Of a cold New Year

3rd January 2021

HAPPY NEW YEAR

(Keep telling yourself and maybe it will be!)

First of all, apologies to anyone who came on promptly to read last week's edition and couldn't find it. In keeping our software right up-to-date (usually, I'm sorry to say, upgrades specifically to fix 'weaknesses' in security that someone, somewhere has figuered out and made use of, so is a 'fix' issued to all users), my esteemed site hoster had carried out an update in the week before Christmas and although all seemed well, it took dislike to me when I tried to save last Sundays instalment. Over Monday it transpired that this upgrade was incompatable with the specific software used on Weekend Rails, so was rolled back and normality was restored.

The period between Christmas and New Year is always a strange one. Some customers - particularly on the heritage side where they have time on their hands - continue to contact me and as a result for example I have another transport job booked for this month and another order for brake blocks. But suppliers tend to be shut up, and work gets hung up as a widget is found to be required yet cannot be sourced. Thus I've a long shopping list for tomorrow onwards! But it is a time for some design work, and so while not that long was spent in the workshops, for after all grandson was up until mid week, some time has been on CAD and catching up on overdue filing, etc.

It was not until New Years day that we spent much time in the Geoffrey Briddon Building and then it was so b******d cold that I neither took photos nor worked on as late as we usually do. We did though, carry out a bit of a shunt - for one thing Ludwig hadn't been fired up for a fortnight and Andrew rightly felt that as a diesel-electric it shouldn't be left for long periods in cold damp atmospheres. Those big generators and traction motors don't wanna be damp. For a few seconds I didn't think it was going to go at all. Ludwig's batteries seem ludicrously small for the size of the engine and on first cranking it was slow and made much white smoke but showed little other sign of picking up. So I gave the batteries a good 20 seconds to recover and on the second try, the engine started to fire.

There is one thing in favour of motoring a generator for starting, that is that once the engine fires at all, even half-heartedly the cranking current drops dramatically so I am less anxious about holding the start buitton for longer than the 10 seconds prescribed for starter motors. With sufficient oil pressure the start button can be released (the circuit is now holding the fuel solenoid on) and although Ludwig's engine is spinning over at barely 500rpm it is running reliably and as the chill comes off the block it will rise to 600. When air pressure is high enough a valve opens and the desk control air is available. That gave me an unpleasant shock - a large air leak started under the cab floor. I lifted the floor panels expecting to find one of those connections I had made for the horn had not been as secure as I'd expected, but no, the source was a pipe with one of those Westinghouse taper cocks in it. I am not a fan of these, and my dislike was reinforced when I investigated and found that the air was noisily escaping from under the handle, i.e. nothing I could do to stop it. But notwithstanding air pressure continued to rise so trying to ignore the underfloor hissing I took Ludwig down and together we started to shunt out the middle siding.

Road '2' to us is the one most easily seen from the adjacent footpath and was intended to be the 'awaiting turn for attention' line, but that list has rather exceeded that siding's capacity for longer (and quicker) than I ever anticipated. It includes our famous 0-5-0 (so named because it was running with only 5 of its 6 wheels touching the rails - you could slide your fingers under the right leading wheel and no amount of leverage or even the Enerpac we had at the time would lower the axlebox in the hornguise) Grace and D9500, and for the moment 2 locos that are classed as my commercial work, one awaiting a rewire and the other a repower. The purpose of the shunt was to extricate these two and move them up to the accessible end of the siding ready for attention in the (hopefully) near future. But at the end of the siding is a B4 bogie and a Buda trolley, neither of which have drawgear let alone buffers and need careful shunting.

We could of course shunt them by hand, and whilst the physical exercise may have warmed us on this bitterly cold day (I think it was -1 on the van gauge) as the saying goes, why have a 550hp/50ton locomotive and push things yourself? Ludwig put them aside and we sorted out the road over the space of an hour or so before replacing the trolley and bogie on the end. Oh and I did attempt to serenade Darley Dale with Ludwig's reconnected horn - only it didn't work, no sound from the 'ooter and none either from the new valve under the floor. Investigation required.

On Saturday I went down mid morning and made a start on work to re-instate Claire's radiator. It was taken out months ago in order to make space to fit an additional compressor drive and in doing so, found the fan drive itself was bust anyway. In order to squeeze in 3 new belts off the front of the crank, the radiator had to move forward by some 90 mm or so, but this brought it into conflict with the running plate across the front and the front casing support, so these had to be cut. As the running plate is a couple of inches thick, this is an oxy-acetylene job and is one I leave to Andrew. My roles after specifying how much/where to cut s to monitor the gas pressure (the oxygen reg is stable but the acetylene starts somewhere different every time) and stand by with the leaky tea pot full (at least at the beginning) of cold water to damp down red hot bts of cut steel and any small fires that start underneath.

That completed we bravely opened the shutter door partly so that the forklift could present the radiator back up in to the loco and partly to clear the smog that was trying to obscure our view of the ceiling. The rad was slid into its new position and bolted down once again. It would have been nice to have had the fan and its extension piece in place first, but, ah well, maybe next week. While all this was in progress Steph rang to enquire whether we had looked outside? It was snowing steadily and the access lane was already white over. Not that it bothered us with barely a mile to the Briddon Country Pile but walkers out in the Goyt Valley and such were taken by suirprise and got their vehicles stuck while the Snake Pass was closed.

Having run out of kerosene for the space heater on Friday we worked on until about 5pm before calling it a day. Today we didn't go down until just after lunch. The filling pipe for the radiator needed a new sealing joint at top and bottom and as the rad was now further forward, the top of the casing needed trimming and in due course a new gland plate making. I too must sort out new top and bottom connections for the rad. As the train brake piping is almost complete and will soon be ready for static air testing, Andrew bored me a hole through the running plate just big enough to squeeze in 4 small bore plastic lines which will connect the pipes and their associated control valves up to the desk gauges. A roaring outside turned out to be the Air Ambulance firstly heading north towards Bakewell, and an hour or so later, low down, heading south in the Derby direction. Rain washed away most of the snow, but it was still very cold outside, though fortunately the inside temperature is always above freezing. But by 5pm the cold was getting to us and we packed up for the day, satisfied that quite a few on the jobs list had been ticked off.

So, suppliers re-open tomorrow and I'll have a run-around to get on with, plus a long list of 'tasks' jotted down over the holidays. I'll be back, same time next week. Will you be? See ya then.