Pheonix From Ashes

Environmental issues are at the forefront of all our thinking these days.  Until fairly recently the ash that was generated from running our locos was sent off to become land fill.  I am now pleased to be able to inform you that the ash gets taken away, combined with cement and gets turned into breeze blocks.  Who knows, the new welfare building inner walls could have started out life in the fireboxes of some of our locomotives.

The digger, getting a bucket load of ash... (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

...and loading it onto the lorry. (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

Somebody somewhere is bound to say "Like a pheonix rising from the ashes", so I might just as well say it first.

Last Saturday saw a continuation with work on 3850's tender, specifically needle gunning and wire brushing inside the coal space.

David getting on with the wire brushing

 I made a start on the places that still needed needle gunning.

I'd done the bit on the left, the right was about to be done

 By the end of the day, I'd wire brushed and and put on a coat of rust inhibiting primer as well.

A start has been made at least

 The outside of the tender has seen much more progress, Roger has moved on from applying primer to grey undercoat.

Or perhaps it's "Work's Photographic Grey"?

Meanwhile, Martin and Keith have been continuing to dismantle 2874.  It is going to be shot blasted and primed by an outside contractor in the near future, but first some more bits need to come off and of course some items need protecting from the shot blasting. 

2874 on its accommodation bogies

The target for Saturday was to remove the reverser.  2874 is 101 years old now, and the reverser had probably not been removed in all that time.  It had grown quite accustomed to being where it was thank you very much and not at all inclined to go somewhere else now.

Keith applied some heat.

The mortal remains of the AWS box did come off

 At the end of the day, all bolts holding the reverser in place had been teased off, but the rust still holding it in place was a force to be reckoned with.  It will have to wait until a telehandler driver is available to lift it off.

Refusing to budge

 Meanwhile, David had been removing some of the grime from the frames and found them for the most part to be in excellent order.  One or two of the frame stretchers will need to be replaced and the drag box is also far past being fit for further service.

David, cleaning the frames...

...the drag box... or what is left of it anyway.

Just in case there wasn't enough work to be done on the locos, we seem to have adopted a wagon to repair.

John putting the brake mechanism to rights.

 The welfare building is shooting up, the breeze block inner walls have stopped for the moment and the brick external walls have been started.

The larger view...

...and a close up of the brick work.

 The standard of the brick work has come in for compliments from many quarters.  The aim is that it will blend in seamlessly with the original GWR goods shed.  It's looking pretty good thus far.

 2807 was out running on Saturday, so its owning group had little to do other than continue with their boot scraper production line (available from the Flag & Whistle).  All proceeds towards funding 2807's heavy general overhaul starting next year.

Bruce painting a boot scraper

 35006 has been having issues with its brakes, Saturday saw a team of people gathering around it.

Or at least there had been, I obviously wandered past at tea break time.

 Testing brakes when a loco is not in steam is a bit tricky as you can't use the ejector to pull up a vacuum. The 35006 group weren't to be defeated though and used an electrical vacuum creating device instead.

 This new-fangled electricity will never catch on!

 I was back again on Sunday, this time as the rostered fireman for Dinmore Manor.  The driver, Mike had hatched a cunning plan.  It was the cleaner's (Mark) birthday.  He arranged for Mark's dad to join us for a round trip of the line without Mark knowing. Mark was dispatched to the Flag & Whistle to obtain bacon rolls for the crew.  Once Mark had gone, Mike sneaked his dad onto the footplate.

Mark returning with breakfast

 We had expected Mark to be surprised when he returned to Dinmore Manor, but as it happened, he had spotted his dad's car in the car park on his way to the Flag & Whistle and put two and two together.  Best laid plans...

Mark & his dad.

Dinmore Manor running round at Broadway

 Being on the prep turn, I only did one round trip before handing over the fire to Tina for the remainder of the day.  On Saturday, just before he left, David had rather cheekily said "If you fancy hanging around until midnight, you can prime the section of 3850's tender that I have needle gunned & wire brushed".  For some unaccountable reason, I didn't fancy hanging around until midnight... I'd have been in breach of our lone working rules & working hours rules if I had.  On Sunday afternoon there were plenty of people around (the DMU group prefer to work on the bubble car on Sundays), so I got out the rust inhibiting primer once more.

Another section of the tender coal space in primer.

 It seems to be the season for painting stuff,  Bryan had fetched his 04 shunter into the shed and was busy wire brushing off the old paint

Bryan wire brushing...

...and Dan followed behind with the primer.

 You may remember from the last blog post that Anthony was my cleaner and I was keen to let him fire a round trip.  I knew of course that he was only a week away from being assessed as a fireman and wanted to make sure that he had a bit of last minute practice. He fired perfectly then and obviously fired perfectly again on Sunday, as he has now been passed out as a fireman.  Congratulations Anthony.

Inspector Meredith (L) with Anthony

A new head of locomotive training has recently been appointed who I have it on very good authority was extremely pleased at this first passing out of an engine man during his tenure. His enthusiasm to update the online operations website didn't go entirely to plan. It turns out that when you try to upgrade somebody from cleaner to fireman, it is possible to convert them to being a locomotive for rostering purposes. Although the new training manager had the permissions to make this change, he didn't have the necessary permissions to undo it. For a couple of days, Anthony existed as both a fireman and a locomotive. A grovelling email had to be sent to the Operations Manager to get the anomaly corrected. The reply when it came was "Done. No chance of anyone accidentally lighting him up now 😉"

That is normally where I would leave off a blog post, however on this occasion, there is one more thing to add. For the last few years, the GWRT website on it's volunteering page has included words to the effect that the steam loco dept is full and don't bother applying. It has been recognised that with the recent change to running split shifts that we need more footplate crew and also we need more people to work on our running fleet and restoration projects. The web page has now been updated with rather more welcoming words. It takes a few years of cleaning locos to get to the point of being qualified as a fireman like Anthony and there is classroom training, written exams, a medical and of course a practical assessment to go through. The hours are long and antisocial, you'll get roasted/frozen/soaked to death depending on the season, never mind getting more than than slightly grubby (Swarfega will become your new best friend). If this is for you and you would like to know more, then please click on the now rather friendlier link.

Two in, One Out

Good progress has been made on the welfare building front:

The long arm of the concrete dispensing lorry has been (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

The concrete delivery in progress. (photo courtesy of Chris Blake)

Job done (photo courtesy of Martin Ryan)

Since then, the walls have started to go up:

Breeze block inner wall in place, bricks waiting to become the outer wall

The title of this blog post refers to the locos.  During the course of this week, 6023, King Edward II has disappeared off to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway for their impending gala.  I have no doubt that she'll make a fine sight climbing up the bank towards Pickering. 

Sad to see her go (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

A new arrival is Hawksworth pannier 9466, recently purchased by Jonathan Jones-Pratt, chairman of the board of the West Somerset Railway.

9466 being delivered (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

The plan is that she will be with us for a little while, you could view her as being our first gala guest loco for 2020 if you like.

Filling her water tanks (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

All the usual fitness to run/steam tests etc have to be undertaken before she enters traffic.  All being well, she is rostered for the weekend of 26th & 27th October if you're interested in travelling behind her.  NB, rosters may change due to unforseen circumstances.  Check on this link nearer the time for confirmation.

On my last turn, the new wood store was a little depleted.  Remedial actions have been taken by the wood team who have made great inroads into stocking it.

Another barrow load of fresh wood for the wood store (photo courtesy of Peter Gutteridge)

The title of the blog says "Two in, one out".  6023 and 9466 are two of those three, what is the second arrival?  Well the answer to that is Dinmore Manor (7820) has returned from her summer holiday on the Dartmouth Steam Railway.  I had the privilege of being her fireman on her first day back in traffic on Saturday.

Sun rise over 7820's chimney

Heading off shed

4270 was the other loco running.

We had a footplate passenger for the first trip, Ian (GWSR publicity officer) brought Carol up to the footplate.

Ian (L) and Carol

Ian used to be a fireman until four or five years ago...

...When presented with the shovel, he hadn't forgotten what to do

A highlight of the day for me, was that the points at Broadway have now been fixed, so there is no more running top & tail with a diesel over our northern most track section.

Dinmore Manor running round its train at Broadway

Anthony was the cleaner for the day, he is well advanced in fireman training now, so I let him fire the second round trip.

Anthony collecting the token at Toddington

Crossing 4270 at Gotherington

The day wasn't entirely without incident, the front lens on one of the lamps came adrift from the the lamp body during the course of the day.

Ade (driver) before giving up on trying to refit the front lens

The funny thing was, that we had just bumped into Mike (who maintains the lamps) up at Broadway just before this, who was calling to check a few ladders before setting off on holiday.  Clearly it won't be fixed for a little while.

Anthony hooking on at Cheltenham Race Course (CRC)

One of the jobs any engineman needs to learn is the art of delegation.  In the case of a fireman, knowing what jobs to delegate to the cleaner is very important. There isn't usually anybody for a cleaner to delegate a job to, but Anthony managed it and had this young lady building up the fire for him at CRC.

I wonder if she wants to join the steam dept!

Eventually she got bored and Anthony had to do the rest himself

And finally, the cylinders for 3850 had meant to be machined a while ago.  The original contractor taken on to do the job ceased trading and it has taken a while for a new company to be formed from the old one.  In spite of the drama, the cylinders are are now being machined and will hopeully be at Toddington in the near future to be fitted to 3850.

Cutting one of the cylinder bores (photo courtesy of Mike Solloway)

Work in progress (photo courtesy of Mike Solloway)

Pink Blues

 Last Saturday saw a reasonable sized gang get on with getting 2874 off of its wheels.   The wheel sets are to be sent to the South Devon Railway to have a new set of tyres fitted, the frames are about to be shot blasted to get them back to bare metal.

The process started with stripping off some of the running plate...

...once rivet heads had been ground off, gentle persuasion tactics were employed...

...then 2874 was gently raised above her pony truck...

...which was wheeled out and lifted off of the pony wheels...

...a bit more lifting and all the driving wheels were rolled out.

At the close of play, all the driving wheels had been rolled out and most of the axle boxes had been removed.  This coming weekend there will be a bit of a blitz to get the last 3 axle boxes off and to insert accommodation bogies under the frames.  The lifting jacks are due an exam soon and they have to have had any load removed before that happens.

3850 wasn't entirely overlooked, Tracy got on with cleaning out some of the grot that adhered to what remains of its front end.

Tracy at work on 3850

3850's tender was also getting a little TLC, the water cocks have been painted into top coat.

Tender water cocks

There was still a need for removal of rust and old paint to be removed from inside the coal space of the tender, I started needle gunning that in the morning before being roped in to help lift 2874 off its wheels.

3850's tender.

The tender was largely painted whilst on the lifting jacks, the rear drag box was resting on the lifting beam between two of the jacks whilst it was being painted, so that will need to get some attention soon.

Bereft of paint.

Foremarke Hall has been the subject of conversation in the steam dept recently.  It has been noted that the initials ID have appeared on the frames just behind the front buffer beam.  For GWR locos before they acquired BR liveries, this is where the shed location would be painted, but there was no shed code of ID that anyone could think of.  Several younger members of the department suggested that it might be something to do with a well known boy band, perhaps they were going to use Foremarke Hall in a video for their next single?  Others thought that getting hold of some tippex and appending the number ten and the letter "T" would be a good thing idea.  The truth as it turns out is that it stands for "Improved Draughting".

Improved Draughting

This all came about because of a photo discovered by the Foremarke Hall group showing their loco at Crew with the letters ID just behind the front buffer beam

If you squint through a large magnifying glass, you can just about make it out

6023 King Edward II was out in the sun receiving some TLC from the owning group and being prepared for a boiler exam.

6023 enjoying some TLC

She has done her last steamings with us for this summer and will be off to the North York Moors Railway for their gala in the near future.

The topic of laundry is not at first sight one that you would have thought that the steam loco dept would be particularly interested in.  You'd be wrong.  The inspectors like to see crews turned out in clean, crisply ironed blues, with tie (drivers) or neckerchiefs (firemen).  Boots need to have been shined to within an inch of their lives. The crew training reports and assessments all have a section for "appearance".   This is all well and good, however operating a steam locomotive is not exactly conducive to maintaining the standards of sartorial elegance that would gain you entry to the royal enclosure at Ascot.  A full day of working in the hot, oily, greasy and coal dust laden environment of a steam loco will soon have you looking like a soap shy dishevelled chimney sweep.  Overalls used during the loco preparation of oiling up, emptying ash pans and smoke boxes and lighting the fire end up looking even worse.  Getting your blues or overalls back to an acceptable level of cleanliness is not simply a case of bunging them in the domestic washing machine on a long hot washing cycle, many of our better halves don't want to be washing their whites or delicates in a washing machine that has just been used for railway laundry thank you very much.  Most of us are relegated to hand washing them in a bucket in the back garden using suitably hot water and industrial strength detergent.  I have long since given up on this as being too much like hard work, and simply bought a second cheap washing machine which inhabits one corner of the garage.  It is plumbed in to the outside tap via a length of garden hose. It works very nicely, blues come out as clean as can be expected (which isn't very clean to be honest) and no whites or delicates are harmed in the process.  Older readers may remember soap powder adverts involving a "doorstep challenge", a film crew ostensibly turning up unannounced and challenging housewives to find their grubbiest items of laundry so that the soap powder manufacturer could demonstrate how wonderful their product was.  I dream that the advert campaign will be resurrected and that they'll turn up on my doorstep... they'll definitely be sorry if they do.  Why am I telling you all this?  Mrs Blogger has a once white fleece jacket that on cold days she wears under her overalls, it has been kicking around in the garage waiting to be washed since the last cold season.  As temperatures are starting to dip, she wanted it washing again in anticipation of the cold weather to come.  Mrs Blogger has some form when it comes to leaving tissues in pockets of items for washing, so I now go through all of her pockets to make sure that they're empty.  It's just as well that I did, because on this occasion she had left a red biro in a pocket of the fleece.  It was a near miss, I might well have turned up wearing pink blues... and I know that I'd never have heard the end of it if I had.

Moving swiftly along to Tuesday, I was back again, this time for a firing turn on 35006.

The day didn't get off to a good start, pulling coal forward is best done with a rake, unfortunately whenever it was coaled up last, the rake had been overlooked and left in the tender.  It was now buried under several tons of coal.

I had to do a fair bit of excavating to have even this much of the rake visible.

Harry (cleaner) finished digging out the rake from here on.
 
 Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary since the foundation of the Merchant Navy.  This auspicious occasion was deemed to be reason enough to turn out 35006 with a commemorative headboard, and suitable flags (union flags & red ensigns) displayed on the front running plate and on the smoke deflectors.  A team of people had been out cleaning her the day before, so she was looking rather smart by the time she was attached to her train.

35006 just before departing shed

 Needless to say, various members of the press had been alerted and various people in hi-viz were being escorted around by Ian, the GWSR press officer.

Harry continues cleaning 35006 for a few of the paparazzi

 Normally, we'd attach to the stock at around 09:30 for a brake test before the first departure at 10:00.  On this occasion they wanted us there at 09:00 for a bit of a photo session beforehand.   The crew & guard were also reluctantly lined up in front of the loco for a photo call, don't worry, I'll spare you that.

Waiting to depart

Even video footage was taken

Many photos of the day have emerged and made their way onto various social media outlets etc.   The following three photos were all very kindly sent to me courtesy of Steve Parker:

On the pits along with 2807

Setting off from the yard

Departing Toddington with the first train of the day

We were requested to slow down through Dixton cutting, then apply a bit of chuff to get us back up to line speed as we approached Three Arch Bridge where some of the photographers would be waiting.  After that, the day returned to being just a normal day out at the GWSR... well mostly

This gentleman was dressed up in togs that predated the founding of the Merchant Navy by some considerable margin

And finally, more work took place on the welfare building foundations, note the blue bricks layer on the outside. 

Starting to take shape

There should have been a concrete pour yesterday to fill in the foundations.  I wasn't there to take pictures, I must have been allowed time off for good behaviour... well OK, time off anyway.