Of birds nests and rust.

7th July 2019

Bit more of a spread this week. But first, a bit of nostalgia...

Some nine years ago, the first edition of what was to become Weekend Rails came out on Pete Waterman's erstwhile 'Railnuts' site. There had been prior to this a sort of newsletter on a now defunct forum mainly for a few friends and acquaintances, but although I regard myself as fairly computer savvy (well, I bought a chip inserter tool in order to upgrade my Sprectrum from 16K RAM to 48K and later used the same device to upgrade my PCW from 256K to 512K - but the technology has rather left me behind since) I remain unknown to Facebook, was persuaded to go onto Linked In but am content that it continues to think I am living in Briddon Towers, and still prefer to go to places using those quaint old things called maps rather than slavishly obeying some disembodied voice. So in one sense it was amazing that Weekend Rails even got a start,:that it has continued without significant interruption for nine years is nothing short of a miracle. But I continue to have a mobile phone for the purpose of making phone calls, and do not expect it to download my e-mails or take photographs. So when I set off promptly for Tunstead last Monday morning and realised, part way through Chatsworth, that I had left my camera behind (yes I have a digital camera but I don't require it to play music or Candy Crush) I decided that there was no time to go back for it, (so for these pictures of RS8 at Tunstead I am indebted to Andy). For at 09.00 we were due to have a welder visit to weld up those front ballast enclosures into boxes and I didn't want to be late.

In fact, I got there before 09.00, something of a record for me, even beating Andy H, but I needn't have bothered, for the welder didn't show. That I admit was a set-back, though I had other work to be getting on with, but Andy H was in full flow with the paintbrush before I even got to thinking about it. Even before Andy had arrived, I had fitted the nice new tacho drive cable, which turned out to be long enough but really could have had a couple more inches to be that much easier on the radii. I also had some nice new 1/4 BSFs which needed shortening in order to mount the windscreen wiper motors in the cab front, and in order to use my free spacers, needed to collect together some 8mm washers which took a while searching bags of nuts and bolts. Andy broke off and helped me fit them, after which I piped them up, retaining the last few inches in copper and jointing it into my regular plastic pipe fittings. Later in the day I set the air compressor up and charged the air system: one of the two wiper motors worked perfectly, the other spluttered and seems prepared to operate one way but expect you to turn it back to the beginning. Maybe I'll sort another out from the container, anyway, I need to find some arms and blades and arms for 1/4 inch parallel shanks aren't that common today.

Whilst I had the air system charged I decided to have another go with the clutch timing pneumatics. Having criticised the original system for putting air continuously on the cylinder, I have to admit that for its inaugural run last April I had the cylinder plumbed directly too, as the combination of timing reservoir and flow restrictor which creates a slow rise in pressure so that the unloader valve sees insufficient to toggle over until about 6 seconds have elapsed, just didn't seem to do it. And sure enough it still didn't. I had to interrupt Andy for this as I cannot see the clutch cylinder from within the cab and without powering the electrics up the clutch indicator LEDs won't help. He confirmed that the clutch cylinder would momentarily twitch but then stay in the 'out' position. In the end I replaced the flow restrictor with a hand valve and even just cracking this open a few degrees tripped the clutch unloader almost instantaneously. It may be that the unloader valve is able to function at very low pressure, it may be that my timing reservoir is just too small. It will have to be attended to.

During mid morning I had braved it underneath in the (fairly dry) pit and started draining the oil/water emulsion from the sump, leaving it to drip into the drums for as long as possible. Late in the afternoon Andy and me managed to extract the oil cooler and I carefully placed it in a plastic bag, propped up for the journey back to Darley Dale. Needless to say somewhere about Bakewell it fell over and a surprising amount of oil/water spread over the floor of the van. Steph and I went down to the shed to check all was well, and mopped the floor with rags, but I can report with confidence that the floor will never rust, but then plywood seldom does.

With Andrew settling in to his new job (he wants you all to know that he now works for a certain train operating company) he asked me to bid for him on a couple of Rolls-Royce crankshafts that were listed, not on e-bay but on another auction site. I nabbed the first for a total of £38, but the second, which didn't have any of the surface rusting which may have put off the potential buyers for the first, was at £130 with 5 minutes to go so I opted to leave it. Andrew settled up that evening and I earmarked a run-round for Thursday to collect. On Wednesday I went back to Sheffield, collecting laser profiles, o-rings and a visit to the fabricators armed with drawings and the sample casing door from RS8. With only two surviving doors from the left hand side of the loco, and those rusted and from the section now occupied by my air cleaner, a new set is called for matching the original style as much as possible. It will probably not be for a couple of weeks, but will be finishing touches cosmetically (and lots for Andy to paint).

On Thursday I had a run over to Skegness to collect the crankshaft. I had set off late having waited to check that payment had cleared (at first they said it hadn't) and I had hoped that it would be barely a couple of hours each way, giving me a little time to spend in the shed in the afternoon. But although I know the run to Swineshead all too well (it's our route to collect grandson) the last 25 miles or so north through Boston, plus an unexplained queue at Sleaford, made it a 3 hour run out and two and three quarters back, so by the time I returned it was hardly worth going down to the shed. During the journey I was listening to Jeremy Vine, who was doing a phone-in on the sad death of the two track gang members at Port Talbot. Now, I was reading up a RAIB report on a near-miss a while ago and my memory was that the correct procedure was that if you had workers using ear-defenders then another member of the team acted as their minder, ready to tap them on their shoulder when the Look-out warned of an approaching train. In this near-miss that person had been turfed off by the guy-in-charge for not wearing proper footwear and as a result the track gang escaped with so little space that the train driver completed an emergency stop and phoned in convinced that he had struck them. Still, it was good to hear Barrie Papworth (S&D Midsomer Norton) interviewed by Jeremy.

I was at the shed all day Friday, though mostly on commercial work. On Saturday Andrew had an errand to run to Derby so it was an early lunch and down to the shed after. He resumed work on on Ashdown's clutch, after I had got a part machined for him at Tunstead, but we tackled the RS8 oil cooler together, pressing the core out of the body and setting it up full of water to see if there were any obvious leaks on the core.

We made an earlier start today, but before we could get off there was a phone call from our PCSO. He needed to get some paperwork signed, but had good news in that the CCTV images of our 'visitors' had been put up on a Police website and as a result names had been put to faces and would be followed up. More on this soon, we hope, and my thanks to those who have expressed their sympathy on the topic over the last few days . I was anxious to get the crankshaft out of the van as I have other uses for the floor space this week, so first task was to fire James up, move Ludwig and 03 901 clear of the shed. before uncoupling and moving over to track 1. Our feathered friends in the buffer of the ferry van have apparently raised their brood and departed, and this was the first time it had been moved for a couple of months or more, and my van was then brought around the back and the crankshaft lifted out with the forklift. For now it has been left in the shed, for cleaning and protecting, and then longer term storage probably in the ferry van.

Then everything was returned to its starting places, Andrew continued on Ashdown's clutch parts and I meandered up the yard to recover a fuel pump off an engine to loan out while a customer has his repaired. The engine was on the German flat, and next to it was a Cummins, which, when I drew back the tarps, turned out to have had another vacated nest in the nook of the exhaust manifold. I really MUST get those nest boxes up for next year.

RS8's oil cooler had not lost any significant amount of water, but Andrew has decided that we should put a pressure on it before declaring it sound, so for the moment that will be left for next weekend. In addition he stripped the winch off its mounting plate, plasma cut a letterbox and remounted the winch with its separate roller assembly on the other side of the plate, so that the wire rope will pass through and on to the winch drum. The winch and its associated power pack need to be fixed to the neck of the King Trailer, and having finally sorted out with Hatz that we need, and have bought, the governor spring that will enable the Hatz to run at 3000 rpm instead of 1800, that project must be pursued urgently to get the King up and running for all the forthcoming jobs that we have it scheduled to perform. During the afternoon we lent out some woodsaws to Peak Rail volunteers who were clearing undergrowth and erecting a 'proper' LMS sign to guide prospective passengers to Darley Dale's up platform. The finished result should assist a lot of passengers who seem mystified as to where the station entance is.

So that's about it for the week. Nine years and still able to rabbit on. At nine years plus one week I'll be back again. See ya then?