Of a return to RS8

5th May 2019

RS8 returns to centre stage this time..

It'll have to be a short entry this week because having spent more time than usual down at the workshops, I haven't had a day there this weekend so far (owing to visitors at home and a day doing something non-railway for a change) and may not even get there tomorrow either! But last Monday was at least a Tunstead day, and we got to see RS8 and wondered if it had been missing us. Before I get on with progress though, in the last few days there has been a video published on youtube of RS8 moving for the first time. You can either view it through the RS8 restoration website here or direct on youtube here.

So, I had come up armed with some new bits and found the new swan neck for the front vac pipe had been delivered so wasted no time in adding it to the pipe, and equally quickly Andy H gave the pipe a coat of primer. PeteC set about making a steady bar for the clutch cylinder - most of the load is taken through the bottom mounting bolts but if the bracket is free to flex these will work slack. A piece of spare strip was suitably cut, formed and fitted and once satisfied, the whole lot came off for painting.

I meanwhile had disappeared up into the cab. Firstly I had a wiring mod to incorporate: hopefully that big capacitor I added can now be directed at the timer relay alone and it will all work as I intended it. At the other side of the cab, once the battery drill was available, I set about mounting a roller operated valve to detect when the throttle is open.

The idea is that you don't want the clutch engaged with the throttle open, so as soon as the throttle lever moves, the valve allows air through to unload the clutch or prevent it operating in the first place. The lever on the shaft incidentally, was once the lever that operated a microswitch for clutch detection, re-used up here. The clutch detection though is one detail that needs re-doing, as what we did before doesn't suit the new clutch cylinder and arm.

You can see the flex conduit and wires for the old arrangement just held out the way for the moment. Until these bits are finalised, we can't really install the air cleaner, which if you recall comes as part of the casing sides. The air cleaner element though was fitted to the box, and once the tapped holes had been re-tapped to remove all the paint, the box was fitted to the casing outer sheet.

Andy meanwhile, was coming to the conclusion that marking out the buffer beams for chevrons on the black chassis paint applied down at Sigma6 wasn't going to work, so instead rubbed front and rear down and applied white undercoat.

He was also spending a few minutes on parts for a certain miniature railway he's currently involved in.

I had a long and boring day at the workshop on Wednesday. First thing a customer e-mailed me to say that a pallet I had been waiting for was finally on its way. Based on his departure time I thought he would be with me any time ater 11.30, so went down in good time and was ready to bring the forklift out on to our concrete pad to unload. This involved starting up both Charlie and James, and to my chagrin, when I set off with Charlie towing 14901 and 03901, I had neglected to check whether Ludwig Mond was coupled as well and it wasn't. So I fired Pluto up and pushed it out the way with that! Anyway, I sat down to wait for this courier. Steph brought me a lunch down about half two, and at quarter to four I decided it must have been a next day service, so started to put things away. I had already chased my customer for clarification without success: but at this point they came back to report that yes, it was on its way direct but they now knew that it had broken down on the motorway and another van had been despatched to complete the task, and they'd hand-balled the pallet from one to the other. Sure enough, twenty minutes later a van arrived with two drivers, the first van having been recovered. I unloaded them as quickly as possible and rued the things I could have been doing!

So that's about all to say of this week, although there'll be much more news (I hope) next time to report. See ya then?