Carols and Steam

Once again, thanks to the good offices of Chris, I have something to report from the activities of the Wednesday gang:

4270 had experienced a badly clinkered fire at the end of last week, and the Wednesday gang leaped into action to get the grate and ash pan fit for further service:

An unidentified person cleaning 4270's grate.

Some of the clinker that emerged from the grate

 As reported last week, 2807 had one of its brake compensating beams the wrong way round (see last week's blog for more details).  The pivot pin had been removed last thing on Saturday, the job was completed on Wednesday.

Ben (l) & Roger, about to switch the compensating beam round...

...Job done, John (l) and Gilbert sign off the paperwork

All previous photos by kind courtesy of Chris Blake

The training of drivers for the new (well to us) telehandler is progressing, Clive getting to grips with the beast, whilst raising Foremarke Hall's safety valves into position.

Clive in the telehandler

Tim picks up where Neal left off as chairman of the escape committee

Now on to Saturday, a few photos came my way from an anonymous source, who was present for the light up of the locos for the Santa turns:

Not having had a winter turn on 4270, our anonymous correspondent took a look under 4270 to find out where the weights for the injector drains are supposed to hang.  They were still in situ...  he overlooked informing 4270's fireman that they were still in place.

Drain weights in place.

4270, in steam, decorated and ready to take nice children to the North Pole

 As noted last week, Dinmore Manor had rather Cinderella like been overlooked when it came to seasonal decorations.  Ben had noted this and remedied matters by fetching along no small amount of tinsel.

Ben and Eleanor starting to decorate Dinmore Manor...

...Ben let the Christmas decorating go to his head a bit

Job done, Dinmore too looked ready for her appointment with the jovial white bearded chap in the red suit

The guilty parties, (l-r), Ian, Tina, Ben & Eleanor

Off with some empty coaches to fill with screaming kids

 The steam hauled Santa specials run from Cheltenham Race Course (CRC) to Winchcombe The North Pole and back, so once they were off, they didn't return for the rest of the day.  This was just as well, because, by the use of some of the magic involved in the Harry Potter movies, Santa was in two places at once, not only was he at the North Pole, but he was also riding up and down the northern section of our line on the DMU.  Toddington was suitably blinged for the occasion:

Danger, Elves at work!

 Meanwhile, back in the yard, after I had arrived, there was plenty of work to do.  The recalcitrant stud on top of 3850's boiler merited further attention.  A nut was re welded onto the stud, and considerable leverage, brute force & ignorance was brought to bear, all to no avail.  Some heat will be applied at a future date to assist, but on Saturday, the onset of heavy rain stopped play on outdoor jobs.

Mark welds a nut on the stud

In the nice warm dry David Page shed, a small team continued welding parts of the roof canopy for Broadway station

Pete holds a cherry red rivet in place...

...Ian applies pressure to finish the job

The tunnelling committee are at it again.

One of the more interesting jobs was salvaging a white metal bearing from one of the cut off coupling rods from 2874.  The rest of the coupling rod is apparently destined for some modern art installation in somebody's home.  I should point out that the cutting of the coupling rod occurred sometime after withdrawal by BR and before removal from the legendary Barry Island Scrap Yard.

The savaged coupling rod

No doubting its heritage

David after pressing out the bearing

Speaking of David, he suggested that I should help him with a nice warm dry job in the new Dinmore Manor container, putting in the brackets that would hold the light fittings.  This was an important point, as the weather had turned and was now raining not just cats and dogs, but a whole menagerie of domestic pets as well.   Unfortunately, I soon discovered that I had been led astray.  David's idea was that after suitable holes had been drilled in the container walls, that some fool kind soul would venture up onto the top of the containers in the pouring rain to put nuts onto the end of the bolts securing the brackets to the walls as they were poked through.  Guess who drew the short straw!

The view from the top of the containers

You will note that the adjustable spanner (an imperial one of course) is attached to me by a piece of string, as retrieving it if I dropped it between the containers would have been highly unlikely.

Back in the dry, the brackets looked like this...

Sam securing one of the brackets in place

 Once proper lighting has been installed, it will be possible to audit the collection of bits that go together to make 3850 at last.

Dinmore Manor's new tender is still in need of having its first top coat of paint rubbing down and a second coat applying, Andy started the rubbing down, a task not made any easier by the myriad rivets involved.

Andy preparing the new tender for a second top coat of paint

My excuse reason for arriving late, was that I had an evening firing turn.  The carol service train departed Toddington at 7pm, yours truly taking over Dinmore Manor from the daytime crew.

The weather left something to be desired

Still, there was a nice warm fire to try to dry off by.

 Mercifully, the rain stopped by the time that we set off, and stayed off for the rest of the evening.

Setting off from Toddington

Phil was the driver, and recent starter, Angela, tagged along for the ride.

 The timetable said that we should ferry the carol singers to Winchcombe, where a brass band would greet them and carols would be sung.  At some unspecified time after that (every fireman's joy, a guess when the train will be leaving event), we were to progress down to CRC and then return to Toddington.  All good fun, it's a very different experience firing in the dark.

Whilst carols were sung at Winchcombe, Phil took the opportunity to dry his jacket, which had become more than slightly damp earlier. 

You could see steam rising off of it.

 I suspect that this distraction was the reason why I didn't hear any changed lyrics to any of the carols... no shepherds washed their socks that night.

Another distraction, was a mince pie that the daytime crew had manage to wedge into an inaccessible location behind the injector manifold.  I was feeling a bit peckish by this point, so I opted to rescue it from it's precarious position.  You'll be disappointed to learn that I managed not to burn myself in the process.

The rescued mince pie, cooling down on the warming tray

The assembled throng singing under the canopy at Winchcombe

Dinmore Manor, enjoying listening to the carols

Angela earned her passage, by uncoupling at Toddington and helping with filling the tender

And finally, a few more photos by yet another Chris of his day on Sunday:

Apparently the dinky wheels of the accommodation bogies that 3850 is currently perched on amused Chris

I note that the weather was much kinder on Sunday.

Students of this blog will be well aware by now that Santa season whilst meaning rampant commercialism to everybody else, means time for a fry-up on the shovel to the crews at the GWSR

Chris H does his best celebrity chef impression

Andy and James enjoying the festive feast

 It wasn't all fun and games on the footplate though, one of the rubbers on the gauge frame was past its best, and steam was misting up the protector glass, Chris had to change the rubbers to get it to behave.

In need of some therapy

The above four photos by kind permission of Chris Chewter.

Next week, yours truly has a turn on the Santa Specials... plans are afoot for yet more cooking on the shovel.

The Great Escape

I'm sure that most, if not all of the readers of this blog follow the Broadway blog... and if not, why on earth not, it is marvellous to see the new station at Broadway unfolding before your eyes.  As many of you will know, a small section of the steam loco dept is playing its part in the recreation of Broadway station, as the steel trusses that will support the roof are being manufactured here.  The following three photos of the work in progress are all by kind courtesy of Roger Tipton:

Ian heats up a rivet...

...the rivet is inserted into the roof truss...

...and given some therapy with a press.

 The target date for opening Broadway is the start of the 2018 operating season, a not far away and set to be a significant milestone in our railway's history.   Achieving that target date, is of course still dependent on funds being raised.  If you wish to help, please do click on this link and make a donation.

 I was recently reminded of just what a debt the cleaners/firemen owe to Roger B.  In the now seemingly distant days when I started as a cleaner, once the loco(s) had disappeared off shed, your next task for the day was to break up a bunch of wooden pallets so that the next day's fireman would have some suitable materials to hand for lighting up his (or in Tina's case, her) loco.  I haven't found myself having to do that for quite some time, and reason is that on every Wednesday (and sadly as a consequence usually unseen by your blogger who still suffers from having a day job) Roger and his merry band of helpers set about converting pallets into firewood.  The next three photos courtesy of Chris Blake:

A stack of fresh pallets beside the wood store...

...Roger setting to work on them...

...result, one well stocked wood store.

Thanks Roger, your hard work is much appreciated by the crews.

A confession...  on Saturday morning, I arrived at the railway bright and early and noticed as I extracted "my" gloves from the boot of the car that they had "Tim P" written inside.  It seems that I had inadvertently pilfered Tim's gloves.  Sorry Tim.  Catch me on Saturday and I'll reunite you with them.

Oops!

The Santa season has started, (there are still a precious few tickets left on selected dates... hurry to avoid disappointment) with 4270 and Dinmore Manor covering the services last weekend. 

Dinmore Manor is in there somewhere

 Normally the first crew of the Santa season turns up with a load of tinsel etc to decorate the locos, however the memo seems to have missed the crew of Dinmore Manor on Saturday.  I have it on good authority that this oversight will be corrected this coming weekend:

Where's the tinsel?

There again, from some angles you really couldn't tell

 I mentioned recently that Foremarke Hall's reverser had been sent off for some attention.  It has now returned, John & Chris refitted it on Saturday:

The refurbished reverser...

...John fitting it...

...Chris fitting the cladding.

3850 came in for some more attention, as mentioned last week, the wheels had been shot blasted and primed:

Lovely job.

 The frames were still being steam cleaned in anticipation of being shot blasted and primed in the near future:

Eleanor is in there somewhere with the pressure washer

 There were still a number of tasks that wanted doing on 3850's boiler, for a start, a little bit of light needle gunning inside the boiler barrel in preparation for the NDT testing:

Angela (new starter) needle gunning inside 3850's boiler

Not to be outdone, Roger started needle gunning 2874's boiler

 On the top of the backhead on the boiler is the feed for the injectors.  Being live steam at boiler pressure, the studs that hold this joint in place need to be jolly tight.  The studs wanted removing, and somebody (probably Ian) had welded the nuts onto the studs in order to facilitate their removal.  The two on the right on the below photo came out with a fair amount of brute force and ignorance applied (7/8 W socket and about 4' of scaffolding pole to gain extra leverage).  The one on the bottom left, required what was probably about 10' of scaffolding pole.

Looks easy doesn't it.

 In case you can't easily visualise the joint concerned, here is the identical one from 2807's boiler:

Injector header securely clamped in place on 2807's boiler.

The fourth one... well, even with the stupidly long scaffolding pole extension broke the weld and turned the nut off, leaving the stud behind.  

Rather obstinatenut

The scary thing is that the corresponding nuts on 2874's boiler look like they will be even harder to shift!

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

 Our new starter, Angela, who has some engineering expertise ran a die over the thread to clean it up and tried locking one nut against another on the stud, but still it wouldn't shift.  Some heat will need to be applied at a future point.

Angela cleans up the stud's thread.

Locked nuts in place, but still no joy

Meanwhile, 2807 was in line for some tender loving care.  A number of people were busy installing a new brick arch:

DIY brick arch kit... in jigsaw puzzle form, but without a helpful picture.

 There were at least four people in the firebox working on the jigsaw.

Looking for a corner piece.

As mentioned a number of blog posts ago, we now have a set of scales by the indoor pit on road 7, making it much easier to check the weight distribution of our locos.  A drawback to this capability is that you discover that you have a problem, which you no longer feel that you can simply ignore.  It turns out that on the fireman's side, the rear compensating beam was installed the wrong way round (there being three quarters of an inch difference depending on which way round you have it).  The upshot was that although the weights balanced nicely on one side of the loco, the rear two wheels on the other side were out by nearly a ton.  The simple task of extracting the compensating beam and flipping it round through 180 degrees was all that needed doing.  Students of this blog will know that nothing is ever easy when it comes to steam locos, the pin holding the compensating beam in place having seized solidly in place.

Compensating beam exposed, but the pin still in situ

 Underneath, Bruce applied some heat, Gilbert used some gentle persuasion... better known as a sledge hammer.

Bruce (hiding on the left), Gilbert in hi-viz on the right

 Capturing the scene for posterity, as well as the 2807 blog, was Roger.

Roger, the man behind the 2807 blog

 I checked back later and found that the reluctant pin had finally been removed, but by then, it was getting late in the day and everything was being lashed up well enough to be returned to the shed for the night. 

The pin, finally removed.

 For reasons that I didn't get to the bottom of, one of the diesels was occupying the pit on road 9, so 35006 was relegated to being worked on indoors.  The task being undertaken, was to strip one of the cylinder drain cocks to clean it out in a bid to clear whatever was causing it to stick open at times

John stripping the left hand cylinder drain cocks

The brake and regulator assemblies in the cab have been removed so that steam leaks can be attended to.

You can't stop it now... there again, you can't make it go either

 And finally, working in the steam loco dept has become too much for some of the inmates and work has now reached an advanced stage on an escaped tunnel.

The start of the tunnel

 The tunnel was deliberately dug on the west side of the goods shed, as the guards are usually to be found on the other side.  No small number of people have been seen furtively getting rid of the soil from the tunnel by disposing of it from underneath their overalls.

Neal is the head of the escape committee

The excuse that would be used if the guards ever caught them was that they were just trying to improve the drainage in the yard, but I doubt that anybody would believe that.