Of past and present

26th July 2020

I was fascinated to see a plan of the Festiniog's Harbour station showing the pedestrian one way flows implemented to prevent potential contact. Personally I've been wearing a face-covering when going into suppliers and such for several weeks even though it's got me comments like 'Hullo, it's the Lone Ranger'. (Yeah, wrong half of the face, duh).  But now it seems I can even go into a Bank wearing a mask and they won't press the alarm button...

It hasn't been a particularly quiet week, but what I have been up to hasn't really been photogenic, by which I mean that I haven't taken any 'newsy' pictures to put in this week - but I can think of one or two historic snaps that I might put in though rather by way of an aside and reflection.

On Tuesday the trailer left: I'd been holding it here in anticipation of a job that hasn't materialised, and as it was due to have a bit of TLC before a forthcoming booked task, we finally arranged with Adam S for it to leave first thing Tuesday morning, once we'd bled the hydraulics and topped up the reservoir. It looks a little bare outside the shed without it.

Grandson has arrived at the moment so shed time has been a rather more restricted. During the week I acquired a couple of fully recon'd alternators and so first task Saturday was to fit one to Charlie, together with another voltage regulator that was supposedly 'good'. First though I checked through all the cables to make sure they were correctly wired and showing no high resistances. With everything set up I started Charlie up and although the alternator warning light went out, a check on the system voltage showed that it wasn't charging (it ought to be around 27V). This isn't making any sense and aside from the obvious possibility of belts slipping, which I am sure they aren't (though a new set wouldn't go amiss) I am going to have to go through everything again and try to figure out what the problem is.

Back up by the shed a section of the ramp that we relocated when the crane was on site was proving too close to the loading gauge for comfort - drivers can breathe in but locos tend not to be able to - so I set up a 110V extension and trimmed the extremities down for now, though we have some re-engineering to perform on it 'ere long. Andrew meanwhile continued on Ashdown: on an 8-pot Gardner there are 6 little oil bath air cleaners, allocated 3 to a 4 pot manifold. The farthest is of course fouled by the new position for the exhauster, and rather than blank it off, Andrew is going to make an extension piece using some box section that I picked up for him during the week. This tube and its mounting flanges were duly cut and ground to shape, though assembly was postponed to Sunday, along with some other bits that are awaiting welding.

But Sunday came and while I took advantage of some moderate weather to carry on with some work on a commercial job outside, Andrew diverted to re-plumbing parts of the air system on Ashdown which wasn't part of his original plan but he'd realised were far below his minimum acceptable standards, what with brass fittings screwed in to ferrous couplings until their hexes were effectively not visible, or half inch bore hose bodged to connect to the original quarter bore gauge line. Ashdown is awfully close to being finished but he couldn't let it go with that sort of sub-standard work still on it. I now have a 'shopping list' of bits he needs to wrap the job up!

Since we re-arranged everything a week or so ago one loco has become visible from the footpath that wasn't before, and a picture of it turned up on that well-known social media site beginning in F. Though not the same view, here is a picky (yes, like I said, a random photo or so) of that same loco some nine years ago.

Its appearance on F- caused some comment, all of which was wrong, some of it amusing, some of it irritating. One person thought it was Adolf, and we'd come on well with it since he'd last seen it. (He can't read this blog or he'd know that progress on Adolf has been zilch for months). One person, obviously addressing Andrew, congratulated him on 'the work you and your brother do at Darley Dale'. OK, not sure if I'm flattered that I might look young enough to be Andrew's brother, or how much he's offended at the suggestion he might look as decrepit as me. (He has decided not to comment on the picture himself).

Someone recognised that the bottom end is 'Hunslet-ish' - and it is, though longer wheelbase than a standard 0-4-0 Hunslet and with fluted side rods and roller bearing crank pins. But the top half? What nobody seemed to twig is that this is Adolf's one surviving brother, the one YEC did for Alstom as a shunter/recovery loco for the Asfordby test track and the Pendolinos. Someone suggested it might be outside load gauge - er no, but I did design it close up - and didn't like the 'squared' casing structure - tough, I did. Why is it here, am I not breaking my rules over not commenting on commercial work? Ah, well, it's been here since last December (RS8 brought it down from Rowsley) - even UK Locos logs it here (though classifies it as diesel electric even while declaring Adolf to be diesel mechanical - both are diesel hydraulic!) - but I don't yet have an order from Alstom so it doesn't class as commercial work - yet.

The first remanufactured loco I did as YEC - an 0-6-0 for Elf Oil back in 1993 - was identified by a well-known entrepreneur in the railway industry as 'a Thomas Hill'. At the time I was slightly peeved. Yes, I had a couple of Steelman cab drawings nearby when I first started my scribblings (and in '93 I was still on a traditional drawing board with parallel motion that I had bought out of the liquidation of Brown Bayley Steels) but a Pete Briddon cab is very different to a Vanguard one.

A recent visitor was given a rapid induction to its superior features. Adolf will of course be more like a Thomas Hill (we've oft referred to it as a Hunguard or a Vanlet) but it will NOT have those ghastly steps formed out of one piece of treadplate - profiles are sat waiting to form a corner step that owes more to Hudswell Clarke than Hills or Hunslet. Anyway, that's about all to report this week. There's developments progressing in the background that will be more photograph-able soon, so maybe next week's instalment will be packed full. See ya then.