Pit Perils

Next Sunday, the clocks go back an hour, so cleaning locos won't be performed almost entirely in the dark. Not so last Sunday of course, It was pitch black when I turned up to clean Foremarke Hall and it stayed that way for quite some time.  Once again it was one of those days when dawn didn't really happen, it just slowly got less and less grey.  It rained a bit too. 

Foremarke Hall and 2807

Foremarke Hall had been out on a dining train the night before.  The crew of the evening dining train don't get to escape until the wee small hours, so they are excused ash pan cleaning duties which of course means that the morning crew get to do it instead. 

Damping down the ash pan before emptying it

 The bonus for Chris who was on a fireman training turn is that when he arrived, he found that Foremarke Hall still had 80 PSI on the pressure gauge, so there was no mad rush to get the fire lit.  Getting Foremarke Hall ready to go passed uneventfully and soon enough she was off.

Foremarke Hall is in there somewhere

Andy finally shut the cylinder drain cocks in time for Chris to collect the token from Peter in the Signal Box.

Chris receives the token from Peter

Once Foremarke Hall had disappeared off down the line, it was time to find something useful to do until she arrived back for disposal.  I made the mistake of saying 'yes' when Ian asked me if I had gloves, ear defenders and safety glasses with me.  The new DMU vehicle had a connecting door frame that was more rust than steel and needed some therapy with a needle gun:

DMU door frame

 The far end of the frame in the above photo is the lower part when installed and consequently where any water will settle.  Needless to say that is the end that had rusted the most and therefore needed the most work.  The forecast for the rest of the day was for sunshine and heavy showers.  I took the view that I'd be better off shifting the frame into the shed to try and remove the rust with a needle gun, otherwise it would rust up again as quickly as I could get it off. Once you've got ear defenders on, you disappear off into your own little world of near silence. I found myself pausing only to demist my safety glasses occasionally or when people passed by suggesting that they were off to make a brew.

At lunch time I took a quick tour around the shed to try and spot what might have happened to our ongoing restoration projects:

44027 now has coupling rods

 44027 may have had the coupling rods in place for some time now and I just hadn't noticed, but I don't recollect having seen them before.  35006 on the other hand, had black driving wheels until recently.  I thought that they looked pretty smart in the first place, but one of them has been done in primer again

35006

 More work has taken place in the cab too, the vacuum gauge wasn't there last time I looked:

Vacuum gauge

 I'm pretty sure that some of the copper pipe work is new as well.

35006 cab

Meanwhile, Ian's Peckett is making progress.  I remember grinding the paint off of her coupling rods some while ago, Ian is now bringing them up to a high shine.

Ian working his Peckett's coupling rods

Meanwhile the other Ian and Dan go about re-installing the reverser  counter weight on the Peckett.

Speaking of Dan, he let me know that on Saturday we'd had a visitor from Australia on the railway.  He had recognised one or two people who sometimes feature in this blog and wanted to know if 'blogman' was about. Well sadly I wasn't, I do occasionally get time off for good behaviour you know. Not very often, as I'm rarely good.  Ok, I'm never good, it's just that sometimes I don't get caught.  Anyway, I'm sorry to have missed you, I hope you enjoyed your day at the GWSR. 
 
By this time, the day was over for Foremarke Hall, and she returned to the ash pit for disposal

Chris empties the smoke box, Ben fills the tender with coal

Ben demonstrates how he managed to remain dry on Foremarke Hall despite the heavy showers

Pits of course are fairly dangerous items.  It would be easy for the unwary to fall into one for instance, never mind the many hazards associated with working underneath a loco.  Even when the loco has moved off, being in the pit can be perilous as Ian discovered. Whilst I had been in the pit extracting the ash from Foremarke Hall's ash pan, I noticed that the water levels were rising. The pump had stopped working even though it was switched on (I did think to look across to the switch just in case somebody was winding me up).  After Foremarke Hall had safely moved off, Ian decided to have a go at fixing the pump.  He made the mistake of picking it up by the out flow pipe which promptly separated itself from the body of the pump.  The pump now freed of what ever had been blocking it suddenly sprang into life spraying water into the air with some force all over the hapless Ian.  Having managed to keep himself dry throughout the heavy downpours of the day, he was now soaked through.

Ian having just been soaked by the pump which is still churning water up into the air

Ian was last seen clinging grimly to the heater in the mess coach trying to dry his clothes out before heading home.

Ian raising steam

Blogaversary

An excellent working knowledge of steam locomotive operation and maintenance coupled with a literary flair and witty yet amusing written style, capable of captivating an audience and holding them spell bound on the edge of their seats are all essential skills for the modern blogger in the GWSR's steam locomotive dept. Why on earth then did the GWSR steam loco dept's management team choose to ask me to maintain their blog, because I can do none of these things! At school I considered it an achievement if I managed to hold a pen the right way round and my hand writing bore more than a passing resemblance to a spider coming home on a Saturday night after falling into an ink well. I struggle to even turn out a palatable cup of tea using a domestic kettle, never mind managing the boiler on a full size steam locomotive.  I can only conclude that they thought I would cause less damage doing this than anything else. If you have a square peg, find a square hole to put it in was probably what they were thinking.  Regardless, the first issue of this blog burst out into an unsuspecting blogosphere exactly one year ago today. It was a rather tentative start and I have since settled into a style (for want of a better word) that is rather more like the real me.  That's definitely not a good thing, but it's what you're stuck with I'm afraid.

This seems like an opportunity to reflect on what I've learnt from this experience.  Firstly, I had expected the audience to be fairly small and to consist largely of members of the GWSR in general and the steam loco dept in particular. Far more people check the blog each day than could possibly be accounted for by the members of the steam loco dept, in fact a fair proportion of the readers are not even in the UK (approximately 15% of you are reading this abroad).  Although the obvious English speaking countries (USA, Canada & Australia) feature in the top 10, you may be surprised to learn that Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Latvia & China are in there too.  Less frequent visitors, but no less welcome arrive from all corners of the globe.  I noticed a few hits from Moldova during the week.  I have no idea where Moldova is, in fact if you'd asked me before hand, I'd have guessed that it was a fictitious country used as the lair of a James Bond villain. I presume that these are mostly visits by ex-pats, but it would be nice to think that our railway has a following amongst the native inhabitants of some of these far flung places. My apologies to the good people of Moldova for my ignorance, apparently it is a country of just under 4 million inhabitants sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. It's also interesting to note that many of the people who visit this blog have come from one of the other GWSR blogs, so the interest in the railway is more general than just that of the steam loco dept.  35006 and 4270 are popular strings entered into search engines that lead people here, so it's nice to know that our active restoration projects are creating such an interest. Now that the 2013 operating season is drawing to a close, I will try to post more updates on those. I have quite a collection of photos of the restoration of 4270 courtesy of Ian Carpenter that I have been saving for a rainy day.  Several of the members of the steam loco dept have been recognised by complete strangers whilst on the railway which I find quite gratifying. We market ourselves as being the 'friendly attraction in the Cotswolds' and if this blog helps our visitors feel they have a more personal connection with the crews of our trains and encourages them to strike up conversations then that has to be a good thing. Don't be afraid to come up and say hello to the crew of your train next time you visit the GWSR, very few of us bite.  

I've never been entirely convinced that maintaining this blog and learning to become a fireman aren't mutually incompatible and I find myself switching out of 'blog mode' when I have a shovel in my hand and switching back into 'blog mode' at other times. It probably makes for less interesting reading and certainly makes for fewer photos, but I like to think that I'm managing to keep all the plates spinning.  If you hear a tinkling sound in the distance, you'll know that I've dropped one.

Saturday was another official firing lesson day for me, so once again checking my camera for photos later revealed that there were embarrassingly few.  The day started well, not only was Foremarke Hall my allotted loco, but I had not one but three cleaners on hand.  The fireman is supposed to manage the cleaners, but Jonathan, Paul and Laurence all know the ropes so I left them to it and seeing as it was a cold grey and slightly drizzly morning, once I had got the fire lit I decided to take full advantage of the situation and warmed myself in front of the fire whilst giving the copper pipes on the back head some therapy with the Brasso.   Not only did they make an excellent job of cleaning Foremarke Hall, but they even went off and fetched breakfast:

Jonathan and Paul having just fetched breakfast

  Though it has to be said that Jonathan's choice of breakfast wasn't for the faint hearted:

The three B's, Black Pudding, Beans and Bacon

 Mind you, it didn't stop him from getting up into the tender and shoveling coal forward straight after finishing that lot:

He'd have used the rake in the bottom left hand corner of the photo, but the handle is broken

Meanwhile Paul got on with the task of oiling up Foremarke Hall.  After his recent difficulties with a certain 'really useful engine', he decided to use a step ladder rather than risk venturing onto the running plate.

Paul at work

 We're in the low season now, and the blue timetable has come into effect on most weekends.  The downside is that there is only one steam locomotive running, but the major bonus point is that the train does the full length of the line, including the Northwards extension out to Laverton and back.  I'm struggling to remember the last time that I fired out to Laverton, so I was quite looking forward to it.  The blue timetable is full on, without any breaks at any of the stations, so in order to comply with the 'Working Time Regulations', we work a split shift with a relief crew taking over for one of the round trips.  Some weeks ago, Cliff had volunteered to be the relief fireman and had asked me which trip I'd like him to cover.  It was here that I had made the most monumental blunder.  Without stopping to think about it, I suggested he take the middle one.  The blunder was that if I'd checked the timetable I'd have noticed that the middle trip was down as a fish and chip special.  I was going to miss lunch.

Paul and Cliff

The run down to Cheltenham and back was uneventful, though the leaky water tower pipe at Cheltenham is still in need of some TLC:

Ade makes the most of the free hand washing facilities

Last year at about this time, there was a 'race the train' event from Cheltenham to Winchcombe and back, with runners heading out over the Cotswold hills and the train taking the usual though rather longer route around them. Some more adventurous members of the steam loco dept had suggested putting out tracks along route that the runners take to make it a bit fairer, though I'm not sure how our locos would have coped with going up one in three gradients or how the brakes would have coped coming back down.  Anyway a similar event had been organised for this year and then cancelled at short notice.  The message that it had been cancelled hadn't quite got out to all the participants and one poor soul turned up expecting to run. She gamely decided to crack on and go ahead on her own anyway.

The loneliness of the long distance runner

She waited until we were due off and then set off.  I hope she made it ok, with no marshalls and water stops out along the route, it would be easy to get lost or dehydrate.

Once we'd done the round trip, and got back to Toddington, it was time for our relief crew to take over.  Cliff had delegated the task of wielding the shovel to Jonathan:

Jonathan practices leaning on his shovel

I handed Foremerke Hall over to him with a good fire/pressure/water levels and I'm pleased to say that is exactly how he returned it to me later on when he got back.

Foremarke Hall... absconding with my fish and chips

If you look carefully, you'll notice that Paul is still on the footplate driving Foremarke Hall.  He had decided that the relief driver would take over for the third trip.  I already knew that the relief driver would be Chris and hitherto I had supposed that he would be covering the middle turn, so I wouldn't have to fire for for him.  Not so.  Although Chris is a very warm, friendly and even amusing character, he is also one of our inspectors and therefore not exactly the person a novice would want to have to fire for. The expression 'no pressure there then' could easily have taken on an extra and very much unwanted meaning if I wasn't careful.  Chris however is used to having to cope with rookie crew members and very quickly set me at ease, so my initial apprehension soon proved to be unfounded.  As with all good things, the day seemed to come an end far too quickly and it seemed like no time at all had elapsed before we were back at Toddington disposing Foremarke Hall:

Chris and Ade strike nonchalant poses by the water column, Jonathan on the tender

 One of the many possible causes of poor steaming is a poor seal on the smoke box door, so when I inspect the smoke box each morning before a trip, I make sure that it is done up good and tight. I had obviously done it up a bit tighter than Jonathan would have liked as he struggled to get it opened again:

Let the train cause the strain

  Whilst Chris was refilling the tender with coal, Jonathan organised an impromptu  photoshoot.  He did explain why he wanted to do this, but I can't remember why and even at the time it made no sense. It involved a small trolley with George & Dan on it, Tina pushing and all apparently being chased by Foremarke Hall.  Not being one to turn down a photo opportunity I grabbed a shot too.

It still makes no sense to me, but the expressions are amusing

 And finally, I was informed later by Ian that he had decided which was the best GWSR blog of the many that we now have.  My chest swelled with pride at this unexpected accolade, but before I could start one of those tearful Oscar style acceptance speeches in which I thank everybody I could think of, he went on to say that "the best read of the lot is the GWR Lineside Drainage Management blog".  The lineside drainage team are of course yet another example of the GWSR's unsung heroes.  They may be largely invisible to most of our visitors, but without their dedication and hard work, we'd have more of the catastrophic land slips like the ones that we suffered at Gotherington and Chicken Curve.  They could probably come up with a better Oscar acceptance speech than I could too.

The Demise of the Washing Up Fairy

J.M. Barrie, the well known author of 'Peter Pan gave the following line to his lead character: "Every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead."  Well it appears to be true according to a notice that has appeared in the mess coach by the sink:

This is grave news indeed.  If the situation regarding the demise of fairies continues at this rate, then it will only be a matter of time before the ash pan fairy and the smoke box fairy succumb.

Last weekend was the 'Diesel Railcar Weekend'.  You might well be forgiven for thinking that a consequence of that would be that we'd have no steam locos running.  Not so, Foremarke Hall was deemed to be an honourary DMU for the occasion and was allowed out anyway.  As she was the only steam loco out, it was a bit quiet first thing on Sunday morning as only her crew were present, all the DMU crews not needing to turn up until five minutes before they were due off shed. 

Foremarke Hall, long before sunrise and even longer before any DMU crews would arrive

Foremarke Hall all revved up and ready to go

Foremarke Hall is something of a Prima Donna and decided to upstage the DMU's by concealing them and herself in clouds of steam as she made her way towards her stock:

The bubble car tries to peek around the steam screen generated by Foremarke Hall

Once again my spy in the 35006 camp has proved to be an invaluable source of information. He sent the message that some work had been undertaken in the cab and that a couple of instruments now adorn the backhead:

Steam heat gauge

Steam chest pressure gauge

The rest of the day was spent in the company of Ade and Tina on the footplate of Foremarke Hall.  Much of the day seemed to involve animals one way or another.  To start off with, Greet tunnel was full with a badling of ducks at the Cheltenham end which all took flight upon our approach. I'll confess to having Googled for the collective noun for ducks to discover that there are a dozen different ones to choose from, though some depend on whether they are in flight or on water. No photos at the time I'm afraid as I was in firing rather than blogging mode, but here are a couple of photos at the same location later in the day:

The next run through, but the ducks were long gone by then

Coming back the other way

I'm now wandering what sort of recipes I could find for roasting road kill rail kill duck in the smoke box of a steam loco.  Continuing with the animal theme, a herd (didn't bother to look that one up) of cows in a field near Gotherington took it into their heads to race the train.  They were no match for Foremarke Hall of course, even though she was limited to speeds defined in the GWSR's Light Rail Order. The cows had no notion of speed limits though so they simply raced on as fast as their legs would carry them until they reached the edge of the field. 

Beef on the hoof

Meanwhile the very next field contained a hurtle (one of the eleven possible collective nouns) of sheep which seemed to be entirely oblivious of any other possible meanings of the word 'hurtle' and just milled about eating grass as usual:

Non-hurtling sheep

 I mentioned last week that Chris had made firing look easy.  Tina not only made it look easy but managed to casually drink a cup of tea at the same time:

Tea for Tina

In what I believe was a first, I had made her tea the correct colour and with the right amount of sugar. I even put the milk in last.  It looks like I've mastered domestic sized kettles, much more work required on the four foot eight and a half inch gauge ones though.

Considering that it was in theory a DMU weekend, we didn't seem to see much of them as we went about.  We crossed the 117 at Winchcombe:

Neil prepares to collect the token as the 117 arrives at Winchcombe

As for the bubble car, we occasionally caught sight of it at Toddington, but I think it was hiding from us.  It was probably scared that Foremarke Hall would put up another smoke screen like she had earlier:

The bubble car hides on platform 2 at Toddington

It seems that the ash pan fairy and the smoke box fairy were both away at the funeral of the washing up fairy, so we wound up doing them ourselves.  Emptying out a hot smoke box on a breezy day can be a daunting task, but Tina was ready to deal with any airborne particles of ash:

Tina looking like she's preparing to rob a bank...

...but only finds ash instead of cash

And finally, I bumped into Chris Bristow at Toddington between trips.  It was nice to catch up as our paths hadn't crossed for a while.  He was keen to know what I thought of the 'Bridges to Broadway' share offer that he had put a great deal of time into organising over the summer.  If you are interested in supporting the GWSR financially, then please do consider purchasing shares in the scheme.

Classified

They say that you shouldn't get dressed in the dark.  The same is true of cleaning steam locomotives.  When the sun finally did come up on Sunday morning, I spotted plenty of bits that I had missed by the light of my head torch and had to go back to finish the job.  Still, the lack of light first thing in the morning allowed for an atmospheric photo or two of the day's locos in the dark:

8274 and Foremarke Hall snoozing on shed

When the sun finally did deign to put in an appearance, at least it made a bit of an effort:

The sun rises over Foremarke Hall

I was booked on to clean Foremarke Hall, but as nobody was rostered to clean the 8F, I found myself cleaning both.  They were rather grimy from the day before as well so there was plenty to do.  Neither was completely sparkling by the time they came to go off shed, but they did at least look distinctly better than when I started.

Once they had both disappeared and I'd popped into the Flag & Whistle for breakfast, it was time to look around and see what was happening.  The David Page shed was bereft of life, though signs of activity from the day before were to be found:

35006 now has a handrail on one of it's smoke deflectors

Although the inside of the David Page shed bears no resemblance to the inside of Old Oak Common shed in the 1950's, we still had a pleasing line up of GWR motive power on hand:

L->R, 4270, 2807 & 5542

So where was everybody?  Well as it turns out, this coming weekend is the Diesel Railcar and Steam weekend.  The steam locos benefit from being cleaned before each working day, so of course they will always look superb, but the same is not true of the diesel railcars.  Consequently a good DMU polishing session was in progress.  DMU's have a lot more bodywork than a steam loco, so it takes quite a bit of elbow grease to buff them up to a high gloss.  Not only that, but the Cotswold Diesel Railcar Group have bought another one:

Newly arrived 51360 in BR blue

It wasn't the new car though that was receiving attention, but the three car class 117.  With just a bit of work, it scrubs up quite nicely.  You could certainly tell which bits had been done and which bits hadn't:

No doubt as to how far we had got

Meanwhile, Foremarke Hall and 8274 made their way up and down the line, kicking out smoke.  We feared that our good work might be undone before the the Diesel Railcar & Steam weekend arrived.

Foremarke Hall sets off from Toddington

After a while, some tired of applying good old fashioned elbow grease and turned to 21st Century technology to polish the DMU:

Neil and George buffing up the DMU the easy way

At this point in the proceedings, things become a little tricky for the writer of this blog.  The driver of Foremarke Hall was on his driving exam.  I knew that he had passed out as he shouted down from the cab 'will you be joining us on the next trip then?'.  It would have been churlish to have said no, so I did indeed join him & Fireman Chris for the last trip.  Unfortunately the newly qualified driver has been overcome by a severe bout of shyness that I had hitherto not suspected, and he has requested that I keep his name and picture out of the blog:

Here he is being congratulated by Inspector, Chris Irving

Later on, here he is, the only qualified driver on the footplate with his hand on the regulator as we set off to Cheltenham:

Mystery hand on the regulator

At least he has managed to lay his hand on the regulator which is rather more than can be said of his erstwhile instructor who apparently couldn't find it when on the footplate the day before. 

Chris was keen to see me fire and threatened to take photos to upload onto the blog. well that wasn't going to happen of course, but regardless, Chris fired to Cheltenham and I fired back. Chris of course only passed out as a fireman earlier this year, but he still managed to make it all look easy.  I rather like this study of Chris by the light of Foremarke Hall's fire as we neared the exit of Greet tunnel:

Chris making it look easy

For the return journey, we had enough steam and water.  We didn't blow off either.  I wouldn't like to say that I had made it look easy though.  Our new driver had a bit of a reception committee waiting to congratulate him:

Everybody else had already gone to the pub to wait for him there

We now have new instructions in place for loco disposal which start with the premise that we come off the train within 20 psi of the red line, but not blowing off and with three quarters of a glass.  As I was firing back, it fell to me to achieve this task:

Happy with that

Needless to say, I won't be able to do that when I have my next firing lesson, but at least I've managed it once.