

Alex grappling with the steam heat

 Thursday evening had been the Christmas do at the company that I work for, each place at the table had a naff Santa hat.  I was way too cool to wear one that evening, as were no small number of my colleagues. I did however grab a number of surplus ones to pass on to the crew:

Jamie & Alex getting into the Christmas spirit.

Hayles Abbey Halt is progressing nicely

You can count the line side clearance gang amongst the many unsung heroes of the GWSR, without their sterling efforts, our many miles of line side would soon become an overgrown jungle.  It occurred to Jamie, that it would be an ideal job for somebody with a wood fire at home.  If that sounds like just the job for you, you may wish to apply, I'm sure they'd be delighted to have more helpers.

Line side clearance team in action

Last week, Ben installed some cab lights in Dinmore Manor, I was pleased to note that they were still there and the batteries hadn't gone flat.

Didn't help much in the tunnel though

Apart from a quick stop at Winchcombe to collect a few elves etc, it was a straight through run to Cheltenham Race Course (CRC) to collect the first batch of children to take to see Santa.  Heading back up the line, we crossed 4270 which was taking its first lot of children back to CRC

Crossing 4270 at Gotherington

Not only was Santa and yet more elves waiting for us at Winchcombe the North Pole, but also Donna, on a mission from the Dinmore Manor group to take some publicity photos.

Donna... sitting down on the job

Dinmore Manor at Winchcombe

The timetable leaves a generous layover at Winchcombe, and indeed between the 2 passenger carrying trips at CRC.  It is something of a tradition with crews that given such long breaks, they partake of breakfast cooked on the shovel.  Jamie, Alex & myself all brought enough bacon & sausages each to feed the three of us.

Alex was the designated chef

The first round...

...and the second

 After all that scoffing of food, yours truly decided that he needed a rest, and that it would be best to let Alex use that shovel for what it was really intended for.

She made a good job of getting us down to Cheltenham

The Carriage & Wagon dept's 03 shunter crew more than a little optimistically  challenged us to a race.

No chance, it didn't even have any go faster stripes

It's not everyday that you get waved off by a snowman

Crossing 4270 again at Gotherington

Some of our young patrons took advantage of the steam heating to provide interesting artwork on the carriage windows.

No idea what it's meant to be though

 We hadn't bothered filling up with water on our first visit to Cheltenham, but we did on the second.  A nice treat, was the discovery that the original leather water bag, (which had more holes than a pair of Mrs Claus' finest fishnet stockings) had been replaced by a modern plastic affair.  From a distance, you couldn't really tell that it wasn't leather, but you could tell when using it, as you actually stayed dry, it was also much more flexible and easy to manoeuvre.

A pleasure to use!

This would have been a nightmare with the old hose.

The quote of the day was from one young lad who wondered why I didn't electrocute myself on the rails as I was coupling up... he thought it was like a big electric train set.  

Donna had been kidnapped for the remainder of the day... there's no such thing as a free lunch though, she was press-ganged into taking over as chef.

Second breakfast on the way

The breakfast of champions

Donna taking a picture as we pass 4270 yet again at Winchcombe.

There was a third breakfast when we got back to the North Pole:

Photo courtesy of Donna Ludlow.

You'll note that the beard has slipped to a rather jaunty angle by this time. It was frankly getting to be a nuisance, every time I tried to stick a shovel load of coal onto the grate, it blew up over my eyes, much to the amusement of Jamie, Alex & Donna.  I decided that it was all good practice for the later part of the day when I would have to fire in the dark.

Speaking of firing in the dark, I said precious little on the subject last week, yet the blog post was re-posted on the GWSR Facebook page along with the words:  "It also features an account of firing 'Dinmore Manor' at night for our Carol Service last Saturday"

Firing by night, photo courtesy of Donna Ludlow

Well if you really want to know what firing at night is like, then here goes:

1) You can't see much on the footplate, reaching for the steam valve of an injector or the steam heating handle are hazards for the unwary.
2) Once you've looked into the fire, your night vision is destroyed for a while, it's best to indulge in looking into the fire after you've passed the section signal and before looking out for the next home signal.  Better still, know where you need to fire next, and do that without looking into the fire at all. Some only use one eye to look into the fire.
3) You can't see the coal (well it's black, what did you expect) and you can't see what if anything is on your shovel.  It's all pretty much done by feel.
4) Trimming an injector by ear is all well and good, but we only tend to fire at times when there is steam heat on and on some of our locos that can be quite loud and drown out the sound of the injector.  Shining a torch over the side isn't unheard of.
5) By now, I know pretty much where I am on the line, even in the dark, that hasn't always been the case.
6) Crossings are much more difficult to spot, caution required
7) We pretty much only run after dark in the Christmas season when there are plenty of distracting lights in the towns and villages that can be mistaken for signals.  Fairy lights at stations are also not to be confused with signals from the guard.
8) Coupling/uncoupling with a torch clenched between your teeth makes it difficult to hold a conversation with anybody who might be watching.  Not wildly dissimilar to a visit to the dentist.
9) Many of the above are exacerbated if (as is likely) the gauge frame lamp has blown out.
10) In spite of all of the above, it's actually fun to do, it's a shame that we don't get to do more of it.

By the time that Dinmore Manor had been through disposal and safely tucked up in bed, there was just enough time for me to get to the Corner Cupboard in Winchcombe, which was the venue for the Steam Loco Dept's Christmas dinner (just the thing after only the three breakfasts).  This year, instead of a Christmas jumper competition, there was a Christmas hat competition.

I think Sue's hat won 3rd prize.

Chris shows off the prize his wife won in second place, a calendar

 The first prize in the festering festive hat competition was won by Ben:

A rare photo of the normally camera shy Ben

Many thanks indeed to Tina who organised the Christmas dinner & quiz.

Tina, in Ben's prize winning hat. Photo courtesy of Neil Carr