Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Being an almost entirely volunteer run organisation doesn't exempt the GWSR from the need to meet the obligations of the many and varied items of health and safety legislation that have been enacted by parliament over the years.  The HSE, or even worse, the coroner would take a dim view of us if we failed to live up to their requirements and cited the fact that "We're just volunteers" as an excuse.  Consequently, I attended a safety training session on the preparation & use of grinding wheels on Friday.  Along with several colleagues from the Steam Loco dept and a few more from Carriage and Wagon, I can now claim to be certified.  This will come as no surprise to many of those who know me who have long since claimed that I was certifiable.  

I won't bore you with the contents of the training, but I will mention something that came to my attention.  It was a pretty cold morning on Friday, not quite enough to have brass monkeys scurrying for warmer climes lest they incur serious injury, but they were certainly browsing the web and checking out the price of flights.  I had informed the attendees from Carriage and Wagon, that come the tea break, we could exit from the training room (it was warmer outside than in) and warm ourselves up in front of the heater in the mess coach.   It was only when we got into the mess coach that I discovered that the heater was missing, a bare patch of wall marked the space where it used to be. 

The mounting screws were still there, but no sign of the heater

It was decided that it must be a ploy by the management committee to stop us congregating in the mess coach and get out and do some work instead.

Also on Friday, 5526 was being spruced up in readiness for its first turn on Sunday, Alex was busy cleaning below the running plate

5526, basking in the sun

Alex at work.

On to Saturday, the key task was to get Dinmore Manor's old tender temporarily back on its wheels (well at least some of them) to free up the lifting jacks.  There was an urgent need to get Des lifted.  Des isn't one of the more elderly members of the steam loco dept, in need of helping to his feet after over-doing it the night before, Des is short for "Diesel Electric Shunter", which has a dodgy axle box that needs some TLC.

The first step was to get the vacuum reservoir cylinder refitted.  The magic scissor lift trolley being put to good use here:

Vac reservoir cylinder re-installed

Axle box casting and half of the white metal bearing

We were only going to put the leading and trailing wheels in, the intermediate would be left out for the time being.  The horn guide faces of the intermediates needed to be protected from the elements, so a liberal helping of petroleum jelly was applied.

Looks like it's ready to swim the channel now

The axle box castings are extremely heavy, so once again, a scissor trolley was used to raise them into position, then the trolley was lowered and three people manoeuvred the casting & bearing round so that they were on the top of the axle.

Axle box, raised and ready to be rotated into position

Martin (l) and David, pleased that one is the right way up and wedged in place

Propped up and ready for the tender to be lowered

Once all four axle boxes were in position, the tender was lowered down onto them and the horn ties re-attached.

Mark (l) lowers the tender

Finally, temporarily back on at least some of its wheels...

...then off out into the yard behind the 04

By the end of the day, Des had been fetched into the shed and was ready to be lifted:

Des, about to go up in the world. (Photo courtesy of Mark Young)

A separate team of people were working on 3845's boiler.  The tubes that had been removed last week, needed slicing up into small enough lengths to fit into the scrap metal skip.

Neatly sliced boiler tubes

Unaccountably, the previous owners hadn't washed out the boiler before sending 3845 off to Barry, in fact, the evidence suggested that it hadn't been washed out for some considerable time before that.  With the tubes removed, it was now time to remedy matters.

Mike hosing down the inside of the boiler barrel

There was quite a waterfall coming out

Dan at work with the pressure washer

Meanwhile, over in the 2807 camp, they were back to turning more chairs into boot scrapers:

Bruce wire brushing a chair.

I'm sure that they're looking forward to 2807 coming back from Llangollen at the end of the Santa season, so that they can attend to their winter maintenance plans.

Most of the members of the steam  loco dept are blessed with a fair amount of blubber to help keep them warm, however Eleanor is not one of them, she had to resort to trying to warm her hands around a cup of tea in the mess coach, in the absence of the heater.

No substitute for a heater in the mess coach

I believe that a small team of people have been putting time into the Peckett on Sundays.  She's certainly showing signs of coming back together, the hand brake is a recent addition.

Peckett "John" slowly returning to life.

There are a few small jobs that needed tackling on Dinmore Manor, one of which was the fact that the ash pan door has a sacrificial plate welded onto it, that had by now been well and truly sacrificed.

Len, removing one of the door's split pins

The inside of the door itself, the sacrificial plate is half missing.

A new plate is in stock and will be welded in shortly.

The next in line for the lifting jacks before Dinmore Manor's old tender can lifted again, is 35006, which ended up in the yard, with its tender in front of the loco

Cart before the horse