Of mission creep

10th January 2021

Hands up how many times you've written '2020' so far this month out of habit?

So, what can be said of this week? Well, on Monday I headed off to my regular oil supplier and returned with a quantity of kerosene with the result that on Saturday we celebrated with an hour or so of the space heater running continuously, taking the chill off the interior and more particularly the cold metal lumps that are the locos (etc) within the Geoffrey Briddon Building. The air outside was -1 or -2, that inside was on arrival about +3 and after the heating had run for a while, climbing on to a loco's running plate brought your head at least into decidedly warmer air. And what have we been up to - well, mostly it has been bits of commercial work for me. Claire has continued its agonisingly slow progress - partly as a result of what one might call (and I have) 'mission creep'. For instance, at the beginning my scope of work included fitting another compressor - now Claire already has two (it was a Cummins practice to put two small automotive twin pot compressors in line with the fuel pump, but by the later 1980s they had dropped it as the combination of repeated joints between short crankshafts was thought to be the cause of reported instances of compressors disintegrating.)

Anyway, even these two together is barely sufficient for train braking anything much longer than one or two carriages, and although we did a rough and ready train brake fit on that basis fifteen years ago. it was envisaged that I'd do a better job this time. Of course, to fit a third, bigger compressor needed space and a belt-drive, and so I returned to my drawings of Beverley where I'd fitted an exhauster. I had tried there to keep the exhauster within the casing line, though in the end we did put an 80mm casing extension on, but to have put it farther outside would have been unsightly and obstructed access to the loco by blocking the steps. (The starter, dynamo, oil dip stick and filler and three filters are on this side too). So at a second attempt I thought I could squeeze an extra compressor in within the casings and drew it out accordingly.

To get the additional pulleys on the front of the engine I had to take the radiator out, which meant removing the casing front, and when I got that far I found the fan was drooping as the fan drive was broken. So the fan drive was repaired, the compressor base mounted on the loco and the belt-drive installed. However it now became apparent that the radiator fan was not going to clear the compressor pulley - if I had pushed the compressor farther out onto the walkway it would have done, though whether the belts could have been made to line up with the respective pulleys without colliding with the frame side and running plate I rather doubt. (Could I have mounted the compressor on the other side? Yes and no. The fan drive and charge pump pulleys are on that side so probably but it would have been equally messy, maybe more so.) So, nothing for it but to move the rad 100mm forwards and drill two new mounting holes for it to bolt to. But that meant that the front running plate was in the way of the bottom tank, so the former had to be cut away a bit.

Andrew meanwhile put a straight edge across the front of the casings and found that the slighly curved top tank of the Cummins radiator was standing proud of the casing front by 10-12 mm. So one of his jobs today was to trim some pieces of 15mm thick plate to form spacers to 'extend' the casings forward enough. Just to add insult to injury Andrew casually asked on Saturday whether the front headlight (a traditional car type which extends back into the casings for bulb and reflector) will clear the filler pipe that also occupies the centre line over the radiator. I fear it probably won't, but we'll address that issue nearer the time - whatever time that may be.

It's not finished there though, obviously. The top and bottom radiator connections, which were thin steel pipes when made about 50 years ago, are thinner now from corrosion and probably held together by layers of rust brown sludge which looks to be thicker than the parent steel. Nowadays of course we use silicon hoses in preference to those old black rubber bits that swell up and go hard and eventually crack, (Rolls' used to swear by Thermopol) so a new combination will have to be put together. Talking of hoses, the original heater hoses were an Aeroquip type whose outer layers had delaminated so these have been renewed in a more suitable synthetic, but the compressor delivery hose needs a higher temperature rating and these were bought during the week.

You can see one, the other is away out of sight under the running plate but the two of them together racked up nearly £200. They're not cheap but that grade of hose is best suited to the application. Claire's batteries also arrived this week, my regular supplier has held 2 back for me ever since I was up collecting 2 and saying I'd be back for a couple more 'shortly' - even though that was last October. Of course, the battery tray (under the desk) was designed for a specific set, probably of 4 x 6V bateries (as was common practice for many years) and modern truck batteries with greater cold-cranking capacity are to different dimensions. The tray on Claire is held in with four 9/16 Whit bolts - after attempting to modify the tray in situ I plucked up courage and tried to undo 4 very rusty looking nuts and of course, being dear old Mr Whitworth's they undid with only a squirt of penetrating spray and hardly so much as a groan. The battery tray, its underside splattered with excess grease from the garbox input and propshaft awaits more comfortable attention on a workbench.

So, from the seemingly simple task of 'adding a compressor' I've ended up with casing front off, rad out, rad remounted, running plate cut back, casing front needing to be extended and new headlamp required. And you know what, I'm not even quite sure whether the outside edge of the pipe coming out of the compressor doesn't foul the casing door after all! Another area that wasn't really taken into account was wiper motors and door catches. As rough'n'tough loco drivers we normally drive with our heads out the windows and therefore never use the wipers, but somehow customers seem to expect them. Claire's haven't worked in years, indeed, one or more of the small bore air hoses are detached and an isolating cock under the desk is shut that feeds them. Sometime quite soon they must be powered up and made to function, and the arms and blades made workable (they're mostly disintegrated). I got this far on RS8 and stuck there, but Andrew has searched high and low and come up with an adaptor which, drilled out a touch, fits the motor shafts and so shortly the motors will have something to do, (if that is, they do anything themselves) and RS8 will benefit from the research also.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about my (minor) part in the 'Murder on the Orient Express' film and lamented the fact that my part was so minor that I neither ended up on the film credits nor in Imdb. Well, a few days ago someone told me that I was wrong, that they had been on IMdb and my name was there. So I logged on and sure enough, I have been immortalised. Should I appoint an agent? Should I be ready for an invite to the Oscars? No to both, but it is nice, even though I have no idea how it has occurred, to think that someone researching old film trivia long after I'm gone will see that refrence and think - who the 'ec was that? I don't know if you watched it then (Film 4 had it on again a few days ago) but I gazed at the final scene as the train pulled away leaving Poirot at the station, the evocative (if rather static) pall of smoke from the big 4-8-2 steam loco against the sunset, but which was in reality being hauled by 03 901 and where I was trying to make a realistic departure acceleration for the steamer, not a nippy 350hp 30tonner with small wheels - and wondered did I actually get it right? You can judge.

So, back in lockdown and the virus running rampant farther south but moving inexorably northwards. Because there's now a vaccine that's 'just around the corner' people are becoming complacent, or just tired of holding back on things they want to do. Derbyshire police found 3 car loads of young men having driven 150 miles when one was involved in an accident in Bamford (Hope Valley) and one car was found to be uninsured. Welsh police turned round an english couple who had driven well into the Principality 'to see the sunrise'. The trouble is that present plans envisage the population immunised down to about age 50 by mid-to-late summer. The present English lockdown runs to at least March but there are clear pointers that it wlll extend into April, that is past the Easter weekend. I read that the F&WHR are raising doubts as to whether it will be worth re-opening then. And what of other lines? Can they comply with all the requirements, and muster enough volunteers (many of whom are over retiring age so are considered at risk until their turn comes) to get things operational? And until Granny and Grandad are immunised and confident, will they take out grandaughter and grandson, because Mum and Dad and unlikely to be jabbed until the autumn? If 2020 was dire for the heritage railway market, 2021, except for those who have sufficient vision and initiative to change their wrking methods to suit the present conditions, ain't going to be a lot better.

So having depressed you all, I'll wish you a virus-free week and hope you'll be back next time. See ya then.