Soggy Matches

An interesting pair of curios to start off with, following on from the photos of the line in the 1950's and 1960's a few weeks ago, I am pleased to be able to present a couple of photos of receipts for goods shipped to Toddington in 1951 and 1952.  I imagine that these are pretty rare survivors and are extremely interesting artifacts from the railway's history.

Invoice of "Forwarded Goods Traffic"

Nearly £92 would have been a considerable sum of money in 1951,

Appendix to Goods General Account

Note that both are on GWR headed forms even though dated in 1951 and 1952 (the railways having been nationalised in 1948).

Both the above photos are courtesy of Donna Ludlow.

Foremarke Hall set off for Tyseley to be reunited with her boiler on Wednesday.  I have photos from two different sources:

Peter had been helping out with the new barrow crossing at Toddington when he noticed Foremarke Hall go past on a low loader:

Steam cleaning the new barrow crossing

First Foremarke Hall set off one way round on the low loader...

...then after a while she is turned around and off she goes again

Apparently the first time round, the driver of the low-loader measured how high Foremarke Hall was once loaded and discovered that she would be too tall for some of the bridges that she had to pass under and so he turned her round the other way so that the cab would be at the lowest point of the trailer and consequently have just enough clearance.  I dread to think what would have happened if he hadn't done that and he had clouted Station Road Bridge at Broadway with Foremarke Hall.  I think it fair to say that words would have been said.

The above three photos courtesy of Peter Gutteridge.

John provide several photos too:

Foremarke Hall in the car park

On the low-loader the first time...

...and once again the other way around.

 John also provided me with some photos showing the progress with Foremarke Hall's boiler at Tyseley:

Much of the backhead firebox outer wrapper removed

New one having been shaped

Ready to be fitted

After fitting

 There is a new ashpan under construction for Foremarke Hall.  The following was sent to me by John:

"New ashpan under construction

It is the traditional flat bottom pan but with improvements by John Hancock

1. The ashpan is narrower at the top just like the hopper pan. This makes fitting and detaching easier as the nuts are outside the ashpan

2. Made of heavier material, 8mm sides 12mm bottom.

3. It has four damper doors in get air into the pan. However they will still be operated by two levers front & back. So the two fronts will open together and likewise the back. (At least that is the plan).

4. There will be hopper doors in the bottom so as the ash can be dumped out. The plan is to use the current rocker arm already fitted to the engine.

5. Once construction is finished it will come to Toddy for us to fit a ashpan sprinkler for which the team is busy procuring some bits.

6. When Tysley are ready it will go there for fitment"

New ashpan

New ashpan

New ashpan

The previous 10 photos all courtesy of John Cruxon.

Leaping forward to Saturday, that was our first operating day of the season and 5542, the Planet's Favourite Prairie had the honour of hauling the trains.

So good to see one of our locos in steam on our line again

10:00 and off she went, bang on time

In the David Page shed, roads 6 & 7 have been emptied of stock and a start made on removing the track

Never seen it so empty

Exposing the sleepers

Ade knocking out the keys

The 4F which is usually tucked away out of sight in the David Page shed is now happily sat on road 2 and is easily visible from the Malvern side of trains leaving Toddington towards Cheltenham Race Course.

First time outdoors for some time for the 4F

 The bricks for 2807's new brick arch were moved to where they would be needed on Saturday and according to Ben's Facebook page, they were successfully installed today and a warming fire put in, ready for the race trains

Gilbert wheeling the bricks towards 2807.

2807 & 7820 bask in the sun, warming fire in 7820

Tim makes 7820 gleam

"Quick, look busy, Ray's here with his camera"

I spent the day needle gunning parts of Dinmore Manor's real tender:

Half way through one side

Ready for painting

The other side being primed

 Later, 5542 returned with her crew after a successful day's work.

Arrived at Cheltenham Race Course

The view from the footplate at Toddington

Dan made a bit of a faux pas during the course of the day. He managed to knock his box of matches into the bucket of water on the footplate. I say "his box of matches", in fact, they were his mum's. Dan removed the matches from the bucket and placed them on the warming tray to dry out, but the combustible stuff on the heads of the matches just fell off, the water having unstuck them. Hopefully Dan's mum doesn't read this blog and won't find out what became of her matches. I wonder if Sunday lunch was delayed or even cancelled because she couldn't light the oven.

The soggy matches

The above three photos courtesy of Dan Wigg.

Ian (l) and Dan with 5542 on the ash pit

Paul (l) and Mike emptying the pit.

And finally, more news on the 2874 front. The trust that is aiming to restore 2874 to working order has had its membership augmented by Sir William McAlpine who has joined as the group's patron. Sir William is a past owner of Flying Scotsman and currently chairs the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, the Dart Valley Railway and the Railway Heritage Trust.

"Sir William McAlpine" by DAEaton - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_William_McAlpine.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Sir_William_McAlpine.jpg

Hanging on in Quiet Desperation is the English Way

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.