Of oil and toil

7th April 2019

There are interesting articles in Steam Railway (I understand, I haven't seen that one) but definitely in Railway Magazine about the plight of the West Somerset Railway which was heading for bankruptcy and where the accountants warned the Board members that they were on dangerous ground since they effectively knew that the railway was trading whilst insolvent. There is I think a belief in the heritage railway market that it is somehow immune from the normal pressures of commercial activity, and that being a Director of a steam railway is just a nice bit to put on your CV and a feather in your cap. There will undoubtedly be a commercial failure of a heritage railway at some time and I don't mean the Sandy & Potton or Westerham Valley projects that never achieved operational status. Read and learn.

Anyway, back to Tunstead last Monday with some trepidation. There was always the possibility that we'd get up there and find the sump full of water, so first task was to go underneath, remove the sump plug and see what came out. Fortunately only about a tablespoon-full of mustardy-coloured oil emerged, which most likely had worked its way down during the week. Andy H set to work to replace all the bolts he'd taken out last week, though he had brought with him an air-wrench to take a lot of the toil out of it. Meanwhile I cleaned out the tappings on the side of the block and fitted Pete C's bracket of last week, after which Pete set about making a couple of u-bolts and clamping it all together.

I moved to the other side and changed the fuel filters, catching as much of the mustardy slime as I could in an old washng-up bowl brought for the purpose. By late morning the sump was being refilled with a temporary mixture of 15W/40 and SAE 30 engine oils (my stock is a little low at the mo) to run and pick up all the remaining emulsified yuk. In due course we started up and ran the engine for about 45 minutes - enough to get some temperature in the block and demonstate that the engine compressor is now well able to build up and maintain the air pressure.

I spent some time playing with the now-working throttle control (it needs some adjustment as the idle is too high) and the brake control. The latter is cam-operated and I expected I'd have to make up a new cam but the old one still seems to do the business, but when you operate the brake lever far enough it catches on the throttle linkage on the left hand side so will need attention. The other peculiarity is the balance weight that hangs on the brake shaft in the front of the cab. What is it supposed to do? I can't believe that it is intended either to return the brake lever to fully-applied or fully-released - it requires a considerable force to overcome it and would give you muscles in your spit after a few days of driving. The likely answer is that it is there to counterbalance the linkage, and so minimse the force required (after all, the combination of shafts and linkages means that as well as operating the valve, you move the three other brake levers too) but finding quite what position it needs to be in to achieve this may be trial and error.

The installation of a new clutch cylinder and bracket got under way. The bracket ought to have fitted straight off but for some reason required a new hole, and my original design had assumed clearance beneath the converter whereas RS8 has a ballast block there. We put the cylinder into place and lined up the clutch arm on to the old clamp arrangement, but I may need to alter the new cylinder bracket a bit to ensure it has full stroke available. I brought the arm and clamp away to get it welded up.

Meanwhile it had been noticed that the charge pump is producing no measurable base pressure so apart from shaft leakage it is clearly out of sorts.

Andy H was suffering from withdrawal symptoms as he hadn't painted anything all day. So he painted the buffer shanks red and of course we had to be extra careful not to touch. Pete C says that passers by want to know why we haven't finished painting it. The truth is that we've only painted as much yellow as we have in order to use up the rest of the paint bought primarily to go around window apertures prior to glazing, but if we paint the rest now they'll think it's nearly finished.

I went in to one of my oil suppliers on Wednesday. He operates from a little yard between Mirfield and Dewsbury with an entrance gateway next to a small factory unit. As I drove up, I found two cars parked outside the factory, the rear of the nearer one slightly overlapping and so making my swing to back in that much more difficult. I had a couple of vehicles to let pass first, so had a front row view as 6 or 8 gentlemen, some hoodied, most bearded, gained entrance to the factory unit. One came around to the car in front: he wore baggy shorts, navy blue with broad white stripes around the leg ends - I wouldn't be seen dead in those, I thought, hoping he might be coming to move said car out of my way, but no, he got something from the passenger side and returned to the others. I shuffled the van and backed in. We were loading a 45 gallon drum of SAE30 when a fight broke out amid much shouting in a foreign language. After a minute or so my supplier went off to dial 999, but things seemed to die down. And then there was a loud crash. We didn't know it, but a third car had been driven right at the first two and struck both of them, and the street had emptied. By the time I was ready to leave there were 3 police cars and a video van in attendance and they had closed the road. We (there was another customer in a Micra) were allowed to depart after being interviewed, and I drew the short straw, getting a nice, blonde lady police officer to give my name and address to. I told her what I could but really hadn't been paying that much attention to individuals, and of course the police had 3 abandoned cars to follow up on. It was only a mile or so up the road that it occurred to me that my dashcam might have some footage - it was off during the fight but on as I had rolled up, before the altercation broke out. Arriving home I put the memory card onto my computer and sure eough, the image was there and I put a message on the West Yorks Constabulary website that I had it available if they wanted it. It seems they don't. Ah well.

Friday Steph and I headed over to Norfolk, stopping for a tea in Morrisons at Dereham opposite the MNR station. They appeared to be in operation and the car park was well filled. We returned with grandson for the week.

Saturday, and Andy H had been asked to come over and assist as we had not one but two enthusiast parties booked. He's contracted to build a miniature ralway at the moment and is finding the toil of traditional wheelbarrow navvying somewhat tiring. Andrew would arrive as soon as he could. I'd arranged with the first group - Tilly's Tours - to arrive at 10.00 so that we had time to position everything in the best places, remove all the sheets that cover most of the locos on the middle siding and put up tape barriers to ensure that no-one accidentally strays on to PR running lines. But Andy H had made better than usual time, reporting traffic was light, which might explain why David Tillotson rang at 09.25 to say they were there! We still had 4 locos to unsheet and the tapes to put up, so I had to ask them to wait! Eventually with everything unsheeted and leaving Andy to tape up, I went over to greet and chat before handing things over and letting them loose.

Although with visitors in ones and twos I tend to act as guide and lecturer, with larger groups I allow them to wander and merely answer questions, besides, I'd spent Friday night typing out a list of everything they would see, and apart from (deliberately) omitting the '901's former BR numbers and (accidentally) describing the Brush 0-6-0 as an 0-8-0, I thought they had most info ready to hand, though next time I'll put tick boxes on the list for them! Amongst the Tilly-ets were Gordon Edgar and Roy Burt, with whose paths I had crossed many years ago when the world was young (see here). More recently we had bought some of Gordon's evocative books on industrial railways so I teased him by telling him he ought to buy one of mine in return - bless him he did as I had half-a-dozen laid out for sale.

David Tillotson puts profits from his tours to Guide Dogs, and we'll be delighted to see Tilly's Tours again. After a break for tea, the second lot rolled up: Phoenix Railtours have been before and came to us just after Heritage Shunters Trust at Rowsley - they had a 20 seater coach which we backed into the yard.

The format was much the same and to my relief, I had just enough lists for all participants. After they'd gone we had lunch, and then the three of us started to sheet the locos back up, which as was to be expected, took far longer and more toil. At one point I saw a cameraman leaning over the fence: I invited him in and showed him around (a good way to let the two Andrews get on with the sheeting back up!) and finished with a cuppa. He lived in Kings Lynn, he told us, and was a little surprised when I said I'd driven through there the previous day!

It was a later start today, and although I had 5 tasks on my list, it was not as productive as I would have liked. For starters, Andrew was determined to put some stuff in the PCV that was cluttering up the workshop floor, and with the new concrete pad now some 8 days old, it would be of sufficient strength to bear the forklift, so he laid out more treadplate strips to ensure adequate grip across to it. So a part of the day was taken up with this, plus doing some rudimentary repairs to the roller shutter door that was vandalised nearly 2 years ago.

Then he was cleaning up some castings and fabrications for me, while I began to sort out things needed for tomorrow at Tunstead, including a couple of (hopefully) servicable charge pumps. Some welding jobs were also in prospect, including the 'new' arm on the old clamp for RS8, which for the moment has been welded sufficient to test, but not so much that we cannot remove and adjust if required.

Late in the afternoon we recovered the batteries off 14 901, now that it is stood down - they'll probably be going on to 'Pluto', which we hope to get fully operational again shortly.

Regular readers will be aware, and some I'm know were astonished, that myself, Steph and Andrew were ejected from Peak Rail's supporters group, the Peak Railway Association Ltd, when our subscriptions came up for renewal last year. For Steph and myself, we were given no reason, nor the opportunity to respond to whatever accusations made against us that the Board had presumably given weight to. Instead they simply returned my cheque stating that the Board had the power to refuse an application for membership. In Andrew's case they stated that this was because of concerns about his conduct expressed by Peak Rail plc., but again, what these criticisms were, or right of reply, was denied.

I was too busy countering the inaccurate statements made about me in the February 2018 newsletter to do much at the time, but towards the end of the year we obtained counsel's opinion as to the legality of the action. The barrister agreed with us that the action taken was illegitimate and identified several clauses within the company's Articles which substantiated that view.

In December I wrote to all the remaining PRA Directors drawing their attention to the action that they had taken and putting it to them that it was 'ultra vires' that is, outside their powers as Directors. I asked for reponses within 28 days and that in the absence of suitable response, I would start legal action. Not one single Director of the eight replied.

Anyway, it took a little while to finish preparing the paperwork but finally this was submitted to the Court and late last week my solicitors distributed the paperwork to the eight PRA Directors. Now that it is deemed to be in the public domain, let me make this clear: although the PRA is inevitably named in (and has a copy of) the paperwork, this is not 'those nasty Briddons suing the poor Peak Railway Association' (though I fear some may misinterpret it so), rather our testing whether the Directors themselves can act in the way they did, and if not, calling them to account out of their own pockets.

And that brings us to the end of the first week of April. My thanks to Andy H for providing the photos for Saturday (because in the rush I'd forgotten my camera). This week sees me out on a job where I shall have to work out whether it constitutes commercial activity (which I don't recount here) or other (which I can). Then we're due to have the IDRPG turning up on Saturday and want to run 1382, so there may be an evening shunt to organise first. It all adds to the mix. Are you coming back to find out? See ya then.