Of progress and aspiration

20th October 2019

When I arrived at Tunstead on Monday morning, my heart sank. A quick glance through the open roller shutter showed that in addition to the other clutter that has occupied the space between RS8 and the outside world, a large cylindrical chemical store, fully 3 metres wide and probably 4 high had been delivered and unloaded right in the way. 'Ah well, bang goes that idea' I thought, and parked the van nearby.

For openers Andy H got on with swapping the casing door catches from the washers the apprentices put in a month ago to the profiled plates I had brought and he primed, last week. I brought back in from the van a length of rubber floor matting, left over from doing the 03, which I thought more than enough to cover the cab of little RS8. But y'know at 6ft by 5ft it's bigger than it seems, and my sheet turned out to be about 28-9 sq feet. So I cleared the floor of clutter, cut a piece 6ft long which covered the majority of the standing area and split the remainder in two halves to go in the areas either side of the central section. It ought to go some way to reducing the noise of the exhaust, and given that said exhaust discharges under the cab, block some of the fumes that found their way up through the floorboards last time we ran it.

At this point I would have added the cab cupboard unit that you saw last week, but unfortunately one of Andrew's welds failed as I was showing it off to Andy H so it was put back in the van.

The fresh obstruction had put me in a despondent mood, but Andy pointed out that first we had to run it up and add the latest brand of coolant system sealer I'd brought along, so I sent him off to the Gents with my trolley and a couple of empty 25litre drums to collect water (no, not for that! The nearest accessible taps are there). With the cooling system filled and no visible leaks, the batteries were connected and the air system charged up using the static compressor. Andy set up the exhaust extraction ducting and plugged the fan unit in, and with a certain amount of trepidation I turned on the battery switch and then the key. Now, if you can recall the last time we ran RS8, I had had problems with the start circuit, or to be exact the timer relay, which died as the engine cranked and the volts fell: I had resorted manually to toggling the relays that the timer should have done for me. Since then we'd fitted a capacitor with a diode to isolate it from the rest of the loco system, and to my delight, this first chance to test it all worked perfectly and the engine cranked and fired straight away.

I watched the gauges, disconcerted as the torque converter base pressure failed to rise. Then I stopped the engine and went round to turn on the converter oil feed and the engine fuel feed, both taps having been off for safety! Here's a view of the desk with the engine running - the two green lights show the oil pressure is good and the clutch is 'out'. Now the idea was to get the engine temperature up and then add the bottle of sealant, but even with the radiator blanked and the engine in stall, it didn't seem to want to rise much above 60, so at this point Andy poured the bottle in anyway and we ran it for longer to try and get it spread around, then declared it lunchtime.

Afterwards we got hold of Alan G, and explained that we'd really like to give the old girl a run and could he move the bund of oil drums with a forklift and somehow relocate the chemical storage thing? The generator on a trailer and the cherry-picker we could move for ourselves. Bless him, he came armed with forklift and slings and the chemical storage tank was last seen heading up the stores fifteen feet above the ground under the crane hook. Andy had been out with a scraper and cleaned out the flangeways - he did this in April but 6 months of dirt had washed back in since - and with the extraction ducting detached, RS8 set off for the doorway. Alan returned to act as traffic warden (it's a one-way system round the building and visibility is restricted: there's a STOP line but few respect it) and for an hour we took RS8 up and down the section by the offices, as far as we can safely run on the few remaining rails.

Somewhere about 3pm, we put the loco back, and cautiously drew the dipstick - whereas before we had seen emulsified oil, this time the dipstick was still uncontaminated. It doesn't prove that the problem is solved, but fingers crossed. We brought the cherry picker back in, and occupied a last few minutes labelling the clutch and gearchange levers in the desk to save forgetting which way round they work!

There are still things to address - the Davies & Metcalfe FD1 drivers brake valve is notoriously slow and ours is no better, and to make it worse the cam that operates it doesn't engage for the first part of the travel then ends up over-pressuring. (As built, the first part of the brake lever movement was intended to operate an exhaust brake). Some attention to the cam profile and start position would be appropriate. There are other jobs too, but for now we'll bask in the comparative success and look to the meeting tomorrow (21st) to discuss what to do next.

Most of the week has been taken up with commercial matters, but admiring the pictures of RS8 I was struck with how bland it looks and how a bit of contrast would improve it. Roger W, who had ICI decals made for Ludwig Mond, had 2 spares and has kindly posted them up to me. But a pair of correct replacement crane rails arrived on Friday for the low loader plans.

Now regular readers will know that at least once a year I try to make the trek to Llanuwchllyn for the Bala company AGM, the Maid Marian AGM, or sometimes both. This year it was the company AGM, but there was no advertised train service, so I set off just before lunch and sauntered over. The project to extend the line into Bala is gaining momentum, and the station site (or at least a portion of it) was bought and cleared some time ago. It's right alongside a large car park, and banners on the fencing pronounce the intention to get to Bala in Welsh and English

I took a slow walk around Bala - past the White Lion Royal Hotel where latterly my Mum and Dad would stay when they came up to meet us. The Badell Awr cafe has been refurbished since last year, perhaps because the competition across the road - the Cyfnod where once we would enter with George Barnes to be be greeted with a high pitched 'S'ydych wi?' - is now the Cyfnod Cafe and Bistro. The essential character though remains the same, and many memories came back of the twenty years or so we were visiting regularly. I drove on to Llanuwchllyn, onward past the station and up the other side of the valley. Looking down there was a train in the platform - but the railway has a carriage shed which meant that perhaps something was happening! Back down to the station, and there was Winifred on a train and members of the Penrhyn Quarry Railway Society having a meeting in the cafe.

Winifred pushed the train away but not before I'd spotted that all the rake were now on FR style chopper couplers rather than the traditional side buffers and hooks that had served the line from the 70s. Many enthusiasts regard centre chopper couplers as de rigeur for n.g. and ignore the obvious example of the Talyllyn. But there are numerous examples of buffer and hook type n.g. couplers on n.g. systems, and even the Cambeltown and Macrihanish who for historical reasons rode both horses and had side buffers and centre choppers.

Bala's reasoning was more prosaic. George Barnes envisaged a 15 in gauge line but was persuaded by Douglas Ferreira that 20 or 21 inches would be less top-heavy and therefore reduce wear on hornguides and such, then George saw ex FR slate wagons at Blaenau and thought 'what's another inch and a bit each side?' so went to what we loosely call 2ft gauge. Even then the Severn Lamb toastrack coaches and their B-B DH Meirionydd were loosely miniature in proportion, and had the then Chairman had his way, a 2ft gauge scale GWR Hall 4-6-0 might have been next....

When I was a regular at Llanuwchllyn, another volunteer was Francis S, but I had not seen him for many years. Recently he retired and moved to Llanuwchllyn, so at last we came face to face, each hardly recognising the other.

Once the PQRS had departed (their meeting was over-running and it was a close call) we assembled for the company AGM, with Julian Birley challenging the Chairman to break his record for a quick meeting. I think I said last year that attending this AGM is rather like sitting in on a Board meeting and this year's kept up the impression. From the RhLLT Manager came the news that after a record year last year, they hadn't expected another but were after all slightly up on numbers with what had turned out to be the busiest August they had ever had. In contrast the Talyllyn was reportedly marginally down and the WHR/FR significantly so with the WHR suffering the worst. There were some absorbing discussions on marketing and whether the long-length/high fares of the WHR were an impediment when tourists are perhaps reining in expenditure at a time of uncertainty.

All in all a thought-provoking time with plans and aspirations for progressing the extension and an organisation which has the professionalism and the contacts to achieve the dream that eluded us all the time I was active there. Watch that space.

Not much to say about today - grandson came up Friday for half-term so Andrew has been occupied and my time at the shed was in tidying or commercial matters. The Blockman passed on a message about 'ne'r do wells' at the Matlock end of the yard seen by the train crew. I wandered down and sure enough two lads whom I'd heard walking past earlier on the footpath were knocking back bottled beer by the DFS car park. When all was said and done they were still on the footpath and to have told them to 'clear orf' would have merely awarded them a perceived justification for retaliation so I let them be and a while later they had gone. And that's about it for this week. Tomorrow is the great meeting but I hope that we'll get a few jobs done too, even if we're not called on to give RS8 a run for the dignitaries.

Tell you all about it next week. See ya then.

Following on from last week's success, here's another video of RS8 in action... MVI_6428.mp4