Santa Came Down 3850's Chimney Early This Year

Santa has paid a visit to the David Page shed a little in advance of his usual delivery date and dropped off the new cylinders for 3850.  Given the size and weight of the things, there probably wasn't room for anything else on his sleigh which would explain why he wanted to drop it off early.  Allegedly several reindeer were heard up on the roof complaining about the weight.

Swindon works standard practice was to invert the cylinder block and attach the frame extensions rather than try to do it the right way up.  It was deemed wise to benefit from their many years of experience, so we did the same.  It may look a bit odd, but it seems to be doing the trick.

Upside down cylinder block, one frame extension lowered into place.

 As ever, nothing fits perfectly first time and a little lightweight chamfering of edges etc was required to obtain a perfect fit.

Dan chamfering the cylinder block

Neatly machined bores.

 Dinmore Manor was in the shed in need of a little fettling.  Mark fitted the refurbished retaining valve, Keith & I attended to the tender brakes which had developed a habit of sticking on.  It was just a simple case of dropping the brake axle down, removing the bearings, cleaning out the coal dust that had got in there, re-pack it with grease and reassemble it.   In the best steam loco maintenance tradition, it wasn't that easy.

Access to the relevant bolts was restricted

Before you could access the various nuts and bolts, a whole horde of the dreaded split pins needed to be removed.

Keith trying to think of a word I could print regarding his views on split pins

Keith failed in his quest!

Not all of the bolts could be easily accessed from within the pit, lying down on the oily floor of the shed was still necessary.

Keith attacking some of the harder to reach bolts

 Rather cheekily, a similar photo of me on the other side of Dinmore Manor surfaced on a certain person's social media pages claiming that I was sleeping on the job...  snoring like a needle gun!  I prefer to think of myself as having taken a "power nap".

The brake shaft weighs a ton... probably literally.  We pressed the "super trolley" with its extremely useful hydraulic table into service and lowered the brake shaft as far down as it needed to go using that.

Super trolley to the rescue

Unpacking the bearing shells...

...and giving them a jolly good clean

The bearing surfaces of the brake shaft were cleaned and then re-greased

 After that, it was all bolted back together, yet more grease applied via the various grease nipples and the hand brake was put on and off several times.  The brakes were seen to apply and come off again quite normally which they hadn't before.  All that remained was to insert fresh split pins as a trap for the next person to have to do this job.

2807's last day in traffic before its heavy general overhaul will be the 1st of January.  I for one will be very sad to see it withdrawn from traffic for the couple of years that it is anticipated that it will take.  The 2807 group have started making preparations for the overhaul, a slot has been booked for the boiler overhaul, and a new ash pan has been made on site by Ian.

Angela applying heat resistant paint inside 2807's new ash pan.

Moving on to last weekend, on the 14th I had my first driver training turn with Steve as my instructor.  Being a Santa crew 2, my task was to oil up 4270 and take it light engine to Winchcombe.  After that I was to swap over to 9466, unsurprisingly a strange loco to me from the driving point of view and take it for two round trips with hordes of excited children to see Santa at the North Pole before bringing it back with empty coaching stock in the dark. 

 I had relatively recently had a go at oiling up 4270 for another driver, so I had remembered about the otherwise hard to spot oiling pot for the vacuum pump.  I managed to overlook one or two others prompting Steve to remind me of their existence.

Job done

Eleanor was my fireman on this occasion, it seemed remarkably strange watching somebody else do up the coupling once I had buffered up onto the stock rather than doing it myself.

Eleanor battling with the steam heat bags

 Unlike my previous turn as crew 1, there was plenty of time to sample the mince pies and tea from the Coffee Pot cafe on Winchcombe station... gluten free mince pies were available on request.

Most welcome!

Although she is an ex-GWR loco 9466 is rather unlike the rest of our current running fleet of locos.  From the firing point of view, as she has no super heating, you have to be very careful not to let the water level go out of sight at the top of the glass.  A super heater would give extra chance of turning water carried over into steam.  Carrying water over into the cylinders is not a good idea.  She is also a slide valve loco (the rest of our fleet are piston valve).  When drifting with a slide valve loco, you need to put the reverser into full gear for the direction of travel to prevent the valves chattering.  This is different to piston valve locos which have a drift position (45% on the ex-GWR locos) in which a minimum of ash will be drawn from the smoke box into the cylinders by the vacuum created by the pistons.  Another implication of slide valves is that the steam pressure makes it all but impossible to move the reverser whilst the regulator is open, meaning that you need to drive it more like a car, closing the regulator every time you want to move the reverser (the motoring equivalent of taking your foot off the throttle every time you change gear).  9466 is also blessed with a large amount of main line gubbins in its cab, which of course none of our other locos have.

Various bits of mainline required kit.

 Something that always catches my attention when I notice it, is the use of stainless steel fittings, 9466 was blessed with a fair number of these.

Just a couple of the stainless steel bolts holding the backhead in place.

 More prototypical was the presence of bacon on the shovel during some of the long rest periods whilst Santa was busy having his beard pulled by the children that we had brought to see him.

A better breakfast you will not find

 Steve very kindly emailed a photo of me cooking bacon, which like the vast majority of photos of me ended up on the cutting room floor.

How did the day go?  As has been noted before, getting a steam train moving is fairly easy, getting it to stop is also quite easy, getting it to stop where you want it to on the other hand is fiendishly difficult.  My stops were described as "smooth or accurate".  Unfortunately what is wanted is both smooth and accurate.

9466 at the end of my turn, but just about to head off on the Carol train

I handed 9466 over to Andy and Luke at the end of my shift for their turn on the Carol train.  No mere bacon on the shovel for them, they had a beef casserole nicely cooking away in the smoke box.

Progressing onto yesterday, I was once again tied up with meetings for a large chunk of the day, however things that I noted were:

The roof joists of the welfare building and roof felt are in place

3850's tender is now largely painted inside

3850's extension frames are both in place, brackets yet to be fitted

 A new set of accommodation bogies are being turned up for 2874 which will keep it mobile whilst its wheels are away to be re-tyred. 

Wheel blanks for the accommodation bogies...

...and a couple that have been machined

The frames to which the wheels will be attached

 Also in the workshop, the eccentric straps for 2874 were being machined. 2874 possessed the front half of each strap, but required new back halves. Blank back halves have been obtained and were being machined.

One set up to be machined...

...three more awaiting their turn

And finally, after 33 years of service to the GWSR, Ian has retired from the steam dept and will move to darkest Cornwall.  Saturday was his last turn. 

Inspector Irving (L) shaking Ian's hand at the end of his last turn (photo courtesy of Chris Irving).

33 years is more than a fair number of our younger volunteers have been alive for.  I understand that he will be moving to a new home reasonably close to another heritage railway, so our loss may well turn out to be their gain.  Thank you Ian, for all you have done in helping the GWSR to grow into the thriving heritage railway that it is today.