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.

Misplaiced

Ben (the roster clerk) had long since apologised for putting me down for a fireman training turn on Thomas.  Apparently the only available dates that worked for all concerned in September were for the 21st, so that's what I ended up with.  Not that I mind Thomas events, they can be quite fun, but I'd be pitched into trying to fire a strange (to me at least) and rather small loco in a timetable that included three extended stays at Winchcombe of nearly an hour.  Using my 'skill and judgement'  I would need to get Thomas up to steam in the morning and be ready to haul seven carriages (Annie, Clarabel and presumably five of their friends) the short distance to Winchcombe and upon arrival, layover for the best part of an hour entertaining hordes of screaming kids before returning back.  From a boiler control perspective, this was asking a fair bit if I was to arrive and keep Thomas from blowing off whilst there.  Quite a number of small children proved to be startled by Thomas' whistle, they'd have been terrified by the noise from the safety valves if they had lifted. To make matters worse, children would be expecting to come up on the footplate and feed Thomas 'coal cakes' (lumps of coal on a paper plate). Exactly the last thing you need if you're trying to keep from blowing off. I wasn't really expecting this to go well.   Ian Chilton had let me know that he was down for crossing monitor duty at Winchcombe in the morning.  He would be switching his hearing aids off so that he didn't have to listen to either the Thomas music being piped around the platforms or the roar of Thomas' safety valves.  He would also be taking pictures of me and of Thomas blowing off and then hack into this blog to display them to the world.  Not being a complete idiot I keep the password to myself (well OK, give or take the NSA, GCHQ and anybody else that Google thinks might like to know).

Things didn't start off too well:

Thomas eats his driver

We had to grab hold of Paul's boots and yank him back out.  During Thomas events. all operational staff are supposed to wear a 'Friend of Thomas' badge on their clothes to identify themselves as being members of staff. I won't embarrass the person concerned by naming him, but he put the pointy bit of the safety pin on the back of the badge in just a bit too far and exclaimed "Ouch, I've just pierced my nipple!". As you can imagine, sympathy was in short supply and those present laughed. On the plus side though, we were under instructions from the owner not to remove Thomas' face to empty out the smoke box throughout the whole weekend.  I didn't need any second bidding on that one.

Getting ready to play, Thomas and Henry, the big green engine

Henry was off shed first and seemed to be rather enthusiastic about getting on with the day's work:

Foremarke Hall Henry steams into action

Apparently Henry was once bricked up in a tunnel by the Fat Controller for refusing to pull trains in the rain.  Henry wasn't taking any chances of getting bricked up in Greet tunnel this time and stormed off down the track regardless of the weather forecast. I daresay that in these more enlightened times, punishments such as being bricked up in a tunnel would be regarded as being a step too far and Social Services would be down on you like a ton of bricks.  As it turned out the weather stayed fine and dry all day anyway, so Henry was spared from being bricked up in Greet tunnel and as a consequence, the Fat Controller wasn't carted off to jail.  That would have put a bit of a crimp in the day's proceedings.

After a short while, we too were on our way down to Winchcombe with a full complement of seven carriages.  We established that Thomas starts blowing off light, 160 psi rather than the 170 psi marked by the red line on the pressure gauge and that she starts to struggle to hold the brakes off at 120 psi.  The trick therefore was to try and keep her somewhere in the 140 to 150 psi range if at all possible.  We also noticed that her exhaust had quite a pleasant bark to it as she had to work a bit to pull seven coaches. Sean has emailed me a sound recording that he made on one of the trips of the sound of my hard shoveling going up the chimney. At least it was going out the chimney rather than out the safety valves.  I think Sean was disappointed with that.  Other things of note are the cab was tiny, not that you needed to swing the shovel far, but hitting the front of the grate without clouting your hand on the bunker in the process was an achievement.  I'd probably have been better advised to have just thrown a few lumps in by hand every now and again.

Upon arrival at Winchcombe, Thomas was of course the star attraction.  Hordes of kids descended on us and queued up to get on the footplate.  One or two of them even queued patiently.  Most seemed to be happy to just have their photo taken, some were just a bit frightened and others were keen to know how you made Thomas go.  Next it was back up the platform a bit for the infamous routine of catching the fish in the water tank.  The Fat Controller was supposed to interrogate Thomas' driver and establish that Thomas wasn't feeling too well, then ask if he'd stopped to take water in the brook. The driver would confess that they had and Thomas' water tanks would then be inspected, a fish found and removed.   The only problem was, that nobody knew where the fish was.  We had misplaced the plaice. We secretly suspected that the Fat Controller had eaten it for his breakfast.  Anyway, it was game over on that, so we did a bit of getting the kids to fetch buckets of water up to Thomas to refill his tanks with. I was stitched up with doing the first lot of filling the water tanks, however Ade did it on one of the later trips.

Ade filling Thomas' water tanks the hard way

Unsurprisingly it turns out to be far more efficient to fill Thomas' tanks using one of our water cranes, so that's what we did later at Toddington.

Ade looks rather more relaxed filling Thomas this way

And so the day progressed, wandering back and forth between Toddington and Winchcombe and being besieged by countless Thomas fans. Eventually the errant fish was found and strategically set up in Thomas' water tank.  The Fat Controller and the driver had their conversation and I was sent off to discover and remove the fish.

The Fat Controller

I dutifully set off, found the fish and extricated it using the fishing rod that was attached to it.  Once it was out, I heard a young lad's voice from somewhere in the crowd say "That's not real".  I was berated later by Paul for not having acted out the angling part convincingly.  Phrases such as 'method acting' were employed.  Later on whilst we were waiting in a siding for our stock to arrive back in the platform, Paul demonstrated how it should be done:

Paul demonstrates how to catch a fake fish convincingly

Paul was also quite keen to cook the fish on the shovel, but was eventually persuaded that it wouldn't be a good idea. and later on it was popped back into the brook where it came from.  No fish were harmed in the making of this blog.

Henry runs round her stock at Winchcombe

A diesel arrives with our stock

The diesels were running without faces.  Usually they're supposed to have a face at each end rather like <insert name of your least favourite politician here> however on this occasion, for contractual reasons they didn't.  Hopefully by the next time that Thomas pays us a visit the diesels will be running in their two faced glory once again.

My great niece and three great nephews were in attendance too.  They all enjoyed their day out with Thomas, though one of my great nephews was a little disappointed that Thomas couldn't take them all the way home to Severn Tunnel Junction.  Come to that, the crew were a bit disappointed too.

There was one other item of note from the day, a young couple had chosen Saturday to get married and to have the event hosted on our railway.  Apparently they were informed when they booked that they would clash with the Thomas weekend, but that didn't seem to deter them.  Well it won't be something that they'll forget in a hurry. 

Thomas and the happy couple

White of course is not really the colour of choice to wear in the presence of steam locomotives, but the bride seems to have got away with it thus far.  It will have been hard work to keep her dress clean throughout the whole day though.

And finally, several of the dad's asked questions about Thomas. What kind of engine was she?  Was she a patriot? Well even I knew enough about her to know that she wasn't a patriot, but I could do little more than point to the makers plate on the cabside and say that she was an industrial Hunslett 0-6-0T from 1937:

Thomas' worksplate

I decided when I got home to do a bit of detective work and find out more about Thomas.  Well as it turns out, Thomas is only Thomas (0-6-0T) at weekends, the rest of the time he is not a 'he', but a 'she' 0-6-0ST by the name of Jessie. You read it here first! The rev A.W. Awdry will be positively spinning in his grave.

Blown on the Steel Breeze

The weather forecast for Sunday was grim.  It would start off grey.  Only the one shade, which would be as near as makes no difference black (the other 49 shades must have gone somewhere else) and slow moving heavy rain would soon set in for the day.  A little thing like the prospect of heavy rain doesn't put off the dedicated team of volunteers in the GWSR's steam loco dept.  They might try and wangle their way off of a loco with an exposed cab onto one with a nice enclosed one, but it doesn't put them off.  Once again I was the only cleaner present, so I set to work cleaning both the day's locos, 5542 and Foremarke Hall.  Andy has now given up on nagging to get a pot of tea made (well he only had the one loco to light up, I had two to clean) and once he had got his fire lit in Foremarke Hall, he fetched us all a brew:

Andy... capable of operating kettles large and small.

Having made us all a brew, he demonstrated just how it should be drunk

Meanwhile, Phil took shelter just in case the forecast rain started suddenly

 My spy in the 35006 camp had clued me up to the fact that progress is being made on her smoke deflectors.  They're now in undercoat:

Primed smoke deflectors

A chance encounter with Andy Marshall at the end of the day revealed that work had focused on fabricating the brackets for the smoke deflectors.  Apparently there are quite a few brackets involved and the original Bulleid design required that they were robust enough to keep the smoke deflectors in place at speeds of 100 MPH or more.  Andy rather hoped that none of our drivers would regard that as a challenge. 

Sunday as it turned out was also a 'Classic Vehicle Day'. For volunteers in the steam loco dept, this means that you're supposed to park out of sight behind the Flag and Whistle rather than in any of the prime spots next to the yard entrance as those form part of the display area.  To get from the yard to my car to retrieve my footplate gear now meant walking through the assembled collection of vehicles, so even though classic cars are not really my thing, I thought I'd grab a few photos.

Ok, you got me, even I would like an E-type Jag?

Having seen me take a photo of the E-type, a cheeky chap in a mini (car not skirt) parked next to it suggested that I should take his photo too.

The lady in the passenger seat was rather embarrassed and hid her face

Of much more of interest to me was the collection of classic motor bikes.  For instance this rather tasteful 1000cc Ariel Square Four definitely caught my eye:

Ariel Square Four

I had spent a while chatting to the owner of this BSA A10 a few weeks ago.  Many years ago I used to own a BSA B33, which shared many common parts with the A10:

It's got a Norton front end and a Japanese carburettor, but still looks gorgeous

Behind the A10, was a BSA B29 De-Luxe of something around 1929 vintage.

BSA B29 De-luxe

Again, she's rather gorgeous.  I love the fish-tail silencer.  Strictly a utilitarian machine in its day, meant for commuting rather than high speed burn ups to the coast.  Although recognisably a motorbike, the girder forks, rigid rear end, 250cc side valve engine, drum brakes, acetylene lamps, hand operated gear lever and magneto ignition all hark back to days long gone.  Like modern motor vehicles, the lubrication system is fully enclosed albeit driven by a hand pump mounted on the far side of the petrol tank. 

Closer view of the B29's engine

This all got me to thinking, this for its day, was a cheap and cheerful commuting bike, built down to a price rather than up to spec, yet it had a fully enclosed lubrication system. This B29 is of a very similar age to one of our locos, 5542 (built 1928) and is far older than Foremarke Hall or 8274.  All these locos and even newer still BR standard locos all persisted in using total loss lubrication systems right up to the end of BR steam loco design.  It just seems rather odd to me that some sort of enclosed lubrication system wasn't dreamed up by some enterprising young CME. I know that Bulleid initially fitted enclosed chain driven valve gear on his pacific locomotives, but they were not exactly a success and were removed when the locos concerned were subsequently rebuilt.  No doubt one of this blogs better informed readers will come up with an answer as to why this was.

By contrast with the BSA B29, this is one of the big ends of 5542.  Not enclosed in an oil bath like the B29, but exposed to the elements. 

Just pop out the cork and fill it up.

 Lubrication is provided by the driver removing the cork and topping up the oil reservoir underneath which will retain enough oil to last the day and will need topping up before the next days use. Just in case anybody from the environment agency is looking in, removal of the oil after use is fully automated and done in strict compliance with Charles Collett's regulations on used oil disposal. The slide bars just receive a squirt of oil on the slide bars themselves and in a few filler pots scattered above them and on the cross head:

Which on a wet day turns into an emulsion like this

8274 features a pair of Wakefield lubricators on the driver's side running plate, but once again there is no oil return path.

No wonder there is so much cleaning needs doing on a steam loco. On the plus side though, it makes them far less prone to rust.

Apparently the classic vehicle event is open to machines over 25 years of age.  There is a small army of people nagging me to get my beloved 1977 Triumph Bonneville back on the road again. Perhaps one day.  At least then I'd be able to park by the entrance to the yard rather than be relegated to a spot behind the Flag and Whistle..

I was invited out onto the footplate of 5542 for the day by Steve & Phil.  5542 has a rather nice fully enclosed cab and is the perfect place to spend what is forecast to be a rainy day.

5542 indulges in a spot of shunting before the first service

Foremarke Hall disappears off with train 1 whilst we head onto the ash pit

 At the first hint of cold weather, the guards start asking for the steam heating to be connected up.  That caused a spot of bother.

Plenty of steam, but not where it was wanted

It turned out that not only had the steam heat bag on 5542 been recently changed with the connector misaligned, but that also several coaches had been in and out of the maroon rake and some of the inserted ones had the steam heat cocks shut.  By the second round trip we had it sorted, but the first trip may have been a slightly frosty one for the passengers.

I don't have many photos from the footplate as Phil more than kindly threw the shovel at me for the second and third round trips.  I think I caused him so much amusement after my first attempt, that he decided that it would be more fun to watch me foul it up again rather than fire himself.

Steve and Phil in the office for the day

Steve takes shelter from the leaking water delivery pipe at Cheltenham

On one trip, I managed to drop the token during the exchange at Winchcombe.  It's a double token exchange, so you drop one off and pick one up at the same time at the Toddington end of the platform.  I feared that when we stopped at the far end of the platform I'd have to walk all the way back to collect the token however Neil, the signalman on Sunday put in a surprising turn of speed as he ran after us down the platform to pass me the token.  I was extremely tempted to produce my camera and grab a photo of Neil chasing after us, but decided that it would probably put him off and then I really would have to walk back up the platform.  I've never dropped a token before, at least I chose to do it at Winchcombe where we were coming to a halt rather than at Toddington or Gotherington where we would have been pulling away and I'd have needed to get the train stopped so that I could collect it

Permit holding lineside photographers are expected to wear orange hi-viz when out and about on the lineside.  That message has failed to get through to at least one of them.

Sniper in the woods

 To be fair, he was only just off the platform at Toddington, but you don't usually expect to find them wearing camouflage.  It's a technique that I might be forced to employ myself if I'm to continue getting photos of certain members of the steam, loco dept who run and hide as soon as I appear.

An interesting exhaust trail as Foremarke Hall restarts after being checked at Winchcombe

Not only did we have a classic vehicle display at Toddington, but we also had a beer festival taking place on platform two at Winchcombe.  I had visions of lots of classic vehicle owners weaving along the nearby country lanes and failing breath tests at the end of the day. I trust that the drivers of the classic vehicles managed convince themselves of the virtues of temperance or at least nominate a designated driver. I'd have definitely taken the former approach if that lovely E-Type Jag had been mine.   

Ben turned up to rub in the fact that he wasn't on duty and could therefore partake of the pleasures of the beer tent:

Ben living dangerously.... and I'm not referring to his proximity to the gun powder van

Last time I had been out on 5542, I had rather overdone the firing at Toddington and had her blowing off much of the way to Winchcombe, with the rest of the trip being fairly ok.  This time round I was ok coming out if Toddington... but rather over did things at Cheltenham.  I managed to build up a fire big enough to get us all the way out to Honeybourne, never mind Broadway, though to get anywhere past Laverton we'd have needed to engage in a little on the move track laying in the style of Wallace and Gromit.

All too soon, the day was at an end and it was time to dispose of 5542 for the day:

A final top up of water

Phil empties out the smoke box

Needless to say, the weather forecast had remained inaccurate as usual right up to the point that I was emptying out the ash pit.  My being out of the cab was the cue for the heavens to open and I got soaked. 

And finally, next week's exciting installment will if all goes to plan, feature me getting a firing lesson on a certain 'really useful engine'.  What will happen and what the fat controller will make of it all is a matter for conjecture.  Somehow, I'd like to think that somewhere on the heritage railway celestial, the rev A.W. Awdry will be amused.