A Dirty Weekend

I received a photo during the week from Bill, a GWSR signalman who also moonlights as a driver on the Talyllyn Railway (a delightful line if you ever get the opportunity to visit it).  Apparently Ian (one of our drivers) had paid a visit and blagged a ride on the footplate. 

Ian on the footplate of Edward Thomas at Talyllyn, photo courtesy of Bill Tyndall

The sandbox/frame stretcher on 3850 has now been removed, it's cast iron and weighs a couple of tons, that won't have been an easy job.

3850's sandbox

Removing the sandbox was a pre-requisite for accessing the bolts that hold the cylinder block and frame extensions in place..  As you may recollect, a new cylinder block has been cast and is currently awaiting machining as the original one has a long crack down the front on one side. 

Crack down the front of the cylinder block

It turns out that it was rather worse than that, now that the sandbox has been removed, we can see that there is a corresponding crack down the rear of the cylinder block.

Can't have been much holding it all together!

Other works were of course being carried out on 3850 and its tender:

Jeremy painted under the tender...

Matthew (L) & Kenneth painted the tender's vac cylinder...

... and Matthew applied top coat to sundry small items

Several of us spent a while fruitlessly searching for 3850's pony truck which was last seen outside the front of the shed.  It took some little while before discovering that it really hadn't been half inched (not exactly the sort of thing you could nonchalantly stuff into your pocket whilst passing by), but had been sent for shot blasting.

The space where the pony truck had been for some little while

 Some weeks (probably months actually) ago, 35006 broke a bogie spring.  As we had none in stock, we ended up borrowing one and with grateful thanks to the Mid Hants Railway and the owners of 35005, Canadian Pacific, 35006 was soon back in traffic.  A replacement has now arrived and over the weekend, the borrowed one was removed and a new one fitted. The new one was sourced from the manufacturer that had supplied the original ones to BR when 35006 was rebuilt in 1959.

New bogie springs

Dave seeks spiritual guidance before fitting the replacement spring.

2807 was in line for a bit of attention to its steam heat valve which was passing a little steam even when turned completely off.  After some serious talking to with a big spanner and a hammer it came apart and the valve face could be cleaned and the seat re-machined in the workshop.  Hopefully no more steam leaks via the steam heat.

Gil (L) and Bruce attending to 2807's steam heat valve.

2874 had some attention, Angela and Tim spent the day removing fittings from the cab.  The plate work has seen too much attention from the rust moths to be salvageable, but the hand rails/brackets/angle iron still has enough meat left on it to be worth hanging on to and restoring.

Tim drills through a rivet...

...Angela wields one of the just removed cab hand rails

With a full month of not running ahead of it, and a bit of a backlog of repairs needed, Dinmore Manor was split from its tender

A tender-less Dinmore Manor

The tender could then be prepared for its annual coat of bitumastic paint

Stuart shovels out the last of its coal...

...Andy hoses down the coal space...

...Kenneth pressure washes the drag box.

A suspected leak from the feed to the fireman's side clack valve had been booked, Jamie and Mark had a go at fixing that.

Jamie (L) & Mark

Dinmore Manor's brick arch had partially collapsed and was in a fairly perilous state.  Your humble blogger, who always seems to end up getting the grubby jobs ended up in the firebox with Eleanor demolishing the brick arch.  A request had been made for the old brick arch bricks to be assembled on the ground in the order that they came out so that it could be ascertained from that how the new one was supposed to go in.  Out it came, brick by brick, passed out through the fire hole door to Andy, who then passed it on to Chris who reassembled it on top of a couple of pallets.

The top of the brick arch

Andy took this photo... Eleanor & I were more than a little grubby by the end

The old brick arch, laid out in order

The bricks in the brick arch soon acquire a substantial layer of hardened deposits which we mostly removed and dropped through the centre drop grate.  Some of the deposits clung on to the bricks 

Chris examines one that looks a bit like a lunar landscape

I think Chris was wondering how he could incorporate it into a model railway.

Needless to say, when it came to emptying out the ash pan, there were some pretty large lumps in there that didn't want to come out through the ash pan door.

Blocked solid...

...there was quite a lot of it in there in the end.

The new brick arch in kit form... ideal job for a Lego enthusiast

Next on the to do list for Dinmore Manor was to blow though any blocked boiler tubes.

Andy with an air line clearing out the tubes.

Meanwhile, Mark cleaned up the faces on one of the injector steam feeds that had developed a slight leak.

Mark dismantling an injector

Not a bad day's work.  More of course was undertaken on Sunday, the following three photos were all courtesy of Matthew Harris, who had the following to say regarding what happened. "Smoke box cleaned, started first stages of new brick arch, needled gunned scum in smoke box, components from tender were removed and cleaned too."

Tender component (no idea which) removal & cleaning

This must be Sam (passed out as a fireman last week) building the brick arch

Presumably the needle gunning in the smoke box

And finally, whilst never actually a member of the steam loco dept, Malcolm Ranieri was known by many of us.  It was his funeral on Friday 1st November and a number of members of the steam loco dept were in attendance including John, our head of department. who said the following

"As most of you will know, we have lost one of our prolific photographers Malcolm Ranieri who suddenly passed away a couple of weeks ago. A lot of us on the footplate will have seen and even been given by Malcolm some of his magnificent photographs, so therefore I felt it only appropriate to attend the funeral with Chris Smith GWSR fireman who also knew Malcolm to represent the Steam Dept. of the GWSR & 7903LTD. It was a funeral that was very well attended, in fact to the stage of standing room only. The hearse was preceded by a traction engine as Malcolm also had pictures and articles published in Old Glory the traction engine magazine. Many well-known photographers and some of the early GWSR members were also in attendance so Malcolm certainly had a good send off from the whole Steam movement."

Photo courtesy of Paul Stratford

Fireman Sam

Your humble scribe took the weekend off, Mrs blogger & myself thought that we should celebrate our wedding anniversary by going away.  I am grateful therefore to Peter who took a number of photos on Wednesday of the various activities taking place.

The first job was to recalibrate the cylinder pressure relief valves on Foremarke Hall.  Should the water level be allowed to get too high in the boiler, there is a danger that water rather than steam could be allowed into the cylinders.  This is an extremely bad thing as water is incompressible.  All the kinetic energy of the train in motion is then used to press the water against the cylinder end cover, the result wouldn't be pretty and would either involve the piston head disintegrating , piston rod bending or the cylinder cover being forced off.  Whichever went first, a "Please Explain" letter would soon be winging it's way from the loco owners to the crew.  The cylinder relief valves are the last line of defence between water being carried over and disaster.  The idea is that they permit the water to be expelled when the cylinder pressure significantly exceeds the boiler pressure 

All photos unless otherwise stated courtesy of Peter Gutteridge

One of the relief valves being tested...

...then fitted back in place

2807 was also in for a little TLC, or to be more precise, its tender was.  One of the tender springs had a broken off mounting point lug

The broken one

How it is supposed to be, complete mounting point lugs

Not all split pins come out as easily as they should

Bruce fitting the replacement spring.

And finally, the GWSR now has it's very own Fireman Sam.  Not the cartoon kind of fireman that drives around in big red engines with blue flashing lights and puts out fires, far from it.  Our fireman Sam drives around in big black or green engines and creates the fires that keeps them in steam.

Sam (L) and Inspector Irving (Photo courtesy of Neil Carr)

Fittingly, Sam passed out on Dinmore Manor, which is appropriate as he is the youngest director on the board of Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD.  Congratulations Sam!

Plastered on Po

Upon arrival on Saturday, I was greeted by the sight of the cleaning rag collection bin over-flowing from a bulk delivery by one of our supporters.  Many thanks indeed to whoever it was, our stocks have been running low lately.

An excellent start to the day

 The food fayre was on over the course of the weekend, with a modified green timetable featuring Dinmore Manor and 35006 running the steam services, along with a diesel and the DMU.

Dinmore Manor and 35006 preparing for the day ahead.

 I noted that some of the pieces of steel scattered around the shed that looked like they might be component parts of the Broadway footbridge have now been assembled into larger pieces of the footbridge

Neal & his team have been busy

 2874's boiler was needle gunned and painted with primer some while ago, then a number of regions of the primer were stripped off and grease applied in its place to facilitate non-destructive testing.  Now that has finished, it is time to clean off the grease and reapply primer to protect it.

Angela priming the boiler barrel after removing grease.

 Outside of the railway, Angela has nautical interests and demonstrated her rope tying skills when attaching a tarpaulin sheet over the front of the boiler barrel.

Angela

The weather was unseasonably pleasant, however most people preferred to work indoors, where there was plenty to be done on 3850's tender and frames.

Jeremy strips paint off of one of the cab side sheets

Richard primes the inside of the tender drag box

Martin paints underneath the tender

Eleanor undercoats the tender horn ties.

David paints the tender safety link shock absorbers

Stuart undercoats the front of the tender body

 I couldn't fail to notice that there was something new lurking in the shed... being bright yellow, it was hard to miss.

Wuzzat!

 It transpired that it was an industrial dust extractor.  Sounds like a good idea to me, wire brushing and needle gunning both generate lots of dust which gets everywhere, so extracting it at the point of generation has to be a good thing.

Both Jeremy and myself were wire brushing 3850's cab sides, the new yellow dust extractor was manoeuvred over towards Jeremy by Steve and switched on.

Dust extractor at work

 Or was it at work?

Steve looking perplexed

 I'm not sure if it never worked at all, or if it did but only briefly, anyway it wasn't the success that I had hoped for.  I am sure that experiments in this direction will continue.

The tender vacuum cylinder is now reassembled and after a few touches of paint will be ready for attaching back under the tender.

Mike (L) & Mark reassemble 3850's tender vacuum cylinder

Later on, David adds the finishing touches to the paint.

 As mentioned earlier, last weekend was the annual food fayre event, local producers of artisan (euphemism for good, but expensive) food products set out their wares both in a marquee at Toddington and also at Winchcombe.

The Toddington marquee

I am easily led astray by food, and in the afternoon I took a brief stroll around the marquee to see what was on offer.  I hadn't gone far before I stumbled across chocolate and fudge with images of our home fleet on the packaging.  I could hardly say no could I.  One bar of chocolate and a box of fudge was purchased by your humble scribe. The chocolate was scoffed long before I got home on Saturday, the fudge would not have lasted much longer either, however Mrs blogger took the view that I had over indulged and has hidden the remainder of it.  I have sent out search parties to the furthest flung corners of Blogger Manor, but thus far the search has proved fruitless fudgeless..

Too tempting to resist

Foremarke Fudge & Dinmore Delight!

 Last weekend was also the end of the season for the narrow gauge railway, they were going out with a bang rather than a whimper, with three engines in steam.

Two of the narrow gauge locos at work

 Meanwhile, back in the shed, Mike & Mark were grappling with the front sandbox on 3850 which doubles as a frame stretcher.  It would need to be removed to permit the removal of the cylinder block and the frame extension.  I suspect that the bolts holding it in place hadn't been removed since 1943 and they certainly showed no signs of wanting to be freed.

Nuts slackened off, a ten ton jack had limited success in pushing the bolts out...

...Some gentle heat therapy helped matters though.

Being a glutton for punishment, I was back again on Sunday, this time to fire 35006 for the day.  This was one of the timetables where there is a prep crew, all I had to do was lie around in bed whilst James lit my fire for me, I could swan in at 09:00 and take it easy. Well, I could have done, but I chose to go in a bit earlier anyway and finding my fire already alight and pressure building up, opted to give a hand with oiling up 35006 instead.  Unlike any of our GWR locos, it has four mechanical lubricators on the running plate, one for each cylinder and another for some of the motion parts.  They take a considerable amount of oil and a fair few turns of the wheel to prime them.

Two of the cylinder lubricators...

...and one of motion(L) and cylinder

James had lit the fire for me first thing, however he was off to a bad start as there was precious little coal in the tender, a consequence of no digger driver having been available the previous evening.  Steve was the prep crew driver and signs for the digger, so his first task of the day had been to fetch round a bucket full of coal.

And there still wasn't much left of that after James had lit up.

To cut a long story short, it was something of a miracle that the trains all started off on time as Dinmore Manor and 35006 had to take coal in the morning as well as the DMU stopping to take on more diesel.

Steve loads Dinmore Manor's tender with coal

The narrow gauge were steaming up for their last day of the season

We eventually got some coal too

There is a new shovel by the ash pit, with a handle at least twice as long as any of the other shovels.  I'm curious as to how well it will work.

Shovel for superheroes!

Having recently passed out as a driver, Andy made the most of the opportunity to take his dad along for a round trip on the footplate. 

Andy (L) and his dad

It was a lovely sunny day (forecast had suggested overcast) but a bit nippy first thing, the guard wanted steam heat.  I'd never fired 35006 before when steam heat was required, it's normally only used in the summer months.  On a GWR loco, steam heat is achieved by opening a valve and then setting the desired pressure using the knob on the top of the Mason valve... simples!  On 35006, it's one of the klinger valves attached to the steam fountain... keep turning it anti clockwise until either cows come home or you have reached half way along the line, at which point it is time to start turning it back the other way to close it off again.  The chances of getting to the point where it delivers steam into the carriages is slim.

How many turns?

It's also a job that requires gloves as I discovered, frantic attempts to open the thing in a hurry resulted in a layer of skin being peeled off of my index finger.

Ouch!

I very quickly reached the conclusion that opening and closing the steam heat klinger valve was a job for a cleaner.

It was nice to see that a route master bus had been laid on to transfer passengers into Broadway town centre.

It's a bit lost if it's really trying to get to Trafalgar Square

It's not uncommon to get visitors from other heritage railways or loco owning groups appear.  This trio were from the LMS Patriot Project who were taking a day off from working on their new build to enjoy a day with us.

Patriotic trio

 As you may be aware, the original intention was to have the loco in steam for the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI, which they will not now be able to meet.  The locomotive will be called "The Unknown Warrior" and they have sensibly settled on a new target date of the 100th anniversary of the repatriation of the unknown warrior from France after WWI. Best of luck with it chaps.

On Saturday, Dinmore Manor was sporting a Cambrian Express headboard, even though we are nowhere near the Cambrian line.  Dinmore Manor was the last manor class loco to haul the Cambrian Express in BR days though, so I suppose it was appropriate.  On Sunday, she was to be seen wearing a Cathedrals Express headboard.  To the best of my knowledge there is no cathedral in Cheltenham, Broadway or anywhere in between.

Crossing Dinmore Manor at Gotherington

I let the cleaner (Luke) have ago with the shovel on the second round trip, he's right handed but seems to fire pretty well left handed too.  He needed precious few hints from me.

Luke feeding the fire

You may have noticed that I always refer to our pacific loco as 35006.  I was advised by the loco's owning group long ago that the shipping company of the same name don't like the abbreviated version of its name being used and frankly typing out the full name simply takes too long.  Unofficially it is often referred to amongst the crews as a certain Tellytubby character... the red one, even though 35006 is green... never mind.  Regardless, the fact that Andy, Luke and myself had all suffered minor finger injuries (it was the steam brake for Andy, using the coal rake for Luke) requiring us to raid one of the two first aid boxes on board that gave rise to the title of the blog this week.

Plastered on Po

And finally, yet more good news to bring to you, Andy T, who not only volunteers in the steam loco dept, but also in C&W has passed out as a fireman.

Andy(L) with Inspector Lacey

Congratulations on passing out as a fireman Andy.