Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway Steam Loco Dept Blog

Saturday saw yours truly taking his biennial fireman's written exam. Having once managed to cram into your head enough information about the anatomy of steam locos and all the hand signals that you might encounter (well most of them anyway) isn't considered enough, you have to repeat the process every two years. Sadly that's probably a good thing, I frequently struggle to remember stuff from 2 days ago, never mind 2 years ago. Anyway, "I entered the training room, answered a number of written questions and then left" doesn't really make for an interesting blog post. Plan A had been to provide you with a post regarding the upcoming "Cotswold Festival of Steam" gala on May 23rd until May 25th, including news of the second guest loco which I had hoped would have been confirmed by now. Sadly the confirmation has yet to arrive, so although the article is already written, I can't post it just yet. Hopefully I'll be able to hit the "publish" button soon.

So much for plan A, we'll have to go with plan B which is to cover the few things that I managed to catch up with after suffering the harrowing ordeal of the biennial fireman's exam.

Something that I held back from a few weeks ago was that Len and I briefly reunited 2874 with her smoke box number plate and one of her cabside number plates.

There was no doubting where the smoke box plate should live, but the cabside could have come from either the driver's or fireman's side. I tried it in both positions and the holes lined up perfectly with the ones on the driver's side and didn't match so well with the ones on the fireman's side, leading me to suspect that it came from the driver's side.

2874 cabside plate tried on the driver's side...

...and on the fireman's side.

No doubt about where that one goes.

2874 wearing both plates

Thank you very much to Roger from Cotswold Steam Preservation (2874's sister loco, 2807) who kindly loaned me the fixing bolts for the plates.

That last photo was used in the current (issue 438) of Steam Railway Magazine to accompany an article on the new charitable trust recently set up to oversee the restoration of 2874. More information will eventually appear on 2874's own website which is under construction as I write this.

Some work was still progressing on getting 2807 ready for action, a number of people were busy waxing and polishing her tender:

(l-r), Stuart, Paul, Mike & Mike

Meanwhile Clive and Eleanor gave the smoke box some therapy.

Eleanor smartens up the smoke box

After the Pirates headline from last week, I thought that we'd tracked down Captain Hook on top of the boiler of 2807, but it turns out that Ian had just left the tool for preventing mudhole doors dropping into the boiler lying around.

Could have sworn that I heard a clock ticking somewhere

Dinmore Manor has returned after a successful visit to the Great Central Railway. 4270 has gone to the Llangollen Railway for their gala, probably on the same low loader on which Dinmore Manor arrived. The task now, was to get as much of Dinmore Manor's winter maintenance programme as possible completed before the start of the season:

Sorting out the axle weights was first on the list. The process involved Rob jackied up one wheel at a time:

Rob jacks up the wheel

Then Mike inserted a feeler gauge under the wheel. The wheel was lowered down, and then jacked up again, noting the weight at which the feeler gauge just became free. The process is not too far removed from that of setting your ignition timing on your car/motorbike in the days of contact breakers.

Mike pulls the feeler gauge free

Once all the weights on each wheel have been noted, it's time to go around adjusting the nuts on the springs to rebalance the weight distribution. You then go back to the beginning and re-weigh every wheel to see how close they are to correct this time, re-tweak the suspension adjusting nuts etc ad infinitum.

Mike & Matt giving the adjusting nut n one of the springs a turn with a big spanner

Reconnecting the tender was on the list of things to be done as well, along with removing the coal that came back in the tender so that the coal space could be painted.

Paul fetched up the FLT, several people in the cab shovel coal and miss the firehole door by a wide margin

The inspectors tried to convince me that they only ever turn up to drink tea and eat their lunch:

Chris (l) and Jeff inspecting their lunch

They couldn't fool me though, I caught them both later on wielding paint brushes on Dinmore Manor's real tender

Chris gets on with the grey undercoat...

...whilst Jeff makes a start on the top coat

Meanwhile at the other end of the tender, Ralph got on with getting the buffers between it and the loco ready for fitting

Ralph at work

buffers stood on the floor.

Foremarke Hall is still with us, Phil spent a while building up the base of one of the cab handrails with weld and grinding it smooth.

Phil looking pleased with his work.

And finally, we'll soon be having contractors working in the David Page shed to install the new pit, reinforced pads for lifting jacks and concreting the floor on roads 6 and 7. Consequently all the stock on those two roads will shortly be evicted from the shed and have to live out in the yard. I see that the LMS diesel shunter and the NRM's 4F, 44027 are taking no chances and have put on their coats ready to face the worst that the Cotswold winter weather can throw at them.

That little lot should keep them warm and dry.

It was another busy day at Toddington on Saturday. Permanent Way were working hard on reinstating the track in the station area and the Steam Loco Dept was in the throes of getting the home fleet serviceable for the coming season. Just to give you an idea, here is a view of the car park, remember that this was a non-operating day, all those cars will belong to volunteers. It takes a lot of hard work to keep a railway like the GWSR running.

Sometimes I think we need a bigger car park.

Last week I mentioned that Steve was in the workshop creating a tool to clean the superheater headers. I received an email during the week pointing out that it was a tool to polish the superheater element seats in the header, not the inside of the superheater header itself. Well now you know. That job has since been completed.

Whilst we're on the subject of Foremarke Hall, most of her front coupling has been replaced, as well as the front draw hook.

In the machine shop, about to have the shackle pressed and pinned in place

Later on, after pressing, complete with the new draw hook

I didn't need to ask if it was one of the run of draw hooks manufactured by Dinmore Manor Locomotive LTD, the draw hook told its own story.

DML

Fitted and ready for painting.

As you're probably aware, 4270 is about to pack her bags and head off to the Llangollen Railway for their Steel, Steam & Stars IV gala. What we hadn't been aware of, was quite how imminently she would be departing. Needless to say, there were still plenty of jobs that needed doing to get her ready. The large red button with the friendly word "Panic" on the front was pressed. Apart from anything else, 4270 was still "winterised". I joined in with helping de-winterise her.

The first task on the list was to get the sanding pipes fitted at the sand boxes at the front end of the loco. I had thought that the sand boxes would be outside the frames and easily accessible. Well the rear ones are, the front ones are between the frames and a bit more tricky to get at.

One of the sand boxes, awaiting the fitting of a sand pipe

Post-job, all sand pipes present and correct.

We never bother with putting sand in the sand boxes as our gradients aren't steep enough to warrant using sand to aid adhesion to the rails. The Llangollen and West Somerset Railways that 4270 will shortly be visiting on the other hand may well appreciate the fact that the sand pipes are now in place.

The next job on the list was to refit the injectors. After a bit of a hunt, they turned up in one of the tool boxes in the cab. Once again, access to the injector bodies was a little restricted, but we got them fitted ok.

Injectors hiding in a tool box.

A warming fire was required prior to a steam test on Sunday. It's usually considered good practice to fill the boiler with water before lighting the warming fire, so we got a hose pipe attached to the blow down valve to make that happen.

Blow down valve.

Filling the boiler with a hose pipe takes a remarkably long time. That gave us an opportunity to crack on with a few more odd jobs such as refitting the fireman's side window which had been re-glazed. Once again, it turned out to be one of those jobs that sounds simple, but in practice turned out to be a bit fiddly.

The re-glazed window, ready to be refitted

I'm only guessing here, but I suspect that the window was broken when somebody closed it whilst one of the fire irons that lives on the fireman's side water tank was protruding back into the cab, you can see how it might happen.

The hole awaiting the return of the window.

The fiddly bit was that the three holes for the lower hinge to be attached to were largely concealed by one of the water tanks. The gap between the water tank on the left and the cab on the right was much smaller than I would have liked. Ian suggested the the best method was to use a pair of pointy nose pliers and insert the bolt from the outside. I tried this, dropping the bolt into the gap three times and managing to find it again only twice, once it ended up on the apron between the pits, and once in the pit itself. Heaven knows where it finished up the third time. After that, we switched to plan B, Ade inserted the bolt from inside the cab and I waited outside with a nut held in the jaws of a pair of pliers. Amazingly this worked, we didn't drop a single nut or split washer.

Finally, lower hinge bolted into place

Window fitted, Ade looks pleased with a good job well done

With the boiler finally filled, it was time to light a warming fire. Jonathan needed the practice, so all I had to do was watch him and make sure he did it right. There is a long list of things to check before you can light a warming fire, one of which is that that the grate is intact and free of foreign objects. Well in this case, one of the fire bars has been lifted and was lying loose on the grate. There was nothing for it, Jonathan would have to go in and refit it.

Jonathan trying to refit the fire bar.

After around ten minutes of hearing profanities emerge from the fire box, but no Jonathan, I went in to investigate for myself. I spent a further ten minutes without any joy, the gap was too narrow for the fire bar no matter how much you ~~hit~~ encouraged it with the coal pick or tried to shuffle the fire bars around etc. There was nothing for it, but to remove half the front row of fire bars and take a grinding wheel to the bits of clinker that had built up on sides of some of them which was preventing them from going back into place.

Jonathan grinding clinker off of the fire bars

I took pity on Jonathan and went off to fetch him a cup of tea, when I returned a few minutes later, he had somehow persuaded Steve and Martin to finish off the grinding for him, Steve even refitted them back into the grate.

Lighting a warming fire usually requires coal, the bunker was empty as the insides had recently been repainted. I fetched a couple of wheel barrow loads round, Jonathan shoveled them up onto the footplate.

Jonathan shoveling coal, Martin holds the wheelbarrow

Not too much later, and we finally get smoke at the chimney.

Sending smoke signals to the Cotswolds

Phil is supposed to be Jonathan's firing instructor, so really he should have been watching him start the warming fire. He turned up at the very end to make sure that everything was as it should be.

Jonathan looks happy now that he's finally got the fire lit, Phil just looks happy.

Work has continued on Dinmore Manor's tender, the main work was riveting several brackets in place.

Step 1, heat rivet until cherry red

Mark with the flame thrower

Tim takes the rivet and passes it to Ian

Ian inserts the rivet

Mike uses pneumatic press to turn over the end of the rivet

The pneumatic press was louder than a Motorhead concert, ear defenders were very necessary.

Some time later, when the noisy tasks had abated, Chris and Tim cracked on with applying grey undercoat onto the tender frames.

Chris (l) and Tim.

Towards the end of the day, I was summoned to take a picture of the tender frames with brackets riveted in place and the two replacement plates in place, but not yet riveted. It was even suggested to me that a perch on top of Foremarke Hall's tender might provide a better view. Whilst I was scrambling up on the tender, everybody disappeared from view as they didn't want to appear in the photo.

Dinmore Manor's tender frames

The two new plates are the two just beyond the drag box that are not parallel to the frames. Deliberately not parallel I should add.

Once they thought I had finished, Mark, Mike & Ian returned to admire their work.

Well I couldn't miss an opportunity like that could I.

View inside the frames of riveted bracket and new piece of plate.

The 2807 group has come up with a fund raising plan. It came to my attention as they had placed an advert for it on the wall of the gents in the yard at Toddington. Not everybody is going to see it in there, at least, I'd like to think that not everybody would see it in there. Hopefully it will get a bit more attention by posting it here.

2807 prize draw

I should point out, that most of our locomotives have owning groups that would be delighted to sell you shares, as well of course as the GWSR share scheme. I plan to do a feature in the not too distant future outlining how you would go about obtaining shares if you wish.

You may recollect that the 35006 gang moved the centre con rod about in the shed last week. It was in a pretty grubby state. They have spent a lot of time polishing it until it gleamed. To be quite honest, nobody other than the driver when oiling up underneath will see it anyway, but it does look good now. If any of our passengers get to see it when 35006 is running, then something will have gone seriously wrong.

35006's centre con-rod.

I reported last week, that the 35006 gang were hydraulic testing the cylinder drain cocks, well that's what they told me they were, apparently they were the cylinder pressure relief valves.

Clive had a good day, he started off as a pirate, only one leg

Ready to ~~walk~~ hop the plank

Clive is in charge of the oil store and has arranged for new oil tanks to be installed to replace the old oil bunds which have been found to be very wasteful of oil.

New oil tanks

The colour coding, green and red is nothing to do with traffic lights. Green is for motion oil, red for steam oil. At least I presume it's that way round, I should have asked one of them.

During the course of the day, hand pumps have been fitted to allow the oil to be extracted from the tanks

Steve (Not to be Moved), Clive & Ade fitting the pumps

There are of course now colour coded oil cans on each loco.

New steam oil can on 4270.

Finally, after an afternoon painting the inside of 2807's tender, Clive emerged looking like a panda. There were no end of suggestions as to how he might have a acquired what appears at first sight to be a black eye.

On the plus side, his missing leg has miraculously healed itself

Not long before clocking off time, the weather closed in for a while, cold, wet, white stuff descended on us. It only did so briefly, but there was an impressive rainbow once it had passed by.

Sadly no pot of gold was discovered.

And finally, a bit of a treat. I am greatly indebted to Len who has managed to unearth the following photos of our line from back in the days of its previous ownership. Not only that, but he has made contact with the copyright holder and obtained permission for me to use them here.

All photos from here on are courtesy of Roger Carpenter. Please do not take any of these and repost them elsewhere. Should you wish to purchase copies, then Roger can be contacted at:

Roger Carpenter
407 Highters Heath Lane
Hollywood
Birmingham
B14 4TR