Good news comes in threes

Saturday morning started off bright and early... and it was just about bright too, no need for a torch to illuminate my way into the yard at Toddington first thing. Unfortunately none of the other cleaners started off bright and early; either I'm using the wrong soap or have said something on here to annoy them. Even Sean, the rostered fireman for the morning was a bit late, apparently he'd managed to sleep through the first of his alarm clocks going off. Never mind, it was looking like a nice start to the day and I set to buffing up 2807 for the day ahead.

The sun rises over the peak of the er... Peak

I set about cleaning her in my preferred order, smoke box first as it may start off hot, but will only get smokier & hotter as the morning progresses, followed by the brass safety valve bonnet (again as it won't get any cooler) then wash over the boiler, then clean the wheels & motion, finishing off with the running plate.  Near the end, Ade (afternoon fireman) and Andy (RSF) appeared with a tray of tea, very welcome indeed.

Andy & Ade with the tea

Cliff was down for a driver training turn and had just finished oiling up the bits of 2807 that needed it.  Apparently it's thirsty work oiling up 2807.

Cliff guarding his cup of tea

I can't remember the last time that one of the locos set off in sunshine... in fact I'm not too sure that I can remember the last time that I saw the sun, so it was a pleasure to watch 2807 set off shed bathed in the morning light. 

A gleaming 2807 setting off

It was at this time that my thoughts drifted towards  getting some breakfast at the Flag & Whistle, however John Cruxon appeared.  Apparently the boiler on Foremarke Hall was only partly filled and needed filling.  I should have asked the question why the boiler was only part filled, but I failed in my role as investigative journalist.... I fear that there would have been no Watergate scandal if I had worked at the Washington Post during Nixon's term in office as President of the USA. I'm guessing that she had just had a boiler washout.  Anyway, regardless of why she was short of water, she wanted shunting over to siding number one and the 5 lengths of fireman's hose run out from the new RO water supply wanted connecting up to her injector overflow pipe to continue from where they had left off filling her up a day or two earlier.

Foregoing breakfast, I joined Foremarke Hall on her shunt over to siding 1

Fireman's hose attached to injector overflow

2807 sets off for Cheltenham as 7903 fills her boiler

No sooner had I got the water in the boiler up to three quarters of the glass and my thoughts had once again turned to getting that much anticipated breakfast, than Tina turned up looking for victims volunteers to crack on with painting the outside of the mess coach.  Once again, thoughts of breakfast were put on hold and I joined in with the team of conscripts volunteers that Tina had rounded up.   Tina had emailed me in advance about trying to get together a working party for painting the mess coach and had promised to wear make-up so that she would allow me to grab a few pictures to put up on the blog.  She renaged on her promise and turned up without make-up.  Chris announced that it was ok to take photos of him though as he was wearing his make-up

Chris filling in the worst of the blemishes on the mess coach

And sanding the filler down when it had dried

Ian gets to work with painting on the primer

Steve Oddy hands back the token as 2807 returns from her first trip up to Cheltenham

Tina without make-up anyway

 At least I took a photo of Tina from this side, she had managed to get a fair amount of grey primer into her hair on the other side... or at least that's what she said it was.  Eventually rain stopped play and we packed up for the day.  The mess coach wasn't quite finished, but at least was progressing in the right direction.

Spot the bit we missed!

Personally I was quite grateful for the rain, it meant that I could finally get some breakfast.... though to be strictly correct, by now it was more of a late lunch.

After breakfast lunch, it was a case of finding things to do that involved staying dry.  Now Richard & Ian haven't quite got the hang of that bit yet and were to be found giving Foremarke Hall a bit of a clean up in the rain:

Richard & Ian hard at work on Foremarke Hall

Three items of good news to finish off with:  Firstly, after a tip off from Ian Carpenter, I took a look in the smoke box of 4270 which is safely tucked away in the nice dry David Page shed to find that it is nearly finished.

4270 smoke box

Since the last time I checked in here, the main steam pipes & super heater elements have been fitted along with final fixing in place of the ejector pipe & the petticoat.  All that remains in here is the oil feed to the cylinders. You can see where that pipe will enter the smoke box just below the one that feeds the regulator towards the top left hand corner of the picture.

The second item of good news came from Paul Richardson.  Apparently he and Chris Irving are now stars of the small screen and will soon be appearing on a tv set near you.  For as much detail as there is at the moment, please click here. Currently believed to be scheduled for May 2nd.  For the benefit of Paul's children if they're reading this, the concensus of opinion around the railway, is that this does make him a celebrity and that you should join his fan club, tidy your rooms, do the washing up and do your home work  (you can pay me later Paul). 
  Once again, in a valiant attempt to keep out of the rain, I joined Dan as he lit a warming fire in Foremarke Hall under the guidance of Sean.  

Dan, building up a warming fire in Foremarke Hall

Dan made only one mistake, if you manage to break a broom whilst sweeping the floor, for heaven's sake try and hide the evidence quick and whatever you do, don't let some fool grab a photo and splash it all over the interweb!

Dan failing abysmally to hide the evidence

Anyway, the third bit of good news, is that Dan is now passed to break brooms light warming fires.  Congratulations Dan.

And finally.... you can stop wearing out your F5 key now Ian Butler

The last shall be first and the first shall be last

A fine red crescent moon rose above the Cotswold hills as I progressed along the M5 on Saturday morning.  After marveling at it for a while and wishing I could stop and grab a photo, it occurred to me that the reason I could see the moon was that the sky was clear.  Clear skies of course meant only one thing.... it was going to be colder than usual.  I wasn't wrong, according to others who turned up later, it was about minus 5.  Now that the clocks have gone forward, it was still dark when I arrived at Toddington, it was certainly still too dark to see what the brass monkeys might be up to.  If they had any sense at all they would be safely tucked up in bed and with their electric blankets turn up to 11. 

I had thought that cleaners weren't supposed to function as Running Shed Foreman (RSF) however I sensed an air of desperation in Ben (roster administrator) when I queried it.  Obviously he was having difficulty tracking down enough mugs to fill the rota.  I've not seen a job description anywhere, but the general idea is to make sure the locos get sorted out and leave shed on time, after which you make sure that any volunteers still daft enough to be showing their faces are found something useful to do. Turn up first, leave last and boss people about, how hard could it be!

There was only one loco turn on Saturday, 8F 8274 was assigned to cover the steam portion of the blue timetable.  Ian and Ade got on with the process of oiling up and lighting the fire, everybody else looked for something to clean... preferably something warm.  I picked on the smoke box to start off with, that's always a good bet for being warm.

A clean (and most importantly, warm) smoke box

Chris cleans the motion

Andrew after washing down the tender

 Soon enough, 8274 was sparkling and off to tackle the day's work.  Well that was the easy bit of being RSF sorted out, now to find everyone something else useful to do.  I started off with what turned out to be a popular choice of heading over to the Flag & Whistle for breakfast.... never forget an army marches on its stomach.  Breakfast eaten, there was then the pressing matter of replenishing the wood store as it was remarkably bare.  The bad news was that there was no neat pile of wooden pallets next to the wood store awaiting breaking up. I dispatched raiding parties to the far corners of the yard to hunt out any lost looking wooden pallets and fetch them back to the wood store.  A surprisingly large number were to be found scattered around making the place look untidy and soon the yard was both tidier and the wood store fuller.

Andrew & Cheyenne in the process of converting an untidy pallet into useful fire wood

Should you be the proud owner of a wooden pallet in Toddington yard and are now wondering where on earth it has gone, then don't fret, it is now fulfilling a far nobler purpose than merely weighing down a tarpaulin or such like.

Another task that needed doing was getting Foremarke Hall warmed up for a turn on the Elegant Excursions dining train on Sunday, to that end she was fetched out of the shed, a warming fire lit, ash pan emptied and a start made on cleaning her up for the next day.

Cheyenne giving the brass a bit of therapy with the Brasso

Nick & Cheyenne hard at work

Clive cleaning out the ash from the pit the hard way

Well so far so good, all was going according to plan.... well in as much as there was a plan.  8274 returned from her labours a little later and the disposal process kicked off.  That is of course when the plan fell apart.  You'll doubtless have noticed that the loco roster on the main GWSR website mentions that locos are rostered 'subject to availability', that they may be changed at short notice for 'operational reasons' and other such weasel words that effectively say that it's pot luck what turns out to be hauling the trains on any given day and that the railway can't be held responsible if what you're hoping for isn't running.  Well on Saturday, the 'operational reasons' kicked in.  When examined at the end of the day, it transpired that 8274 had broken a spring and was declared a failure.  Such eventualities aren't usually too much of a problem as the leading lights of the owning group can usually get one swapped out in just a few hours in the morning whilst the loco is being prepped for service.  On this occasion however, the relevant persons had taken the not entirely unreasonable step of disappearing off to warmer climes for their holidays and given the recent freezing weather in the UK, who can blame them.  In their absence, that left the choice of either putting out a diesel on the Sunday or getting 2807 ready.  Not wanting to let the traveling public down, a hasty shunt of locos was organised to get 8274 into the shed and 2807 out.  Being the fireman on the second shift, Tina should probably have lit the warming fire in 2807, but her dog was home alone.  In an uncharacteristic moment of chivalry I decided that it was better that my dinner ended up in the dog than her dog's dinner ended up.... well you can guess the rest!

Tina is actually 6' tall, but she looks dwarfed in George's jacket as he is 6'8"

All that remained now was to get a warming fire in 2807, a process that takes several hours. So it came to pass that everybody else disappeared off into the sunset leaving yours truly to get 2807 warmed up and ready for the following day.  

The light is fading a bit, but at least 2807 has some semblance of a warming fire in her

Getting the warming fire built up enough to be in a state where I could leave her for the night takes a number of hours and to while away the time where I wasn't shoveling coal, I soon found myself taking long tea breaks and contemplating how many other people over the intervening years since she had been built in 1905 had found themselves doing the same sort of thing.  Eventually she was in the sort of state where she could be left and I set off for the mess coach to change, only to find that Andrew Meredith was still around having been spent many hours working elsewhere on the water treatment plant.

The sun has set and the stars are out, 2807 continues to gently warm up

I had thought that to be the end of the story, but Ian Butler alerted me to an article that had just been uploaded to the news section of the main website.  Sydney Hogg, a long time supporter of the GWSR was celebrating his 100th birthday and to mark the event we even had a GWR reporting code of 100 displayed on 2807's smoke box.  Ian Crowder had been on hand to record the event for posterity and has kindly allowed me to use the following photos that he took.

2807 with a '100' reporting number

Sydney Hogg with family & well wishers

Sydney Hogg with driver Ben Evason

Still going strong at 100

It was a pleasure to have been able to have contributed something towards this event, even if it was only by making sure that Sydney ended up with steam at the front of his train as he had hoped for.  

Should anybody be able to let me know which train the reporting code of 100 would be for, then I'd be delighted to hear from you.  It's not easily tracked down on the web.

Edit:  Sean Nielsen has kindly provided a useful link which states that the reporting code of 100 denoted the Paddington to Penzance train after 1957.

Catching up with 4270

Time to 'fess up.... in the unlikely event that you'd believed it, Foremarke Hall is still in green rather than lined BR black that I said on April Fools Day.  In fact the joke was on me really, as I wound up getting out of bed an hour earlier than usual in order to get the story uploaded to the blog on the right date, before heading back off to Toddington again.  I nearly had to get up before I went to bed.  

The clocks of course had just gone forward an hour the day before, so it was back to starting off cleaning the locos in the dark.  As usual a merry throng of volunteers settled into prepping the rostered engines for the day and soon enough 8274 and Foremarke Hall were heading off shed to haul the 'Easter Eggspress' workings up and down the line.

8274 sets off from the yard

Soon followed by Foremarke Hall

Monday turned out to be a fairly quiet day at Toddington, so after I'd broken up the last of the stack of pallets and put them in the wood store I set off over to the signal box looking for a few photos of the trains departing down the line.

Neatly replenished wood store

Bill Tyndall in the signal box was most welcoming and even provided me with a nice hot cup of tea as we waited for the trains to depart.  Apparently the railway was very popular on Monday morning and Foremarke Hall was delayed by 15 minutes or so as a long queue of passengers progressed on their way through the booking office to the platform.

Chris Hayes collects the token from Bill Tyndall as Foremarke Hall sets off with the 'Easter Eggspress'

8274 returns from Cheltenham, Chris Bristow hands over the token to Bill.

Afterwards, a rummage around in the David Page shed turned up not the usual crowds of people working on the various engines, just Ian Carpenter making steady progress with 4270.

4270

Few Churchward locos survive with inside steam pipes, but 4270 is one of them.  The current aim is to get her ready for an in frames steam test.  To that end, since the boiler arrived back from Crewe, Ian has been working on the smoke box fittings.  I caught him working on the lubrication feed pipe for the regulator and the end of the ejector pipe that connects to the chimney.

Smoke box with the ejector pipe offered up rather than fitted

Ian manufacturing a nut for the regulator lubricator feed pipe

Regulator & cylinder lubricator splitter with part made regulator lubricator pipe

4270 left Barry Island scrapyard in a relatively complete condition, she still retains all her original coupling rods, but some items have one way or another found there way onto the loco from elsewhere. The driver's side piston valve front cover for instance is stamped '5227'

5227 stamped on piston valve front cover

5227 is now one of the 'donor' locos for the new build 4709 at Didcot Railway Centre and what is left will eventually end up as a static exhibit there.

Work has also taken place up at the other end of 4270.

The backhead is also taking shape

Not visible in this shot is the grate and brick arch which are both fitted.
In the hope of getting me to stop bugging him with questions and taking copious photos for the blog, Ian sent me off to turn up a couple of gaskets for the ejector pipe.  The last time I had to make gaskets rather than buy ready made ones was for my dear old BSA B33 when I was an impecunious student many years ago.... and I made them from old cornflakes packets.

The last victim of my gasket making... note no oil leaks underneath her!

Ian Meanwhile cracked on with the task of soldering up the regulator lubricator feed pipe and the ejector pipe.

Regulator feed pipe being finished off

Likewise with the ejector pipe

Quenching the new ejector pipe

Finally the completed ejector feed pipe and regulator lubricator feed pipe was offered up with the petticoat in place underneath the chimney to make sure that everything fitted ok.  The original petticoat from 4270 was rusted past the point of no return,  The one seen here came from 7200.  7200 at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre has been treated to a nice shiny new one.

Taking shape in the smoke box

The main steam pipes, cylinder lubrication pipes and superheater elements remain to be fitted, but it's all coming together.  Watch this space for future updates and hopefully for a bit of a history of the earlier stages of the restoration.

Back in Black

The Easter weekend started off on Good Friday with feverish activity in the biting cold to get 2807 and 8274 spruced up and ready to face the public.  In truth both were fairly clean to start off with anyway and soon both were sparkling in the morning sunshine.  Most of us had forgotten what sunshine was and had to go and look it up on the internet.

2807 departs from shed on Good Friday morning

Once again, a long list of outstanding infrastructure tasks awaited those hardy souls who were not off out on either footplate and between us we decided that continuing to clear the trackbed of the parlour road out of ash would be a good idea.

Ed emptying a wheelbarrow full of ash

The start line of the Toddington 2013 wheelbarrow handicap hurdles, Andy Webber applies a handicap shovel full of ash into Nick's wheelbarrow, whilst Ed psych's himself up for the start.

The Toddington handicap hurdles about to commence

For the 3rd trip out of the day for 8274, I joined Andy Beale & Chris Brooks on the footplate.  Andy was keen to point out an omission from this blog last week, not only had Ben Evason been out on the footplate of Kinlet Hall during the Double Headed Halls run last week from Tyseley to Newport and back, but he had too.

Andy driving 8274 on Friday

Chris was on the footplate on a fireman training turn, under the watchful eye of Ade. Firing a steam locomotive is not too dissimilar to playing a piano, anybody can hit a note on a piano keyboard or spot for a signal's aspect/shovel coal into the firebox/ inject water into the boiler/exchange line tokens/watch trains in and out of platforms etc.  The trick with playing a piano is of course to hit all the right notes in the right order at the right time, likewise with firing a steam locomotive, doing the right things at the right time is key. The beaming smile on  Chris' face for most of the journey spoke volumes, although this was his first firing lesson of the year, he was getting it pretty much right. He knew it and was enjoying every minute.

Just handed the token back at Toddington

Chris on the shovel

Finally, as I'm sure that many of you are aware, 7903, Foremarke Hall is now into the last year of her current boiler ticket and will be withdrawn from traffic at the end of the year. Some members of her owning group have been scratching around looking for innovative ideas as to how more funds can be secured to cover the cost of her impending rebuild.  It hasn't escaped their attention that if you want to attract business by photo charters and the like, then you need to have an engine in a desirable livery.  Hitherto she had been painted brunswick green, but the shade of 'brunswick green' on her tender didn't quite match that of the 'brunswick green' on her boiler.  To break into the lucrative steam photo charter market, something needed to be done. Not strictly authentic, but in keeping at least with the period that she was first built would be BR blue.  This livery is currently worn to great effect by the recently restored King class, 6023, King Edward II.  Like Foremarke Hall, King Edward II spent time in Barry Island scrapyard before being rescued and restored to running order. 

6023, King Edward II in BR blue

Apparently the BR blue option was seriously considered, but eventually lined BR black was chosen which is at least an authentic livery for Foremarke Hall and will no doubt please steam photo charter organisers.

Foremarke Hall resplendent in BR black yesterday

This has been something of a well kept secret and few members of the railway were aware of this change except those who were involved in the re-painting and anybody who caught sight of her out on the line yesterday for her first day of running in lined BR black in preservation. Everybody who saw her yesterday commented on how good she looks.