Of balls and video

30th June 2019

July is in the offing. June has gone out with an unseasonably hot spell. My commiserations to all those rostered on steam loco footplates!

It had the feeling of being the end of an era. I arrived at Tunstead a few minutes after nine on Monday expecting to be all alone, and instead found Pete C waiting for me. He was due to retire on Thursday and Brian P had forecast he wouldn't return at all, but here he was, half-a-stone lighter after a bout of gastro entiritus, to progress the job and set things up for next week. I had brought up two 5mm thick plates to augment the ballast boxes at the front. Like most diesels RS8's prime mover produces much more power for its weight than the steam loco that begat it.

Consequently it has ballast weights strategically placed to bring back its gross weight (and balance) to what it was before. But those front weights had been made up of half or three-quarter thick plates that had been severely rusted. We scrapped them, retaining a couple as patterns with a view to profiling replacements, but I didn't think it fair to lumber all that additional cost on Tarmac, and I certainly didn't want to buy it. An alternative strategy was arrived at during recent weeks, with the planned scrounging of mills balls. These are steel balls that start off a little over tennis ball sized, but bounce around breaking up the stone and wear down in the process. I gather they end up much like large ball bearings by which point they are ineffective so are replaced and put aside for scrap. By converting the ballast boxes into proper boxes, we can fill these reasonably efficiently to achieve something like the original weight, then put something on top and hopefully the old side covers go back on and RS8 is once again the loco it used to be. So Pete C did ringing around and got the promise of a welder for next Monday (tomorrow) to weld in the plates for us, and maybe there'll be a 45 gallon drum of old mills balls for us to lob in. I had also brought up the restored grille. RS8 had such a grille in ICI and Dinting days, but it disappeared when the radiator core was hacked out. I had hoped the fabricators at Tarmac might take it under their wings but in the end had brought it off site for attention. No doubt Andy H will want if off again for painting, but to my surprise not only did the fixing holes line up, but they turned out to be M8 so the job took less than half the time I'd expected.

One of the tasks that sill awaits us is draining the contaminated oil from the sump and removing the oil cooler for attention. Unfortunately the pit was still several inches deep in rainwater, so Pete disappeared off to find a submersible pump. Finding one was apparently simple, but it was overdue a PAT test and finding a PAT testing man took rather longer! Eventually he returned, with pump and flat hose, which we routed up the access stairs and round into the oil separator. (The pit once had its own pump, but this was removed when the locomotive department de-camped further down the quarry). The pump was VERY effective - far better than mine - but the same could not be said of the hose, which we found to have 16 holes of various diameters, two of which were large enough and directed such that Pete was drenched with stagnant water in a few seconds. He went off to get changed, then put a piece of RS8's under-desk bodywork over the worst of the holes to re-direct the water back to the pit.

We soon had quite an effective water feature, cascading over the steps, but significantly more was finding its way to the oil separator and by 11 o'clock the water had gone, but the pit was still slimy, so we left it to dry.

There are a whole heap of redundant holes through the front of RS8's cab. (Um, a whole heap of holes. Sounds good, but how can you have a heap of holes, whole or partial?) Some are from equipment that we've changed - like the plate which I think upon which was once mounted the battery switch and voltage regulator just under the window - and others I have no notion of, but before Andy H comes back and starts adding paint, it's high time we did something about them. Many of the smaller ones have been plugged with bolts, some of the bigger ones with an epoxy-based 'plastic metal' with mixed results. I continued re-plumbing in the cab to provide feeds for the wiper motors, but the 1/4 BSF setscrews I'd brought were too short to go through the neccessary spacers, so they still need mounting but the pipes are waiting for them. The day wore on - we had a last Corbett-cuppa together and he showed me the video of the day of his daughter's wedding, which it seems was captured mostly through drone footage, even inside the reception. He has promised to come visit us at Darley Dale: when his immediate plans shave been accomplished.

Tuesday, and a customer was due to send me a spring for repair. This is always a problem when it comes to pallets. The forklift of course is at the workshop, but to get incoming vehicle and forklift in any sort of proximity calls for shunting that would currently occupy half an hour before and again after, and neccessitate my waiting around watching out for the arriving vehicle. But direct that same vehicle to the Briddon Country Pile is to risk being unable to unload at all, that is if/when the driver can find it. I opted for the latter, and the big van that arrived had nothing but the spring on a pallet and we slid it from his van to mine.

On Wednesday I was out and about collecting parts from Sheffield and surrounding areas and although I had planned to go down to the shed that evening, I felt too tired, which turned out to be unfortunate. On Thursday I headed down fairly early, opened up and turned on the monitor for the securtity cameras and my heart sank - one of the 2HAP doors was wide open. Slam lock doors do not open themselves,- we'd had visitors. I checked through the security recordings and sure enough, about eight o'clock the previous night, some 8 or 9 youths had been 'exploring' the yard, going through all the loco cabs and letting off fire extinguishers.

They had come from the Matlock end of the site - you could see them climbing in and out of 14 901 first, then working their way up. They laughed and waved at the security cameras (maybe thought they were dummies) and generally were mucking around. 03901 got the brunt of dry powder from an extinguisher they took out of Ludwig Mond. I went around locking 2HAP doors (not sure now whether it is better to leave them open or lock them and risk projectiles through the glass).

After lunch I phoned 101 and reported it to the Police, returning to get on with the work in hand and download the footage to a memory stick. I was out on Thursday night, but Steph volunteered to take a walk down to the shed and ended up photographing four of them who were up by the crossover, but as soon as they realised they ran off and into the DFS car park, where their mates were. Steph hung around for an hour or so, but other than one or two verbal exchanges, nothing more happened. On Friday evening a PCSO turned up at the Briddon Country Pile to collect the memory stick. I offered the fire extinguishers for finger printing but he doubted they could justify the cost. Afterwards I went down to the shed for a couple of hours, regularly checking the cameras - difficult to concentrate on anything worthwhile but nothing untoward happened. And so it has been over the weekend, when I've been largely on my own and getting on with a backlog of commercial work. Not that either day has been wonderfully productive, what with the heat on Saturday and although cooler today the inside temperature was 23 degrees. At least I dould bear to put overalls on today!

So, back up to Tunstead and RS8 tomorrow armed with the new tacho cable (at last! the firm didn't live up to its name to my mind), 1/4BSF bolts and sundry oher bits. As long as the welder doesn't ring in sick or get commandeered by something more important elsewhere, we'll make yet more progress on RS8 and hopefully know who'll be taking over management of the last stages of the project. The casing doors are drawn up (thinks: visit the fabricators again this week) and once that oil cooler has been sorted we'll try getting another run with it. July too- where has the year gone? Still, I'll be here, same time, same website. See ya then?