Of 42p loose change

11th July 2021

A lone blogger writes from his heart as the rest of the country watch a football match...

There was something of a crisis at Briddon Towers early this week - the washing machine broke down. I know, we all have the occasional hiccup with 'white goods' in our homes, so what? Well we have two washing machines here, the big sophsiticated one that was brand new when we moved into the Briddon Country PIle and another, that came cheap from a seller on e-bay that is dedicated to doing mine and Andrew's overalls. And a hard life it leads, considering that the level of soiling from each overall I put through, while maybe not as muddy as the local football team's kit, has a greater preponderance of oily dirt with a hint of grinding dust, so maybe is  a tougher environment than most of its brethren have been subjected to.  But I wouldn't suggest to Mrs B that putting the sheets and pillow cases through 'my' washer would necessarily bring them out in a condition that she'd be proud of. And besides, I was accused of putting too much powder in it of late when Andrew sent me a picture of it with soap suds trailing down from the tray on the front like the ivy over the oil store. I insisted I hadn't but since then have only risked putting one pair through at a time, and thought that maybe I ought to open up that filter thingy on the front which protects the pump from any bits Andrew or I had carelessly left in our ovvies' pockets.

I thought I should (having never done so since it arrived) but achieving it was a different matter. I could rotate it (and hear some distinctly inappropriate noises) but pull it out I could not. I debated lifting the machine, undoing the assembly and extracting it from the washer. Debated yes, tried to find information on the 'net, yes. Proceeded? No. So Tuesday a nice man came to fix the domestic washing machine, finding various bits that allegedly supported the drum had broken or were no longer fulfiling their purpose. While he was here (I proposed) could he have a look at the other machine in the garage? He couldn't get the filter out either, but he knew how to disassemble it and soon passed me things across until I felt like it was a conveyor belt from the Generation Game. I had once found a 1/2 inch spanner loose in the drum when I pulled out a pair of ovvies, so I was under no illusions as to what might be lurking there, but even I was a bit mystified to receive a piece of red celluloid about 3 inches square, part of a zip, an eighth inch twist drill, 4 M10 washers, a few ounces of grinding dust and forty-two pence in loose change. Sadly I had to pay him more than 42p to receive this windfall.

Amongst the tasks this week I have been preparing to fit a level switch on to the converter fluid tank on Tom. I took the tank top off and was not unduly surprised to find the oil level so low as to be below the outlet to the suction filter: it was what I had surmised when it was started up. I had just got the top off when the washing machine man had arrived at the house so that paused that job until later in the week. Charlie's broken sand ejector had been replaced with a new one late last week and the task was finished by warming up the old pipe and nut assembly, still doggedly holding on to the broken bit of said sand ejector, and getting it to unscrew.

During the week I ordered and collected a large piece of 6mm steel sheet to form the new floor section of the cement van, and on Friday evening Andrew and I went through a list of things we planned to achieve at the weekend. Jagger had been a 'might be, might not be' for a day but Tony S was planning to visit on Sunday, as he wanted the tool he had lent us for separating Wickham drive hubs from their stub axles back. When I got down to the shed on Saturday, Andrew had made a start and was determined to get one or both of the rails from the Ornamental Pond back in place having first relieved them of the sediment that had collected while in there, preferably without accidentally sweeping it into said former Pond while doing so..

We achieved it, mostly, and dropped the first rail back in before breaking off for lunch. Immediately after Andrew decided that first we should empty the van of the 6mm sheet and then cut the first plywood sheets ready to make the new sides on the cement van. The sheet, being almost 8ft long and 2ft 6 wide, was a darn sight heavier than it looked and taxed our muscles and patience getting up the side of the shed and laying it against some stillages ready to be primed. I should perhaps have recorded that Andrew has been suffering from back pains attributed to a trapped nerve, so may be excused if certain expletives were either more frequent or expressed with greater fervour than normal. That done. out came the plywood sheets which though bigger and much thicker, were substantially lighter if a trifle less easy to keep hold of. A rudimentary sawing bench was assembled out of pallets and with a circular saw the large sheets were reduced into smaller rectangles (in some cases not that much smaller) interspersed with regular trips to the van to double check and triple check cutting sizes before marking them out. The old proverb is after all measure twice and cut once, but to be honest measuring 3 or 4 times is no major hardship.

The boards were then taken inside the shed. While Andrew started priming some of the boards, I was at last able to get on with something else and proceeded to drill the hole in Tom's tank top for the new level switch. The tank on Tom is a different size to my usual, and the level switches I assembled as a batch some weeks ago were not suitable, so a new one about 2 nches longer had been put together ready. Once in place I toddled back up to the loco (which is currently right at the south end of the yard) and refitted it, before returning with lengths of conduit and determining a route to bring the wires up into the desk. By the end of the day I had the switch's plug cabled up with a suitable flex conduit attached ready to go on, and I had located and changed the voltage reg with a new one from my stores, and we'll see whether that has the effect of restoring charge.

Sunday, and Andrew got down to open up for Tony S and after a quick cup of tea we motored up to Rowsley. Back when I was working for RMS Locotec, I spent many hours at the erstwhile Rover plant in Brum. By that time they had 3 68-ish ton 0-6-0DHs originally built by Hunslet with 8RPHX Paxmans, but repowered later with R-R CV8s -sorry Perkins 3008s... But prior to all that they had run a pair of 37ton Thomas Hill chain drives, one of which was built during my time at Kilnhurst. Anyway, they had gone but two spare springs lay outside the loco shed and with an eye to spares for Charlie, I sought permission and obtained them. (Cheedale was not even a twinkle in the eye). One we cut up a decade or so ago, yielding some leaves for an earlier repair (being for a 37ton loco they had more leaves than Charlie's at 25tons) and the other remained at Rowsley in a collection of parts originally put to be 'out of the way' but now somewhat inaccessible. We took the new pneumatic tyred sack truck with us and after some minutes probing around in the undergrowth we found both the complete spring and remaining leaves, half buried in an ant's nest of significant size. We extracted them and with some bits of mother nature still attached conveyed them back to Darley Dale and lunch. Tony S meanwhile had been seperating bits of Wickham. The lightweight Wickham drive axle has two stub axles joined with a tube that carries the final drive sprocket. Andrew's plan is that his Wickham will have both axles driven, but directly from a hydraulic motor rather than through chains and sprockets, and to this end he has collected other components which will be required. In the end it appeared to be something of a race between Andrew using the hydraulic press and Tony with his puller and the power of his arms. I think it worked out a draw.

Jagger appeared rather unexpectedly and was duly put on the cement van where he has continued extracting the remains of old bolts and cleaning up bits ready for the new floor plate to be welded into place. For some reason I got it into my head to strip down the remains of a Leyland engine sump - extracting all the ferrous and brass pieces so as to end up with the purely aluminium parts for weighing in. Andrew split the buckle on the recovered spring so as to release the leaves - but the newly welded spring buckle needs a little more cleaning out before the leaves will fit properly. Our grand plan to shunt Charlie in to a position so that the spring can be lifted out and repaired/replaced just never got near happening, though we may do that one evening this week. Neither too did the second rail get put back into the Ornamental Pond: in fact our whole carefully drawn up plan just didn't quite seem to correlate with what actually got done.

Never mind, there's always another day. And in those days this week we should see the imminent departure of two coach bogie frames that have been obstructing access to the scrap skip plus some other miscellaneous bits arriving. I'll tell you all about it though, next week. See ya then.