Of bits and Tits

26th May 2019

May is nearly at an end. June beckons. One of our good friends has had preliminary results from scans showing dark masses. Our thoughts are with him..

It'll be a short edition this week: apologies but I'm starting late and would like to get some sleep before another day at the shed tomorrow.

Last Monday was back to Tunstead for RS8. Pete C was back from being a guest of the NHS, Andy H was there too and I'm ashamed to admit I was late as a flurry of e-mails and things needed answering before I could get away from home. I brought with me the tacked-together plates for the rear floor section, which dropped in nicely, so we sent Pete up to the quarry to get it fully welded together, and when he returned he ground the plates smooth on the underside (where the weld was slightly proud), drilled a couple of holes to fix it to the loco and Andy primed it, so that now just needs the steps to go in the centre to improve the cab access.

With the new M10 bolts I changed the clamp bolt on the front vac pipe and took my courage in both hands and swapped the studding for a bolt on the back. A few minutes later it did this...

It's got a mind of its own that vac hose. Most of my time was spent in contortions over the battery box, re-arranging the wiring to the clutch detection switch and torque converter temp sender. This involved disconnecting the relevant wires (and a few more that had to come off first) in the connector box and re-arranging the conduit fittings to clear the new bracket, threading the wires back through and re-connecting it all. Hopefully it will all work but I didn't get time to test. Andy resumed painting: I must get more Golden Yellow in time for our next working day (June 3) and more magnolia for the cab interior. I put the first LED headlight on the front right hand cab pillar to see how it looked and if there were any issues fitting it to the old mounting bracket. It fitted easily and apart from deciding on a simple, cosmetically palatable connector, can be soon wired in, but the other three may be more of an issue as so far as I can see, the holes through the cab corners are all behind the stiffening angles we added to overcome the obvious cracking in the corners. We'll figure something out. I want to get the air cleaner on properly in time for next we run the loco, so that means finishing the work in that area which includes a permanent operator on the cylinder piston rod, which I've drawn up on CAD and issued to the profilers. Hopefully that will go on next time, when we are assured that Netta Christie from Discover Buxton will be coming (I've had it from Pete C's boss this time, so it must be true) and I have to concoct a publicity strategy/action plan for discussion. I think I should still push to get RS8 a one final tour of the Tunstead quarry network...

In other news I popped down to check Cheedale over as it will be moving shortly, and on Friday Steph and I drove over to Norfolk to collect grandson for the week.

This weekend has been an HST gala weekend and as usual we expect a trickle of enthusiasts to come down to us at Darley Dale, indeed some were already booked. In the event, Saturday meant I got virtually nothing done, as visitor after visitor got the guided tour. Several 'only wanted to see the ex BR locos' (I really must work out a witty put-down to that which doesn't give too much offence) and surprisingly we still get people saying something like 'I saw X loco up at Rowsley last time, I didn't know it had moved down here' (hec, it's only 4 years ago). Andrew assisted when I got too many at the same time, but in between he was starting to manufacture a coupling adaptor to suit a vehicle we are expecting shortly. The base material for this is the supports for the RS8 display board that we recovered with the loco from the National Stone Centre. I had had other plans for this but I suppose they may still come to pass. Jagger turned up last night after a day volunteering at Butterley and spent today with me at the shed, working on Ashdown and Jack. I was mostly under a customer's loco getting extremely dirty in the process, but depite keeping a weather eye, we had no visitors or lurkers today so I'm guessing that today was quieter than Saturday at the HST gala. Not that we didn't have passengers leaning out the windows with cameras as the train went by.

Did I mention we have birds nesting inside one of the buffers on the ferry van? Fortunately not an end we need to buffer up to but I do wish I'd made time to get those bird boxes finished and up. What birds? Great Tits I think. at least, that's what appears to be hovering whenever we stand around outside. Yes, I know Tits aren't capable of hovering, but there are two which fly off whenever we come out of the shed and then return to the fence and watch us. They're either worried parents trying to draw us away or aspiring seagulls waiting for us to produce a bag of chips.

So, a short edition this week but you need the occasional dud to make the others the more memorable. Hopefully much more to impart next Sunday. See ya then?