Riding the Gravy Train.

It's probably no secret that the cushiest cleaning turn to get is the evening dining train.  The deal is that you pitch up towards the end of the normal day's timetable, help dispose of train 1 (empty the smokebox and ashpan) and then get to ride out on it for a couple of trips between Winchcombe and Cheltenham, sedately hauling the dining train into the sunset. Not only that, but you get a free meal too. There's supposed to be no such thing as a 'free lunch', but I'm struggling to spot the catch here.  Before that though, I had a little time to wander around and record the activities of the steam loco dept at Toddington:

I rather liked the symbolism of the ex-GWR prairie reflected in the tender of the Stanier designed 8F.  Stanier of course served for many years on the GWR, finally becoming the works manager at Swindon before being poached by the LMS.

Neil got in on the act too

At 50p per shovel full.....

Progress has been made on 4270, I noticed that some of the boiler cladding now has a top coat of paint applied:

4270's boiler cladding

Work was taking place on 35006 as well:

Re-fitting the driver's side motion

A good day's work

I had been informed in advance that Ian had been revisiting some of the painting.  I presume that this is his handiwork on 35006's trailing truck:

Finished to a high gloss

Meanwhile, Mike got on with the task of inspecting all the department's ladders.  Even heritage railways don't escape from the requirements of the HSE:

Mike taking steps

One of our eagle-eyed drivers had noticed that there was a small crack in the frames of 2807.  It was tiny and well concealed under the running plate, I'm amazed that he spotted it.  The fix was to remove the running plate, grind out the crack and rebuild it with weld:

Matthew assists in removing the section of running plate

 One of the rivets holding down the running plate that needed removing was half buried under the boiler cladding.  Apparently the removal of enough cladding to provide adequate access to unbolt the rivet from below and extract the head was a major undertaking.  Plan B was to just remove the rivet head with an angle grinder.

David using 'angle grinder diplomacy' to extract the half hidden rivet

The offending crack revealed

David grinds out the crack

 David seems to be quite keen on using that angle grinder.  I wonder if he is related to the motorist's superhero, Angle Grinder Man?

Part way through grinding out the crack

 I missed the welding part (yes I know, you just can't get the staff), but here is the application of the finishing touches of paint on the replaced rivet heads.

Job's a good 'un

Back to the plot, the 8F would soon be returning from her turn as  train 1, in readiness to be prepared for the evening dining train.  There was a slight issue in that the railway's fire service department was making use of the hose by the ash pit to refill one of the fire trucks:

Re-filling the fire truck

We borrowed the hose back in time to damp down the ash in the ash pan and get her ready for service in time:

Jeff replenishes the tender with coal

Arrival at Winchcombe revealed the rather tastefully finished Monster wagon mentioned in last week's blog.  I grabbed a photo whilst we sat waiting to extract the dining train from its siding:

Our Monster

The crew for the evening was Tina on the shovel and the increasingly inaccurately named Mark Young on the regulator.  Mark has just celebrated one of those landmark birthdays that involves a zero... preceded by a largish number.  It only took a little mild ribbing about this to provoke him into highlighting the fact that he was the youngest person on the footplate by a considerable margin.   

Also joining us on the footplate was traveling signal man Bill Tyndall who took great delight in letting me know that in a recent blog post I had erroneously identified Cheltenham signal box as the one at Toddington in a photo that Ben had provided.  Yet another sign of slip shod editorial standards. If I get any worse I'll be relegated to editing one of the tabloid newspapers.  At least I know how to use a spelling checker, so I won't end up on the Guardian.  No spilling misteaks hear!

Being on the footplate after dark is a rather strange experience.  I have to say it is one I rather enjoy even though it presents its own difficulties. Hurtling into the dark (as much as one can hurtle at 25 MPH) is slightly disconcerting at first, but after a while of not actually hitting anything becomes less daunting. It's a bit like doing the whole journey inside Greet tunnel. Peering into the firebox temporarily destroys your night vision.  I experimented with the old trick of looking into the firebox using one eye and looking out for signals with the other, it wasn't perfect, but it was an improvement on not doing so.  Knowing where I was on the line was at times a challenge and I found myself paying attention to the curves in the track to identify when we had got to certain points along the line.

Tina catches the last of the evening sun on the footplate

I'll catch some grief for uploading this photo as one or two of Tina's hairs have blown out of place, but the warm evening light and the smile more than compensate. A cricket box now forms an indispensable part of my footplate attire.
 
Our evening meal was delivered to the footplate by none other than Andrew Goodman, the owner of the dining train.  Andrew was responsible for the repatriation of the two LNER A4 locomotives last year for the great gathering of all six surviving A4's at the NRM at York.  The repatriation process was shown on the Monster Moves programme on channel 5 last week.

The two A4's (plus Union of South Africa) at Shildon last year

Mark tucks into his dinner

There was just enough light to see when the tender was full, no wet boots today

All done, time to put the 8F to bed

About to be fired?

My plans for the weekend of the 7th & 8th of September have been deferred until later in the year, so with an unanticipated free weekend, I decided to use the time wisely and I belatedly volunteered for a cleaning vacancy on the 7th of September using our online rostering website.  On Friday evening I received an email saying that my offer had been accepted.  This is the email that I received:

That might be slightly difficult to read, but if you look carefully, I have not been rostered to be the cleaner, but to be the loco.  This has caused some amusement amongst the other volunteers in the steam loco dept who are quite keen to see me try to suck on the vacuum pipe hard enough to release the brakes on seven coaches and then pull them to Cheltenham and back at line speed.  I presume that I would also be expected to give the rostered driver & fireman a piggy-back and be fed coal and water as I go.  Several firemen have said that they will try to get the roster changed so that they become the fireman for the day and get the job of feeding me the coal.... one way or another. That's nearly a fortnight away, hopefully our apparent shortage of steam locomotives that hitherto I was oblivious of will have been remedied by then. 

Anyway, on to Saturday.  Once more I found myself bright and early at Toddington for the day.  This was rather different though, as it was my first official firing lesson with Ade who has drawn the short straw and ended up as my instructor.  Although Ade would be on the footplate with me all day, I would end up with two drivers doing a split shift, Ian in the morning & Neil in the afternoon.  It seems that neither could face the prospect of a full day of me firing for them.  5542 is noted for being very easy to get to produce steam, too easy in fact, many firemen over-cook it and find themselves blowing off.  I was determined to try to not make the same mistake and was quite pleased with myself that by departure time for the first trip down to Cheltenham I had a decent fire, the pressure gauge was pretty much on the mark, I still had a bit of water space left in the glass, yet the safety valves still hadn't been put to the test. I baled in a few more shovels full of coal just for good measure in the last couple of minutes before we were off, the guard blew his whistle, waved his flag and off we went.  Looking back now, those last few shovels full of coal were my undoing.  In no time at all we were out of water space, 5542 was making steam like there was no tomorrow and much of it was roaring out of the safety valves... all the way to Winchcombe. Being held up at the outer home signal for a while didn't help matters much either. I'm informed that it caused some amusement for the crew of 8274 which we crossed when we got to Winchcombe. Later that evening, Ian Chilton contacted me via a well known social media website and asked "how much bloody coal did you put on this morning?".  So it appears that it wasn't just the crew of 8274 who had noticed.  Ian went on to say "poor Clive missed the train because he couldn't see it :-~". 

Chris pours the teas.  He would be amused later, on 8274 at Winchcombe

One of my earliest blog posts involved the fitting of this light pole at Toddington.  It still has no lights, but has acquired this impressive fungus instead. Hopefully it glows in the dark.

Dan's handiwork on the wood store, note the nice new and for the time being white panels

8274 setting off to pick up her stock for the first train of the day

Emptying out the ash pan on 5542 before setting off

There are no photos of what took place during the day, I was too busy doing other things.  Although improvements on the first time, I still managed to over do the firing when leaving Toddington on the subsequent trips. Afterwards Ade gave me a lengthy list of things that I should be working on in order to improve.

Filling up 5542 at the end of the day. Ade holds the pipe, Neil operates the water tap

One thing that did stick in my mind from the day was that whilst standing in the platform at Cheltenham, a passenger said "That doesn't look very authentic" as I fished my phone out of my pocket to check the time.  I assured him that it was a much sought after genuine Collett 1930's GWR iPhone, examples of which commanded astronomical prices on the rare occasions that they appeared in railwayana auctions.  I'm not convinced that he believed me, but he laughed anyway. 

Somehow I had been rostered not only for fireman training on Saturday, but also as a cleaner on the Sunday, so it was back to Toddington again on Sunday morning.  The same two locos were out again, and I had 5542 to clean.  There isn't that much to do as far as cleaning 5542 is concerned, so I wound up cleaning up the grate that I had left behind from the day before and lighting her up again.  It was interesting to compare the light thin fire of the night before with the small amount of ash scattered about on the grate in the morning.

We also had Matthew, a new cleaner start on Sunday.  Keen as mustard!  I noticed from my vantage point on the top of 5542 that whilst every body else was stood about chatting, he was still cracking on with cleaning 8274.

Matthew hard at work on the tender of 8274

After spending a bit of time in the morning showing Matthew the ropes, introducing him to the delights of breaking up wooden pallets for the wood store etc, I went out for a couple of trips out on 5542 in the company of Derek (ex Gloucester Horton Rd fireman) and Neil again from yesterday.  Obviously Neil is a glutton for punishment.  Derek's first comment when I arrived on the footplate was.  "I'm jolly disappointed in you, unless you've got it well hidden, you've left your camera behind".  He needn't have worried I did have it, it was just cunningly concealed:

Derek is a firm believer in well ventilated footplate attire

Derek on the shovel

Whilst 5542 comes complete with a seat for the fireman, no such luxury is provided for the driver.  If the driver wants to take the weight off of his feet, he needs to perch himself somewhere above the reverser:

Neil perching above the reverser

I spotted a passenger wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt at one point which prompted Neil to spend much of the rest of the day singing Pink Floyd songs as we trundled along.  Not being able to sing a note myself I refrained from joining in, even though I knew all the words.

5542, not having a tender can fit on the platform at Toddington as well as the coaches. This meant that much of the time we were waiting there Derek was engaged in chatting to passengers and inviting them up onto the footplate. He even managed to find a chap celebrating his 85th birthday on the railway who had worked as a young conscript on the Longmoor Military Railway in 1946 & 1947 before embarking on a  career with the LMS and then BR. At various times I tried engaging some of the passengers in conversation.  I asked several young children if they were intending to come along to the Thomas weekend in September, getting varied responses.  For some children and parents, this came as news and they were keen to come back, though one little chap wanted to know why the engine that I was on wasn't wearing a face.  Oops!  Well this one was of course just an ordinary steam loco, it's only special steam locos on the Isle of Sodor that have faces and they would be the ones to visit us in September.  

You often find that parents, usually the dads are keen to get their offspring onto the footplate for a minute or two when ever possible in stations.  An elaborate charade is sometimes played out where a disinterested or occasionally even frightened child is offered up as an excuse for dad to bring the child up onto the footplate. Everybody knows that it's really dad that wants to be there and not the child, but the crew will usually play along and try to encourage the child before finally saying something like "Well perhaps dad would like to come up instead then?".  On other occasions the child concerned needs no second bidding.  In the hurried run around at Cheltenham, one such keen little lad arrived on the footplate with his dad.  Not only did he want to know what everything did, but he also wanted to put some coal onto the fire.  At that point in time, the last thing the fire needed was any more coal, but I bunged a lump of coal or two onto the shovel and let him tip it into the firebox anyway.  For me it was another of those tables have turned moments similar to the milkman story of a couple of weeks ago.  About ten or so years ago I was driving to Cornwall on holiday.  My wife, mother-in-law and eldest daughter had gone ahead in one car, my youngest daughter, Emily and myself plus more luggage than you could shake a stick at were in another car.  Well Cornwall is a long way to go, so you need to break the  journey somewhere and I chose to detour away from the usual route along the A30 and take a break on the South Devon Railway.  After doing the child friendly things at Buckfastleigh, Emily started to get to be rather bored with dull old steam trains.  The fireman on small prairie 5526 noticed that Emily wasn't looking best pleased at hanging around on the platform and invited her up onto the footplate.  "I've got to make the train ready to go in a bit, I need to get that needle up by the red line" he said pointing to the pressure gauge.  "How do you think we do that?"  Emily didn't know, but looked interested.  "Well I've got to take some of that coal in the bunker there and shovel it onto the fire.  Would you like to have a go at doing that for me?".  All of a sudden, steam locomotives became very interesting as far as Emily was concerned, she perked up considerably and talked about if for days afterwards. Needless to say it made my day rather more enjoyable as well.

Emily building up the fire on 5526

Family groups make up a fair proportion of our visitors.  Having long enough platforms to accommodate carriages and locomotive as well as gaps long enough in the timetable to allow visits to the footplate is important to our visitors and will keep them coming back, just like I still visit the SDR regularly even though it's a fair trek from home for me.  It may seem a bit strange that we are going to the trouble of building such long platforms at Broadway and a second lengthy platform at Cheltenham, but little things like that really do make a world of difference to the visitors experience.

Unrelated to the above story, but still involving the SDR, is the fact that they have a GWR Monster van, from 1918 which was built for moving theatrical scenery around the country.  I believe that just one other survives, and it is currently being restored alongside the carriage and wagon department at Winchcombe.  I have noted as I've passed on the train that it's restoration is coming along nicely.  The one on the SDR lives alongside the platform at Totnes station and makes an interesting and popular backdrop for photos:

My little monster and the SDR's monster

I have no idea who owns the one we have on the railway, or what the plans are for it when it is finished and I'm probably speaking out of turn, but I'd like to think that when not in use it could be found a home alongside a platform at  one of our stations such as Winchcombe where it too can form the backdrop to treasured family photographs.

Finally, recent social media debates have raged about what can be cooked on a steam loco. Last year during the Santa specials, we tried mince pies on the back head and sausage and bacon on the shovel.  Ben informed me on Saturday that 10 miles wrapped in tin foil in the smoke box is not nearly enough to bake potatoes.  He needed to take them over to the Flag and Whistle to get Val to finish them off in a micro wave.  If anybody out there can come up with a sensible idea for something to be cooked in a smoke box, I might just give it a whirl sometime.  The results promise to be amusing though unlikely to be edible.

It's not over until the fat lady sings

I rather like the purple timetable.  It only runs on certain Sundays throughout the year, but sees us with three locos in steam during the day. Consequently there are plenty of people around and plenty to do.  I was down to clean train one (which was 8274) driven by Sean (under the instruction of Andy) and fired by Paul.  Whilst cleaning 8274, I noticed that some of the wooden panels of the wood store had been removed and Paul was stood nearby looking guilty.  Paul has some previous when it comes to burning the wrong wood so I feared the worst.

Paul caught in the act

Disappointingly, it turned out that it was Dan who had removed the rotten wooden panels, with a view to replacing them with new ones.

The crew of train three (the dining train) had a very leisurely day ahead, late start, early finish and a long lunch break with free food somewhere in the middle.  They decided that getting rostered down for train three had been a wise choice:

Andy, Tina and Paul.  The three wise monkeys.

The GWSR publicity machine is gearing up for next year and a 2014 brochure has been commissioned.  Shots of suitably photogenic railway volunteers doing whatever it is they do are required.  To that end, Jack Boskett had been requested to do a photoshoot of some of the more visually appealing volunteers last Wednesday at Toddington.  Obviously Tina had been invited (I guess my invite must have been lost in the post) but was unable to manage to be there on the day due to work commitments.  She rather foolishly asked me if I would bring my camera along on Sunday to take some publicity type shots of her on the footplate for possible inclusion in the aforementioned brochure.  This was a first for me, people usually run for the hills as soon as I pull my camera out of its bag, even my own daughters run and hide.  People who are cornered and can't escape try all sorts of tricks to get out of it, such as Andy here:

Nice try Andy, you'll have to do better than that.

I had planned to try to get Tina to wear a grease top hat, or possibly even a flat cap and bought along an example of each to try out on her.  Before I even got myself fully up onto the footplate of Foremarke Hall, she had sussed out my cunning plan and informed me that she doesn't do hats!   I decided to quit whilst I was ahead not too far behind on that one. I distracted her with the last of my stash of Jelly Babies, which she still claims not to like, but eats anyway and proceeded to grab a few photos of her at work on and around Foremarke Hall.  I even roped Ben in to operate a reflector to try and reduce some of the harsher shadows caused by the strong sun.

Not quite like that Ben!

That's more the idea

I'll be working over the shots in Photoshop in a few days time.  I asked Tina if she'd like me to tweak them a bit for her.  She replied "Can you fix the wrinkles so that I look about 30?".  I now have the highly unusual task of having to add enough wrinkles to age her by 9 years.  With a bit of luck one or two of the resulting shots will find their way into the relevant publication next year.

Meanwhile, train one had departed without me, but I had arranged with the crew to join them when they got back from the first trip down to Cheltenham.  Hanging around on the platform for ten minutes or so before they arrived was rather pleasant.  As I was loitering on the platform in footplate gear, several conversations with passengers ensued who thought that I would be able to assist them.  Two separate groups had arrived at Toddington looking for the dining train, which was a pity as it starts from Winchcombe.  I was at least able to give them directions to Winchcombe and assure them that as the loco for their train was still stood on the ash pit, that they had plenty of time to get there.  For several others, it was a case of demystifying the timetable to enable them to see as much of the railway as possible in the limited time available to them.  I can see now why the platform staff enjoy their job so much.

Train two setting off from Toddington whilst I wait for train one to arrive

The other nice thing about the purple timetable is that steam gets a lamentably rare outing up to Laverton and back, so when 8274 appeared bang on time, we didn't simply run around the train and head for Cheltenham, but took the scenic tour over Stanway viaduct to Laverton.  

Either Andy was a little slow in switching off the water when we filled up at Toddington, or I called stop a bit too late, either way I found myself with my own private swimming pool.

In at the deep end

The timetable permits a half an hour break at Toddington for train one. Sean and Paul took advantage of the break to work out how to get out of being with me on the footplate for the rest of the day:

Plotting

Paul eventually decided that feigning death would get him out of it:

Paul plays dead (not sleeping at all).

I offered to save his relatives the cost of a funeral by shoveling him straight into the firebox there and then, at which point he made a miraculous recovery.

For the next round trip, Paul decided that his best hope was to throw the shovel at me and hide in the corner of the cab.  It seemed to go fairly ok, thanks Paul.

The third trip gave me an opportunity to grab a few photos along the length of the line.  It seems that real wild life along the route is no longer enough.  I noticed a green woodpecker, several buzzards and a kestrel at different points along the line which isn't too unusual.  What was unusual though was a pair of giraffes peering over the fence of the Harvest Home at Winchcombe:

Giraffes at Winchcombe

The consensus of opinion on the footplate was that logging into eBay on a Saturday night after a few too many beers was not a good idea.  

Not only did the line now have giraffes, but down at Laverton we seem to have acquired a python:

According to the sign, it's 'The Laverton Python'

 It looked a bit dodgy to us, so we made the guard get out and operate the ground frame for us rather than risk getting off the footplate ourselves:

Nigel operating the ground frame

Nobody was too sure if orange hi-viz would have the same effect on pythons as red rags do to bulls, but I can happily report that no guards were injured in the making of this blog.

 Later on back at Winchcombe, Ben was waiting with the dining train to taunt us with how good his free lunch had been.

Ben taunts us.

I've often fancied taking a few footplate shots by the light of the fire whilst in Greet tunnel, but not done so before.  I gave it a whirl on Sunday and quite like this study of Andy that I came up with:

Asleep on the footplate?

 I know his eyes are shut, he just blinked at the wrong moment, he wasn't stood up fast asleep.

The footplate of a steam locomotive lacks many creature comforts.  Yes you can cook on the shovel (if the regulator isn't open or blower on) and yes you can keep a can of tea hot on the warming plate, but aside from that it's fairly spartan.  The most obvious thing that it lacks is a convenience.  I'm sure that in days long past, when steam ruled supreme, crews caught short between stations would just judge carefully which way the wind was blowing then stand in the doorway of the other side of the cab to attend to the call of nature.  A bit unfortunate for any passengers who might be leaning out of a carriage window perhaps, but effective nonetheless.  In these rather more enlightened times, such a recourse isn't really on, so when Sean informed us that he needed to make a pit stop somewhere around Winchcombe yet still hadn't done so by the time we had turned round and were leaving Cheltenham again, we were all getting a bit concerned. Eventually Sean told us that it was not a problem, he found it easier to stop the train at the right point on the platforms when his legs were crossed.  He also mentioned that he really ought to be more guarded in what he says when I'm around.

Sean drives cross legged, Andy blocks the doorway just in case

So there you have it, if you are a trainee driver and find that you have difficulty judging where to stop the train, just drink plenty of fluids and omit to attend to the call of nature until you sign off at the end of the day.  Remember, you read it here first, you don't get advice like that anywhere else.

Speaking of Cheltenham, Andy very kindly purchased refreshments for the crew:-

Yes I know the point of focus is on the background rather than Andy. In my defence I was too busy eating the one he had bought for me at the time to concentrate on operating my camera properly.  Lets hope I did better with the photos of Tina.

Gratuitous shot of us crossing train two (5542) at Winchcombe

Finally, we have yet more good news.  Chris Blake passed out as a fireman during the week.  There are no photos from the day itself, but his agent has provided me with this publicity shot of him:

Fireman Blake (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

A little bit of artistic licence has been employed here as Chris is apparently firing from the wrong side of the cab.  Chris spent over 30 years working for the Fire Service, so he has done extremely well in overcoming his natural instinct to put fires out rather than keep them burning.  Chris's first turn out after qualifying was on a particularly rainy day.  Footplate crews are hardy souls and just get on with the job, regardless of what the weather chooses to do.  Not so some of our signalmen.  Chris was offered the token at Toddington on the end of a broom to spare the poor signalman from having to lean out of his nice warm and dry signal box into the pouring rain.

Photo courtesy of Ben Evason