Looking for a half wit Whit

Arriving just too late for inclusion in last week's blog entry, was this fine photo of one of our firemen (name withheld to protect the guilty) suffering from what can most charitably be described as a 'wardrobe malfunction'. 

Bad Moon Rising.  Photo courtesy of Steve Oddy

We seem to have acquired a cat.  It has the dolly to go onto the parlour road to access the ash pit, but it didn't seem to be too interested in that.

The forecast for Saturday was for torrential rain, thunder and lightning.  I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at Toddington that it wasn't actually raining yet, but dark skies in the direction of Cheltenham suggested that it soon would be.   The best course of action was to crack on with cleaning as much as possible of my allotted loco, 4270 before the deluge commenced.   Mercifully she was still looking pretty smart, so I managed to get her looking quite presentable in fairly short order.

Nicely shining safety valve cover

It was a little surreal at times, thunder and lightning, accompanied by some heavy rain was only a short distance away, yet Toddington remained dry until both of the day's locos were prepared and ready to go off shed.  Being perched up on top of the boiler cleaning the safety valve cover probably wasn't the best place to be as an electrical storm approaches, I was glad to get down from up there.

Whilst oiling up, Steve spotted that the steam lance cock had lost a nut and was a bit loose, which would result in a loss of the seal in the smoke box and potentially affect the steaming of the loco.  He asked me to rummage up a replacement half wit Whit nut for him.  I found the location that they should have been hiding in, but it turns out that we had none left.  A complete replacement nut and bolt, quite possibly metric  (I expect 4270 will reject it) was sourced to replace it with.

Steam lance cock

Once 4270 had set off for her day's work, I had a quick look in the David Page shed.  35006 is now on road 9 (giving easy access to one of the pits) and more work is taking place:

One of the driving wheels, prepared for painting

The tender brakes is one of the outstanding tasks, it was good to see that some of the tender's brake assembly was now being prepared for fitting:

Tender brake rigging awaiting installation

The cab windows have yet to be fitted, Dave was getting on with the job of glazing them:

Dave cracking on with the cabs glazing

Left over from last week, was the job of lifting the coconut matting from the car park field.  Getting the pins in to hold the matting down had been relatively easy, getting them out again was not.

Ben used a claw hammer to extract the pins...

.... whilst Ed used a crow bar.

We didn't quite get the last section of the coconut matting lifted before the heavens opened.  Ben, Ed and myself all tried to squeeze into the cab of the fork lift truck (FLT) to escape from the deluge.  It's a space made for one, three was definitely a crowd!

Ed and Ben in the FLT

A temporary respite, just long enough to tempt us out of the FLT was quickly followed by another deluge.  This time, Ed took shelter as best he could in the tree line.  The FLT was now less cramped and I suspect that Ben & I were staying much drier than Ed was:

Ed wishes that he'd brought his brolly

The FLT was far from perfect though, the doors are ill fitting and the cab roof leaks:

Ingress of rain through a hole in the roof

The coconut matting had been down for long enough for grass to start growing through the gaps, so rolling it up took a fair bit of effort.  It didn't help that every now and again we discovered a pin or two that we hadn't removed first.

It didn't want to come quietly

During yet another downpour, Ed and I sheltered under the water tower.  Ed did a spot of weeding whilst we were there, he even identified what kind of weeds they were as he pulled them out.

Ed tackling some thistles.

Finally we got the very last one rolled up and in the bucket of the FLT for removal back to the main car park.  They fitted neatly into the FLT's bucket, but only of you managed to roll them up straight. Get them slightly out of line and they didn't.

The last one in the bucket

Cleaning them up was next, the plan was to unroll each one of the 5 pieces of matting over the ash pit and give them a thorough going over with the pressure washer:

Ben and Tina unroll the matting, Mark looks on with amusement

Difficulties with attaching the hose to the pressure washer (a dodgy jubilee clip meant that the hose keep detaching itself) led to Ben and Tina trying to clean the matting with just a hose pipe and brush, with what can best be described as 'limited success'.

If we'd had it there an hour earlier, the rain would have done the job.

Finally, when a fresh jubilee clip had been found, Tina was able to do the job properly with the pressure washer.  She's dangerous with that thing, I was just one of several people that she managed to spray with it.  Not that I was really bothered, by then I was still soaking wet from being caught in the rain while we were getting the matting out of the field.

Tina, small but deadly.

The rag collecting point continues to do a great job.  Thank you to all who have contributed.  I had noticed that it was full again when I arrived, but I had thus far neglected to empty it.  Paul turned up with a bag of rags to put in it and complained about it being full.

George decided to check out the items that Paul had brought along.  A theme started to emerge, most of Paul's cast off t-shirts were advertising various brands of real ale:

Paul and George, where were John & Ringo?

George models an inappropriate t-shirt

Taking the hint, I fetched up a wheel barrow and emptied the bin into it and took them off to the oil store.

 A very full barrow load of rags

Back in the David Page shed, John and a small team of people were re-shaping the eyes on some of Foremarke Hall's break rods.  To the untutored eye, the process seemed to involve heating them until they turned a cherry red colour and then bashing them about with a big hammer on an anvil.  I'm sure that it was rather more scientific than that though.

John applies some heat

It turns cherry red

John bashes it about with a big hammer

We're getting ready for another pour of concrete in the David Page shed.  Putting the steel meshing in place and tying it together in readiness for the next pour was on Saturday's list of jobs:

Some bits have been done already

The next section to be done is on the left here (road 8)

Mark and Nick prepare a ramp for the concrete mixer lorry to reverse up...

...and tie up the steel reinforcements

Preparing for the concrete pour finished, I returned to the mess coach to find that Ben had been having a spot of bother.  The water pump in the ash pit had stopped working, probably clogged up with mud from the coconut matting.  I missed the photo, but Ben had been soaked when the the outlet pipe had become detached from the pump.

Ben tries to unclog the outlet pipe with a hose pipe

The water pump finally working as it should.  Ben got caught in this earlier

I think Ben had been hoping for a little sympathy, but as I'm sure you're all aware by now,  the steam loco dept is a complete stranger to that.

And finally, one last visiting attraction from the gala was still to be found down at Winchcombe.  Having not had the opportunity to take a look at the traction engines during the gala, it was nice to be able to see one of them close up.

Burrell, 'Cour De Lion' gets ready to leave.

Pines Excess

I managed to see very little of our recently restored loco, 4270 over the last few weeks, which is something of a shame and of course something that I hope to rectify in the coming weeks.  She is a gorgeous loco, and finished to an extremely high standard.  Fortunately Pete Young managed to capture of few photos of her in the lead up to and during the gala period and I am indebted to him for allowing me to use them here:

4270 in the paint shop at Winchcombe

4270

A fine study of 4270 by a bracket signal at Winchcombe

4270 on one of her first passenger turns

I'm a sucker for black & white photos, I particularly like these two Pete sent me of 4270 and Dinmore Manor on the freight train during the gala:

4270 on the freight train

Dinmore Manor on the freight train

All the preceding photos courtesy of Pete Young.

I didn't see them myself, but there were heritage buses running to Cheltenham Race Course on Saturday:

A left hand drive double decker from Lisbon, photo courtesy of Chris Crump

More old single deckers, photo courtesy of Chris Crump.

 
The gala isn't quite done and dusted yet, we still have one of the visiting steam locos with us, Black 5, 45379 from the Mid Hants Railway and there is still some tidying up to be done to get the railway back to its normal self.  On Saturday, I was rostered for a fireman training turn which luckily for me happened to be on the Black 5.  Trainee firemen wouldn't normally expect to get out on the footplate of a visiting loco, much less fire one, so I was more than pleasantly surprised at this.  I had known for over a week that she was booked down against my training turn, however there was a small question mark over her availability. Soon after she arrived a section of her brick arch had come adrift and there was concern that it might collapse completely.  That would of course have put her out of action for the gala and probably for the last weekend too.  Mercifully the brick arch deteriorated no further and she was still in traffic:

45379's brick arch

 Note the nice clean grate, thank you to whoever cleaned it up during the week and to Dan for putting in a warming fire on Friday.

Close up, you can see the missing section quite clearly

The bits that had fallen off, didn't leave a hole in the arch, so it should still have been functioning as intended.

Ostensibly the Black 5 is very similar to our own resident 8F, once you've got past the different wheel arrangements (the Black 5 is a 4-6-0, the 8F a 2-8-0).  In practice there are a lot of minor detail differences between the two. 

For a start off, the Black 5 is left hand drive, whereas the 8F is unusually for an LMS loco of its age, right hand drive:

All the wrong way round

 I'll confess that on first standing in the cab to go through the pre-flight checks, I started looking on the wrong side of the cab to check that the reverser was in mid gear and that the drain cocks were open.

The blower control is perched neatly in the middle of the cab between the fire hole door and the regulator.   One of the purposes of the blower is to provide a draw on the fire from the smokebox end, helping to keep the fire in the firebox and not allowing it to blow back into the cab.  With our home fleet, when a loco is stationary, unless there are strong winds, the blower only requires to be cracked open the smallest amount to keep the fire safely in the firebox.  With the Black 5, if the blower is only cracked open, you'll have flames coming back into the cab.  Note where the blower control is in relation to the fire hole door, and think where you're likely to be standing when you operate it.  That's a mistake that you only make the once.  Having not yet invested in asbestos underwear, I made sure that I was stood well to the side before trying to back off the blower or opening the fire hole door.

Up at the front end, the only real difference was that the Black 5 has a spark arrester fitted:

Sparks arrested here!

Underneath the locos is one of the biggest differences, the 8F has a hose feed into the ash pan to allow for damping of the ash, as well as an operational hopper, which nicely dumps the wet ash into the pit, making ashing out a fairly straight forward procedure. The Black 5 still possesses the ash pan that it came out of Barry Island scrapyard with and doesn't have a sprinkler mechanism.  The hopper no longer works unfortunately, so ashing out needs to be done through the damper doors.

Connector to the ash pan sprinkler on the 8F

Ashing out the Black 5 through the damper doors using a hose pipe and scraper

Safety valves and hand hole plugs

 The hand hole plugs are under covers on the Black 5, but not on the 8F,  The safety valves on the Black 5 only drop the boiler pressure by a few PSI then close up again, the ones on the 8F drop all the way back to 200 PSI.  Somewhere between the two would be preferable.

Not a problem on the GWSR or the Mid Hants, but correct for later BR liveried locos

 The mechanical lubricators on the right hand running plate of the Black 5 are manufactured by Silvertown, I didn't go and check, but I'm fairly confident that the ones on the 8F were made by Wakefield.

Silverthorn mechanical lubricators

 The bar at the bottom of the tender door on the 8F lifts out of place when not required and is stowed in the tool tunnel, this one pivoted upwards and latches into place.

Tender door with bar in place

 It took me a moment or two to work out that these were the dampers. They offered a greater range of positions, but in practice I found them to be slightly more tricky to use than the more conventional damper levers that the 8F has.  Maybe what I really wanted was a bit more time to practice with them.  There was also a third seat just to the right of the above photo, which the 8F doesn't have.

 The Black 5 and 8F both feature rocking grates, which makes life a lot easier for the fireman.  the 'happy handle' was stowed behind the driver's seat rather than up above the tender door as it is on the 8F.  It took me a while to spot it hiding there.

The handle for the rocking grate

 As well as a vacuum gauge, the driver of the Black 5 gets a cylinder pressure gauge too

Cylinder pressure gauge and vacuum gauge

 The Mid Hants Railway doesn't have any tunnels, so apparently they don't bother with water gauge lamps.  We have the 693 yard long Greet tunnel, built on a curve so it's completely dark in the middle, therefore a water gauge lamp is a must.  They're also quite handy if you happen to be on the footplate after dark.  A bent piece of wire had been set up by somebody to hang one of our water gauge lamps from:

Water gauge and lamp

 Ade and I spent a moment or two puzzling over what this was.  It turns out to be part of the sanding mechanism.  The Mid Hants have lengthy sections of 1 in 60 gradients to deal with and having the ability to sand the rails to aid wheel adhesion is very important to them.  The most we have is a short section of 1 in 150, so it's not something that we have to worry about.

Steam valve to the sanding gear

The Black 5 comes with a nice large and easy to read Smith's speedo.  In a concession to the 21st century, the 8F has a discrete GPS driven speedo hidden away near the reverser.  It's visible to the driver, but most visitors to the footplate wouldn't notice it.

Smith's speedo on the Black 5

Although both locos are painted black, the 8F is temporarily wearing BR numbering & logos on top of her LMS plain black identity, the Black 5 is finished in BR lined black:

Lined black, Black 5

Unlined black 8F

Being a visiting loco from another railway (Mid Hants), 45379 came complete with a number of owner's representatives to look after her.  The three that were with her for this weekend were Jonathan, Nik and Oli:

L-R, Jonathan, Nik & Oli

 Oli didn't have a nickname, or if he did, it wasn't one that he was prepared to confess to. Jonathan was better known as 'Northern' and Nik as 'Dobby'.  That last one will mean nothing to you unless you happen to be a Harry Potter fan, (or as in my case, the parent of some Harry Potter fans), however it's a good excuse to trawl through my archives and include a photo from a few years ago of when the Hogwarts Express ran on the GWSR:

Hogwarts Express, soon after departing platform nine and three quarters at Winchcombe

Rather than having turned up with a Hogwarts Express headboard, they'd come with a Pines Express one and asked me if I minded if we ran with it on the loco.  Do bears leave deposits in deeply wooded areas?  It's not my place to say if we should run with any particular headboard, so I suggested that they show it to Mike, our driver, secure in the knowledge that he is a big S&DJR fan and was never going to say no.

As this was an official training lesson, I didn't play about trying to fire from the wrong other side, there was plenty of room in the cab, even with 4 people up there to fire from the left hand side of the footplate. 

The cylinder drain cocks on the fireman's side stuck open occasionally, resulting in rather more noise and steam than usual from the front end.   It scared the life out of a poor dog being walked on the path alongside the line at Cheltenham though as we were pulling out of the station.  The dog was off its lead at the time and set off along the path ahead of us as fast as its little legs could carry it, no matter how much its owner called it to come back.  Eventually, when it could out run us no more, it cowered against the fence before setting off back to its owner with its tail between its legs:

Leaking cylinder drain cock and high speed hound

Finally, it could run no more!

 I should point out that no animals were harmed during the making of this blog.

For the second trip down from Toddington to Cheltenham, Mike had arranged for a footplate passenger to join him.  This would have taken us over the limit of four people on the footplate, so I 'rode on the cushions', rejoining the loco at Cheltenham.  I was quite looking forward to this break, I'd managed to miss getting any breakfast, so my plan was to grab a bacon roll (or two) plus a cup of tea from the buffet on the train. As usual with my cunning plans, it all quickly fell apart.  When I got to the buffet I discovered a notice proclaiming that it was shut due to a lack of availability of volunteers.   If you like the idea of getting out and meeting people as well as spending time riding on our trains, then perhaps volunteering in our OTC dept is for you.  Do give it a thought.  

Another feature of the Black 5, is a small plaque commemorating the life of Thomas Clarke who passed away at the tender age of 11:

Thomas Clarke

 His parents made a sizable donation towards the rebuilding of 45379 in his memory.  I hope that every time that they see 45379 that she will bring back happy memories of the son that they lost at far too early an age.

The day went well, pressure and water got lower than I'd have liked coming back from Cheltenham on the first trip, but I got the hang of her after that.  Once off shed, the only blowing off was when I misread the timetable and built up the fire ten minutes sooner than I should have at Toddington.  Doh!

The three owners representatives took it in turns to come out on the footplate:

Oli and Mike

I have to say, it was all a thoroughly enjoyable day out on the Black 5, I had a wonderful time.  Handing the loco over to an evening crew on for the Elegant Express dining train saved us having to deal with disposal too.

Ben and Andy were booked on as crew for the Black 5 on Sunday, the last day she will be operating on our line before going back to the Mid Hants Railway.  Ben had been guard on the DMU all day and was togged up in his Sunday best:

Ben in his guard's uniform

He noticed my nice Midland shovel and was interested in borrowing it for use on the Black 5 on Sunday.  Mike has a collection of shovels and offered to rent one out to him at £400 for the day.  I was appalled at this blatant attempt at ripping Ben off and offered him mine at the generously discounted rate of £375 for the day.  Curiously, he failed to recognise a bargain when he saw one and decline my offer.

An email had gone whizzing by during the week asking the members of the steam loco dept to help with removing the coconut matting from the car park.  Being tied up with a fireman training turn, I couldn't help, but having been part of the team that had put it out (in the pouring rain), I did feel sorry for Paul & Tim who I spotted in the distance trying to get the stuff lifted:

Paul and Tim, grappling with the coconut matting

Later on, Tim was keen to show me how muddy the car park field still was

The rag collecting bin has been an enormous success.  We now have a reasonable stock of rags and the collecting bin was yet again full when I checked it on Saturday.  Several people have commented that they have been cleaning locos with donated items that are in far better condition than the those they were wearing.  Many thanks to all who have so kindly contributed. 

The rag collecting bin

 And finally, the Planet's Favourite Prairie had her last turn out on the GWSR for a while on Saturday, by the time that you read this she will be back in service on the South Devon Railway and will have already hauled her first train.  She's a lovely little loco and will be much missed here, especially in the coming winter months when her fully enclosed, warm & dry cab is definitely the place to be.  I suspect that 4270 will be the loco that people fight each other to crew over the winter period now.  Here is the PFP setting off on the first train of Saturday morning, her last day with us until next season (I think).

She was a bit shy at first

Farewell PFP, we hope to see you back again soon.

5542 sat in the car park at Toddington, awaiting collection, photo courtesy of Chris Crump