Of house moves

21st October 2012

I am writing this instalment from my (old) desk in the (new) office at the Briddon Country Pile. Yes, Openreach's engineer rang me at 08.15 on Friday ("I can't find your house") and by 08.50 the line was connected. Plusnet had promised that the broadband would be on in a few hours, and sure enough it was before the end of the day. Thus the move was on, and Steph and I are now relocated. Andrew, meanwhile, had nominated Saturday to go collect a van full of bits and Sunday has seen him successfully playing trains - er conducting essential trials at a SW Trains depot, located, surprisingly, somewhere south and west(ish).

On Monday last, however, we resumed our efforts back at Rowsley and before repositioning "Tom" ready to re-install the power unit, we drilled and tapped the ballast block to secure a loose conduit with a couple of spare P clips. It would have been nice to have got some traywork for the starter cables in to position while the chassis was so accessible, but we had too little time and Andrew reckons he can squeeze in there to get it done. We shall see. Otherwise things went fairly smoothly - the engine and torque converter were refitted and the front and rear mounts correctly set up, the exhaust system refitted, the radiator and fan drive replaced and the coolant hoses put back, hydraulic pipes reconnected and finally all the casing parts reassembled. This leaves the drive shaft to reconnect, the clutch cylinder to re-seal and fit, all my wiring to identify and re-connect, the converter system to refill, the air induction pipe to replace (after he has done the traywork) and we'll be back pretty well where we thought we were 3 weeks ago. That is aimed for next weekend.

On Tuesday Rob reported that "Charlie" was refusing to start. What with the move I had no time to investigate sooner, but a quick visit today showed that for some reason the clutch limit switch was out of adjustment so start was inhibited even though disengaged. I'll get back in and fix it a day or so, now that Rowsley is but 2 minutes up the road....

As I said, Andrew was out on Saturday collecting loco bits - including a Broomwade compressor (e-bay again) and today I had orders to bid for him on another e-bay Broomwade but although this was advertised as a compressor, the close-up of the data plate shown on the listing clearly stated "Vac". We do not have any technical information, but we do know that Broomwade did a number of versions as exhausters and if this is one we'll be intrigued to ascertain what they did different and how it performs. It may of course be unsuitable for rail vacuum levels (there are two scales for measuring vacuum - inches of water "Wg" or mercury "Hg": 21" Hg is far more -or it less?- of a vacuum than 21"Wg but the latter is quite enough to suck leaves out of a blocked drain).

So sorry, no pictures this week (too busy bolting things up on Monday!) but the saga will resume in earnest next time.