Of the Reluctant Fowler

19th May 2019

I strive to come up with something pithy here to catch your attention and provoke your thoughts. This week? Nothing.

I'm going to break one of my rules this week. Which one is that? The one that I don't report on my 'commercial activities'. I think it is safe to ignore it (a) because it's a one-off deal so no competitor could benefit from knowing it, (b) it's an entertaining wheeze and (c) it's out on their blog anyway. But before I get that far, I better start with the beginning of the week, and Monday at Tunstead. If you recall, I was expecting it to be just me and Pete C as Andy H was laying tarmac. (There must be a joke there given that Tunstead is owned by Tarmac but I'm too tired to work it out). I arrived prompt at nine and found the room and tool cupboard unlocked, but no-one there. After a while another manager turned up and explained that Pete C had been off ill since the previous Monday (actually he'd been in hospital with a lung infection) and as I knew what I was doing carry on - if I needed anything he'd be in his office. And I'll admit it was a bit lonely, and part of me was tempted to scrub it and head home where admin was awaiting me. But no, I'd come up wth enough bits to keep me occupied and I stayed.

I'd brought up 2 new vac hoses and clips. The front swan neck is a brand new one - available from me if you need any - and the hose went on reasonably easily, although the bolts Andrew had put on the clips were too short, I found a longer M8 that would do for now. The hose went on, I tightened the dummy in the right place on the stand-pipe and admired it. It may only be cosmetic, but it looked good.

So I moved to the back, which is the original swan neck, and proceeded to clamp the hose on this time with a piece of M10 studding I'd found. But it wouldn't stay on no matter how tight I clamped it. OK, maybe I'd used a touch too much washing up liquid, but no matter how much I tightened the clamp, no matter the fact that the dummy was clamped underneath so pushing it back into place, you could see the hose gradually start moving down the casting and spring off. After 4 times, I concluded that this was brought about by the excess of smooth paint on the casting and took a piece of coarse grit paper to it. It was still on when I left last Monday - I wonder if it is now....

The treadplate to go across the cab walkway was trialled in lace, but the cross piece was slightly too long and pushed one of the longitudinals to an angle.

Up on the engine I set up the tacho genny but the drive cable was way too short. Andrew reminded me later that the tacho genny was placed on top of the rocker box for the older voltage generators, but the later 3-phase gennies went on the thermostat housing. As the thermostat housing has no provision and the original location is more authentic (and where I'd taken the wires to) I'll settle for buying a longer drive cable.

I set about deciding where to put the clutch limit switch and get it to work with the revised cylinder and bracket. In the end I decided on what you see in the picture, though it hasn't been tested yet. After I took the picture I added a disc between the clevis and its lock nut so that the rising piston will pull the switch arm over and signal that the clutch is in.

Well it ought to work: I just need to tidy up the wiring and reconnect the t/c temp sender. All in all it was a quiet day but the bad news was that examination of oil and coolant showed more cross-contamination with what looks like emulsified oil floating on top of the coolant in the radiator neck. This points to the oil cooler leaking and we will have to address that sometime soon.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I had a sweet e-mail from one of the engineers, now very much retired, who had worked on the original conversion of RS8 from steam to diesel. He is over-the-moon to see the picture I'd sent him of it outside the Tunstead stores building and determined to get himself over here to see it again this summer, although he had an operation scheduled for last Tuesday. I do hope it's gone well for him.

So, what happened as the week went on. Well, it all kicked off on Wednesday although if I am to continue the football analogy then it was what they used to call a Late Kick Off. As at last week, Pluto was sat on the trailer waiting to go on holiday, and it finally got under way on Wednesday. The plan had been to set off at 04.30, which meant that I had to get up early and be on the road on or before half-eight in order to catch up. But the previous evening, while coupling the tractor unit to the trailer in readiness, they'd damaged a hose and had to wait for a hose doctor to get in and replace it. Just one of those things but meant that departure was delayed until 08.30, and an hour up the A1 they had a tyre blow out which delayed them further. So I set off rather later - about 10.30 or so, and as I headed round the M60 saw signs announcing that the M61 was closed so ended up taking the M66 up past Bury and across to Blackburn and the M65 to get to Preston and the M6. From then on it was plain sailing, and I arrived at Whitrope at about 3pm.

Now, Whitrope is definitely a place to get away from it all. Low loaders cannot come in from the south (hump back bridge with a weight restriction to boot) and quite honestly, it makes you wonder why on earth anyone ever built a railway through here in the first place. To cap it all, there's no mobile phone signal (later that evening my phone reconnected to Vodafone some 15 miles south!) and my contacts casually said that up there they defined 'rush hour' as 3 passing cars in five minutes. Of course, this meant I had no idea where the lorry was. 'You can get a signal on the summit' they told me so I set off, on foot, up to the car park and finding a footpath signed 'To the Viewpoint' continued up there. Twenty-five minutes and several hundred feet later I reached the saddle between there and the next valley and Vodafone came through loud and clear, but no news of Pluto and its transport. I walked back down and recounted what I'd done. 'Oh, we meant the summit of the road' they said, pointing along the valley rather than the hillside I'd just trekked up.

At about twenty-to-five the low loader arrived, with fresh grass and soil clinging to the side of the trailer. Adam the driver harrassed me - he had come in on the route I'd been told to use by our local experts and had found a sharp bend and a bridge that he reckoned had taken him 90 minutes to negotiate. 'I don't think we can get back that way with a loco on' he said in deadly seriousness.

'Oh Stobbs' said our local experts when confronted, 'we hadn't thought of that. No matter, we can show you another way out, it avoids Hawick altogether...' Aaagh. The lorry lined up and we assembled the ranp. After the affair of the rail last week I had had the bright idea that we had proper rail tongs and so had brought a pair: they were voted a hit. Pluto was fired up and came down the ramp, taking the crossover and down to where the Fowler was waiting to be pushed on by the Ruston 48DS. Sorry, why was it coming back with us?. Well, it has a large and unintentional hole in the side of the crankcase where no.1 piston and con rod came through, destroying the fuel pump drive in the process. It is, to use a techical term - Fubar'd.

But the 48DS couldn't budge the Fowler at all. It was so stiff that I double checked that the handbrake was released and the gearbox was in neutral. Nothing for it but to link Pluto and the Fowler buffer to adjacent buffer and use Pluto to drag the loco up to the ramp, then drop back and come over the crossover behind it. Even then it was a struggle, and Whitrope members brought up a 10 ton pull lift to assist Pluto in pushing this Reluctant Fowler onto the trailer. Pluto finally completed the task and returned to permanent rails (we'll draw a veil over some of what happened) and eventually the tractor unit was back on, the Fowler secured and things packed up. It was now after half-past eight and I still had to drive 200 miles back. But there was one high point out of all this. One Whitrope member, one of those who bought my novel on their visit last week, came up to me: 'I'm up to Chapter 10, I just can't put it down! Will there be a follow-on?'

So I set off back at about a quarter to nine, and as I said before, it was 15 miles before Vodafone found me. I stopped briefly at the Carlisle services (for not just a sandwich, but an M&S sandwich) and ambled south at 60 mph. As I came alongside the WCML, I realised I was slowly overhauling a steam train. It was dark by now, and I judged a WCML class 37 was coming up the rear, but as I glanced across the outline was too short for a pacific but from published refrences consulted later I think I was passing 'Mayflower' returning to Penrith on a Steam Dreams excursion. I got home just after 1 am.

The lorry crew meanwhile had opted to park up at Whitrope, but whether they found it too quiet or not they set off at 03.30 and had no difficulty in the alternative route to the A68. I was up and mid morning Harvey C and I brought James and the RRA as barrier wagon up to Rowsley. The lorry eventually arrived having had another tyre blow out (the two were probably the oldest on the trailer, possibly original to it), we assembled the ramp, propelled up with the RRA and coupled on.

But with all securings released the Reluctant Fowler wouldn't budge and I had to tug it to get it started, though it did condescend to roll a bit on the steeper parts of the ramp. Locos and RRA waited at the bottom while the ramp was stripped down and the tractor unit reconnected, and they bade us farewell. There are 3 conclusions to be drawn from all of this. Firstly, the low loader is a boon but is not flexible enough. Secondly it needs that winch and thirdly we need more carrying capacity (though our blow outs were almost certainly due to age rather than loading) it still cannot carry any of the larger locos in the collection or that I might need to transport. Watch this space.

James brought the Fowler down and for now it is parked outside the shed. When Andrew came to look at it he pointed out that although there is a crack line between most of the brake blocks and the wheels, the handbrake linkage is not pulling the brakes on but the rigging return spring is under tension and the piston rod from the brake cylinder is free. In short, the brake weighshaft was stuck. I tried hammering the weighshaft lever to move the rigging. He was right, it is stuck.

The IDRPG were due dowm on Saturday to finish getting 1382 weathertight, or in other words, complete the cab glazing. This they almost achieved, but the cab door window glass was 10mm undersize so for now a piece of hardboard has been braced in.

We were also graced with a visit from Tony Sinclair, who arrived bearing bickies and went away with a copy of my book. I spent most of the day working on a customer's loco (though to be honest, not all that hard as I was still feeling the effects of two days of loco moving). Jagger aided Andrew on Ashdown. Later in the day we had visits from Dave H and Dom B so it was a comparatively late finish for me.

First thing Sunday I was off south to collect another pallet truck. Our existing example can only pick up stillages across their long sides: Andrew has been looking for one to pick up their short sides as it means we could stack them far more efficiently in the ferryvan (talking of which, we have birds nesting in the hollow interior of a ferry van buffer!). I collected this and returned to Darley Dale, and after an early lunch we headed down to the shed. Andrew devoted much of his time to tidying, with the result that the side of the shed by the nuts/bolts and pipe fittings racking is much clearer than before. I continued on my customer's loco but did aid Andrew later in stripping a scrap generator down to split ferrous from copper. Towards the end of the afternoon he plasma cut a little more off the treadplate for RS8 and tacked the 3 pieces together for me to trial tomorrow.

And that's about it really. You can read more on Pluto's exploits then and since on the WRHA blog here, and I'll be back next week with more snippets. If you're coming to the HST gala at Rowsley next week, then we should be around (several visitors already booked) do drop in - who knows, you could even come away with a copy of 'The Railway to Merhead'. Failing that, I'll be back next Sunday as usual. See ya then?