Of time and calendar

2nd February 2020

The only B words here are Briddon and Brewery- oh and maybe bikinis.

There are a lot of ex WD/Ministry depots converted into industrial estates up and down the country. When I was running YEC we looked seriously into setting up offices in one, with the possibility of later acquiring one of the larger buildings which had once had rail in and getting ourselves into one place instead of having offices in Rotherham and workshops in Warwickshire. We were offered - for not a lot - one of the typical WD brick structures, with concrete roof, coroded steel window frames and dubious electrical wiring and invited to 'make it our own'. We didn't.

Maybe because in my Thomas Hill days we were supplying locos to the Army Railway Organisation (as it then was) I got into more MoD places than the average person might without actually enlisting. Bicester, Kineton, Ludgershall, Ruddington, Eskmeals - I better not name any more as there's probably enough key words there to trip alarms at GCHQ - but they have, by virtue of having been built at much the same time, a similar atmosphere of layout and architecture. My senses picked this up the moment I started looking for where it was I had to go on Monday to collect two new tyres and rims for the trailer. Andrew had set it all up to go to the suppliers' branch located 'near Uttoxeter' he said (which worked out at about 30 miles from here) but the maps showed a 'course of old railway' nearby and otherwise it seemed a ludicrous place to put an industrial estate, which tended to suggest the WD 'put it where no enemy would expect to find it but make sure there's a railway nearby for transport in and out' strategy. When I got there, although the buildings had been re-skinned, it definitely had that feel. I asked casually and the vendor said it had been in use by the USAF latterly (possible - I was once taken round Caerwent by a USAF officer but there wasn't a runway in miles there either) which might account for some modernisation.

Loaded up, I thought I might drive around and see if there were any obvious signs of old railways but there weren't, though checking the on-line map service from the National Library of Scotland there was no evidence at all on the 1938 revisions but a decade later there were lines all over like a child's train set and the IRS book on WD locos suggested latterly there were two 25T 0-4-0DMs here.

This week was month end, tax year end, VAT quarter and I had some work to get through as well, so it wasn't until Saturday that I had anything much done worth reporting, and even here it's been much tidying. I picked up some new blades for the hacksaw on Thursday - 6TPI are a bit special, it seems, and 4TPI (which is shown on the pictogrammic idiot's guide label on the machine) are the proverbial rocking horse droppings, so I had to settle for 10 and 14TPI which finished off cutting through that rail on Saturday morning after Andrew arrived. I had hoped, having spent time during the week working out permanent rails for the trailer, to have marked the trailer ready to start cutting out some obstructive treadplating, but the weather wasn't conducive, nor to finishing the fence works. But Andrew did get bits welded up for me, and started moving some old tool boxes around to clear a workbench where, he has decided, (though to be fair, I had advocated something similar and he did seek my approval after he was half-way through) we will site the threading machine and a pipe vice. (Currently it sits on the floor and it is a strain on the knees.)

Also on the floor is that Lister engine, and having determined in mid air that the pumps were delivering but the injectors were not injecting, I took the injectors in to Sheffield for TLC and on Saturday put one back on to the pump, but sat in mid-air again, to prove that the injector now functioned. It didn't. The pump was of course pushing some fuel out of the pipe end with no injector on it, but that doesn't prove it was achieving the pressure needed to open the injector itself, so out have come pumps ready to go in for their TLC. This engine has come off e-bay some years ago now and I suspect it was implicit that the thing was actually supposed to run, but we never thought to check as it was conveniently out of fuel. (Actually we now know, thanks to manuals for it bought off e-bay, that the fuel filter is located in the base of the fuel tank and this one hasn't, so there's a likelihood, or a certainty, that the pumps are clogged and aren't working.

Meanwhile I have connected up the winch control valve with hydraulic hoses and opened up the proposed reservoir (which looked rough on the outside but typically the oil inside has kept it fresh) so we'll just have to keep pursuing that one.

RS8 hasn't featured much since it returned in December, but Heritage Railway have done us proud with nearly a page devoted to it with before and after pictures. Do buy a copy. Meanwhile RS8 itself stands waiting for me to catch up with other jobs and deal with some outstanding issues. The 'genuine' fuel tank filler caps, which originals were stolen from the tank fillers years ago and up to now have been protected with 3D printed caps (you just can't seem to get three-and-a-half-inch BSP fittings like you used to) have been united with the same pattern ones.

Andrew was back again today, but first thing Peak Rail had another works train go by, so I hopped up on the trailer neck (it saves trying to photograph through the fence) for a quick picky.

Ben R dropped off armed with thin pieces of board, machined and drilled during the week and carried on to finish the timbering part of the van roof, by inserting these edges and bolting them down to the top of the body angles. Next is to clad it with a roofing felt.

Of course it has got rather dark inside, and my thoughts have turned to getting a rudimentary electrical system set up, like I once had in the VBA only better. Having a large number of spare contact breakers left over with low amperages, I'd decided that the incoming single-phase supply would be split, with a 6amp for the lights and a 10amp for the step down transformer to 110V. Whilst I had such breakers, I possessed no spare enclosure to put them in. Tony S turned up again today to work on the Brewery and passed me an enclosure with nothing but a 3-phase breaker in it. The style looked familar and sure enough it was the later manufacture of the breakers I had, so out came the ganged 20Amp'ers and in went my 6, 10 and another 10ampere breaker to fill the gap and maybe provide extra protection for a 240V socket if the mood takes me. Although the Brewery has already gone up a bit it had to go further to remove the damaged axle and we needed to clear that end to roll the wheelset out (putting it on the mattersons would have been a bit of overkill and anyway it doesn't have lifting brackets). I fired Ludwig up, moved everything back and we managed to encourage the forklift in and out over the damp treadplating outside and recovered an I beam to support the Brewery just inboard of the horncheck. Here's the wheelset out, and safely secured by one of my Safety Scotches, as supplied to discerning railway engineering operations in the national and heritage sectors...

Tomorrow Jagger is coming over, then on Tuesday I'm off southward and meeting up with the local historian in Farnham to talk about the Wey Valley Light Railway. With that in mind I started going through my old 35mm slides to find the WVLR ones and see if they had survived (some transparencies have faded away - my Dad, a keener photographer, actually used to process his own both slide film and colour negative printing but it was far more demanding a process for the kitchen-sink lab and some of his images have all but disappeared). They have not and I found myself looking at pictures of a long-haired, younger me, Steph before we married, my grandmother and good friend and a most unflattering photo of my mother, reaching through the cab window of my 11/13 Ruston to hold the throttle open while I am furiously cranking it over next to her. Happy days?

Is it a sign of the times, I wonder? Is the calendar industry losing momentum? Up to a few years ago I was deluged coming up to Christmas with hang-up calendars. Some girly (have to be careful with them), some railway, some tranquil countryside scenes, even aircraft or ships - whatever, these large cardboard envelopes would arrive, the postman having to ring as they wouldn't go through the slot in the door of course, and I'd be wondering where I could put this one. Recently it has changed, and last December I only had two, and one of those being a (tasteful) girly one (though bikinis and safety glasses/hard hats make strange accompaniment) went down to the workshops to remind ourselves and other visitors to use such PPE if working there dressed only in a bikini. So Steph had to go out and buy one for the kitchen. And whilst she didn't pay the full price it might have commanded in the months running up to Christmas, it was still more than the 10p they're selling at now, in the begining of February. So imagine our surprise when a calendar from a well-known firm in the industry arrived on Saturday morning, 1st Feb. Steph immedaitely put it up in the kitchen in place of the 'doggy' one she'd had to buy, leaving me with the bikini'd and (safety) booted babes in the workshops and a swanky sports car one in my office. Maybe I should do my own calendar for 2021: what could I use as a theme? Suggestions, ideally written on the back of a £5 note should be sent to... I'll be back next week, see ya then.