Of work unseen

7th June 2020

For once, I've been staring at the screen with nothing in mind that I can write about. Well that's not entirely true, there has been working afoot on several days this week but mostly I have been on commercial work, and what has been done on the 'collection' has gone without photographic record. For example, The Number Two of our 3 Lister LV2s (the one that hasn't yet been run in anger yet - or at all) was reallocated a few weeks ago from the repowered Wickham project to become the prime mover that will make the crane on the HATRAMM functional and hence worthwhile.

(To recap on our Lister List, LV2 Number 1 is in disgrace and requires further attention to ascertain what went wrong with smoke from the rocker box after it was deployed on the trailer winch. LV2 Number Two had been robbed for pumps and injectors to get number one going, but now has No.1's starter and the latter's old pumps and injectors fully overhauled ready to bring it back to life - it is even mounted on the bedframe built up for Number One. LV2 Number Three was bought on spec off ebay and fitted on to the Low Loader in lieu of the troublesome Number One. That still leaves an LT2 - currently in bits - which I have ideas for).

Anyway as regards the HATRAMM, I'd like to spend some time and get the whole thing going properly but as Andrew has pointed out forcibly, firstly we don't have time to spare at present and secondly running a 400hp engine just for the crane is rather less than efficient. He has a point, but anyway, LV2 Number Two is now allocated to that and we have had a pump in stock for some time for it.

Like the LV2 driving the winch, the pump mounts on to an SAE5 housing and we had in stock part of a gear-type drive connector but for some reason the keyway was ever-so-slightly narrower than the Woodruff key on the pump shaft. A week or so back I cleaned up the mounting plate and secured the puump to it, but although the drive bit had gone out to our friendly machinists to have the keyway broached out a touch way back before this semi-lockdown thing started, it hadn't come back. Last weekend they had promised to try and get it done this week, but when I rang to check on Friday, they hadn't: but then, feeling guilty, rang me back a few minutes later (why someone should ring me back when my mouth's fitted to the front? I don't know, but anyway) to say that if I turned up about tennish Saturday morning he'd have it done for then.

Well Saturday morning we were up early as Andrew was off out for work, but that didn't seem to help and it was about quarter past when I arrived at the machinists. There were actually two broaching jobs that have been awaited these 2-and-a-half months,. One was a taper bore and broached keyway for a compressor pulley, the other was this drive bit. The compressor pulley was ready (I fitted it Saturday afternoon) but the drive bit was another matter. The broaching tool didn't take kindly to opening up this keyway he said, so he'd tried slotting it, but that hadn't worked really either. So very apologetically he suggested I take it back and open it out with a file. None of the files we keep in the shed was thin enough for the purpose however, so last night I hunted out a couple of swiss files that lie in my office and were bought in the days when I was young, fancy-free and did lots of railway modelling.

They've become a bit hidden over the years, I was looking for my small round one as I had some holes that needed easing in an instrument panel: couldn't find it so after two weeks of waiting for it to break cover and show itself, I bought a new one through ebay. Anyway, two flat files were located and taken down today and I spent a (happy?) hour or more filing the now slightly distorted keyway until finally the Woodruff key could be seen to enter the slot rather than dip down and push its far end up and out. The locking nut and tabwasher were duly affixed.

Back at the flywheel, another goody that arrived this week is a further adaptor that fits the LV2 flywheel and gives a flush surface for the bit wot mates to the pump's bit, though last time a fairly thick spacer was required. The driving bit has only just been ordered by Andrew though, so although it is progressing, it is hardly photogenic and anyway, I don't seem to have had the camera out on it at all.

Andrew has also been scouring the 'net. Last Bank Holiday Monday our friendly machinists were hastily producing a clamp to my drawing for the low loader. Prior to doing the job you saw last week, it had gone out for a change of steering joints on the rearmost axle. The first two ball joints for this had been bought out of the trailer manufacturer just before lockdown, and arrived with the manufacturers name and part number still on them, and a cheery message from the trailer manufacturer's Service Manager that the drag rods are no longer made by the German supplier. Like a car, the ball joint screws into the drag rod and a clamp goes over the top and holds it solid. It's just that the trailer steering is a blooming sight bigger. With three axles that means 6 pairs (left and right hand threaded) of ball joints and 6 drag rods with a dozen clamps. We're working our way through and fortunately the drag rod threads have been OK on the first pair but one of the clamps was unfit, and after two days spent trying to find clamps supplied seperately I gave up and got a replacement specially made. Now Andrew has found a firm in the US of A offering a clamp which appears to fit the bill, and I've ordered a couple ready for dealing with the next axle. As a further precaution, I've also drawn up the drag rod and must source some material to get a pair made in case

Meanwhile, enquiries with local HGV suppliers revealed that the ball joints I'd purchased are available from them at almost 25% of the price billed me by the trailer manufacturer. This raises one of those moral dilemmas. I would like to support the firm wot built it, just as in Thomas Hill and YEC days I looked to my customers to buy from me the parts they needed to maintain what we had supplied. But there is a limit. If the HGV supplier can make a profit on the original manufacturers price, how can the trailer manufacturer justify a mark up culminating in a retail 4 times higher - unless of course, they really don't want the business anyway?

Back at Hills' after we left Vickers and joined the 'Hunter Group', there was a conscious decision to up our parts prices and earn more out of our customers. In practice, whilever we had provided good service, customers paid what we asked of them, but there came a point when an engineer would say something like '£20 just for that?' and pass it to his Purchasing Department for comparative pricing. All too often it wouldn't take a good Purchasing Officer long to get back to the same supplier/manufacturer that Hills bought from and discover the price we paid. (And all this before the internet!) That customer thereafter turned away from us, and our Service Department ceased to be the money-maker it once was.

(When I joined TH, the philosophy was that 'our side' of the road built the locos but because of competition from Hunslet or Barclay, our gross margins were only a few % and often not achieved. The other side of the road - the Service Department - then made the company's money on those same locos. A year or more before I got out, it was admitted that we now had to make profits on the locomotives being produced as the Service side was barely breaking even. Granted, the industrial locomotive population had reduced, but in addition to pushing prices up, the new management fired certain members of the Service Department staff who went away and set up in competition, with all the contacts and goodwill they possessed. In some respects the 1984-5 period at Hills was one of own goals.)

So where was I? Oh yes. Well, with that price differential, and a manufacturer last heard of on furlough, we will work our way through the other axles to keep them in tip-top condition with the knowledge of what we need and with parts to hand - and at prices I can better control.

The weather this week has been either way too hot or way too wet, so I didn't manage to get out on RS8 as I'd hoped, so the other outstanding bits will take a while longer. I've had a number of enquries for transport moves though, and this has triggered various discussions between Andrew and myself on the subject of semi-permanent ramps, and ramps to get up and over the back axles of the trailer - to this end some bracketry goes on order this week from the profilers.

And that's about it really, sorry not to have any pictures, must try harder next week. Besides, it is getting nearer to that tenth anniversary of this blog starting and I ought to be planning something special. But for now, see ya next week.