Of miscellaneous pottering
10th July 2016
After starting rather later than intended, the move of Weekend Rails to new servers was duly completed and judging from my visitor stats, hardly anybody noticed. This week my own site is on the move, and probably nobody will notice that either...
In the early part of the week the new header tank for 14 901 was detailed up and issued to the fabricators. Fortunately they haven't started yet (they hope to during this next week) as I've just noticed this evening that I've managed to miss a connection off so will have to issue Revision 1 first thing tomorrow!
Andrew and I have had several evenings at work at the shed, with the result that the area of floor you saw painted red in last weeks' blog is now twice as large, and has had two coats instead of just one. But most of our time has been taken up with general tidying and a fair amount of forward planning, as there are a few things expected to happen over the next few weeks that will be revealed here as they occur.
Andrew made a start on his engine stand, but so far only by cutting up some lengths of the eave beam channel that we recovered from the building steelwork, which is scarcely worth photographing until there is something more to show for it.
On Friday it was my turn to drive to Norfolk and collect grandson for the weekend, so with Andrew committed to parenting time I have been on my own at the shed for both days.
On Saturday therefore, I decided I would push on with floor work, and after clearing a section of the middle floor, swept and vacc'd it and finally applied sealer. Incidentally this has been a comical exercise, since although applied with a roller, Andrew accidentally bought rollers intended for a 1.75 inch diameter mounting, whereas the handle we had wanted one-and-a-half inch. Thus as you pushed the roller to and fro, it was liable to work its way off the handle, or fly off when you lifted it, etc., etc. He has now bought some of the correct size. Fresh sealant, as I think I said before, is rather like cold tea in appearance and consistency, but the last dregs of the first tin had started to cure (I didn't even know it was ill) and came out slightly like a jelly. You can see the area it covered in the second photo by the darker tone it left, which probably means it has sealed better than the fresh. We'll know for sure tomorrow: as I write this Andrew has popped back down to put a coat of red on it, and the more effective the sealer coat the better the top colour appears.
There were more reports coming in from Scunthorpe that the 03 wasn't revving above 800rpm, and then that it wouldn't shut down again. Later news came through that the stop solenoid appears to be sticking, and as it acts as a fuel shut-off valve, that would explain it all. (This being a Cummins, where the fuel pump merely lifts the fuel at a pressure to the injector common feed rail, the stop solenoid should block the fuel feed line to stop the engine, whereas on Rolls and their ilk, with “jerk” pumps, the stop solenoid pulls the fuel rack on the pump back to a no-fuel position on all elements. A curious feature of the Cummins, though, occurs if your fuel tank is equal to or above the level of your common rail – shutting the fuel off at the inlet merely results in the engine continuing to run by drawing fuel back from the return line or tank. Of course, being at lower pressure the engine does eventually stop, but the return line either goes through a low mounted service tank, or a non-return valve is positioned in the return. I have a customer with that problem because some bright spark discarded the little service tank.)
Today it was a case of pottering around on several jobs, from having another go at putting the cable tray work up along the back wall (and concluding that there is a need for an intermediate bracket along from the concrete panels, so measuring up one for profiling) some general tidying plus mounting the first of the 110V outlets on the column by the workbench, ready for cabling to the transformer (once it has been raised six inches so as not to obstruct my cable tray underneath). I also wandered out to RS8 and measured up the missing cover on the top of the RF25, with a view to profiling up a replacement and close it off from atmosphere. There are mutterings about Team Frodingham making a start on stripping RS8 down at the end of the month, and I find myself keen to make a start, if only because it is so different to everything else in the collection.
So I am afraid that's about it – another quiet week, but that could change at any time, so who knows what I'll be writing about next week.