Of pressing on (or off)

22nd August 2021

I think I'm going to start with a little rant.

There are times that I despair at the quality of service provided by firms these days. For example, back in April I ordered, from a well-known supplier of a certain manufacturers engine parts, a top overhaul kit for a 6-cylinder engine. That should comprise all the joints, o-rings, oil seals and whatever else required to remove the cylinder heads, carry out a full overhaul (be it de-coking and cleaning the heads and valves, or going further) and put it all back together with the parts required. When I ordered it, I was told that they couldn't quote a delivery but this was supposedly due to a new computer system having just been put in.

I waited patiently.

In June I chased it up, and was told that one part wasn't in stock at the engine manufacturer so the kit was not yet made up. I waited patiently.

This week I chased it up again, after all we're 4 months in and I had had to pay up front for this kit, a 3 figure sum. This time the supplier expresses his frustration that the engine manufacturer cannot sort out one 'tiny part' (their description) that is 'without manufacturer'. Never mind, they say, we'll quote you the individual parts and you can get it that way. That rang alarm bells. The benefit of buying a kit is that (a) you get all the parts you need without shortage or surplus and (b) the kit price is less than the sum of the individual bits else why buy the kit? (Besides, by making all these items as one sale, it reduces administrative costs.) For that matter, I reminded them, they had entered into a contract with me and had the loan of my money for 4 months.

Late this week they reverted with their proposal, they had, they told me included their best possible discount, so if I'd like to pay the extra(!) they'd cancel my kit order and substitute these. Now, apart fom the fact that this kit wasn't for me but an increasingly impatient customer, so that would leave me to renegotiate my contract with them or more likely, stand the loss through no fault of mine: aside from the fact that the quote was in pack quantities so I would end up putting parts on the shelf which I might never get to use, apart from all this, there was one thing that made me wonder whether this customer service representative had actually looked at the quote properly before he sent it. Line 4 quoted a joint for 6 off, endorsed with the message 'nil stock, no delivery available'.

It may be reasonable to assume that these parts (the price was only a couple of pounds each so fit the earlier description of 'tiny') are none other than the parts that the engine manufacturer say they have no current manufacturer for. So, if I followed their advice, I'd have paid more out to get all but the one thing which renders the rest useless. Needless to say a slightly less patient me went back and pointed out that their solution was rather less than acceptable. I wonder what will be their response next.

Another example occurred during the week. Last Sunday night after finishing the blog, I put in an on-line order for two items to a large supplier who pride themselves that every order placed before 3pm is despatched for delivery next day. As it was thus in before they started work on Monday, I stayed in Tuesday expecting the items to be delivered. That was a waste of a day. At 08.15 Wednesday two packages arrived: later that day I unpacked them to discover that these actually fulfilled only line 1 on my order, and checking the acknowledgement found no suggestion that line 2 wasn't then available to send. I took that up with the supplier on Thursday - they haven't yet answered and neither has line 2 arrived.

On the other hand, I ordered a small hydraulic reservoir on Friday to go on a loco currently sat in the workshop. It being Friday I didn't expect to see it until Monday, yet Saturday afternoon the carrier tried to deliver (and it's hard enough to get a delivery on a Saturday morning normally) and as none of us were in, left a card and took it back to Stoke. Now provided with a tracking number I checked Saturday night and found it was due for delivery Sunday. Sunday? Yes, that's what it said, so I envisioned popping back to the Counytry Pile to meet the carrier's van, but when I looked it up again this morning to see what time it predicted, it had been put back to Monday. Let's hope its extra time in the van hasn't caused any damage!

Jagger is now working shifts so his appearance at Darley Dale has become somewhat less regular, but he was up during the week and so chassis members have been cleaned and primed on the cement van. It's getting nearer to reinstating plywood panels. For myself it has been a quiet week - on Monday the van received a new set of brakes - well stopping it was becoming more exciting - but there hasn't been significant miles racked up this week. It was an early start on Saturday, a last minute tidy up of the workshop as a party from Pheonix Railtours as due. Just after 10.30 a medium sized coach backed in and after the usual 'hello, here are the rules' chat we guided them round. To make life easier I had prepared a hand-out saying where each loco was, and we had first fired Tom up and drawn part of the rake forward on Road 1 so that all the locos Matlock-side of the 2HAP could be seen and photographed without the temptation to stray on the Peak Rail running line. All seemed to have found their visit worthwhile (and seeing that two had come from Aberdeen and another from Inverness and while I doubt if hey had come purely to see us - the coach went on to visit HST, EVR Butterly and Toton)  it's good to know it is appreciated.)

We had talked about the possibility of cab rides, but on Friday RS8 had shown evidence of an oil leak and a look around on the Saturday morning indicated it was the transmission heat exchanger. The 'twin pack' Covrad ones seal with o-rings on the tube stacks but to get them in, you have to slide the stacks down the cooler body and past the apertures. It is all too easy to snag a ring on the aperture and chew it up, causing the thing to leak immediately or after a few hours. Rather than totally disable RS8, Andrew opted to recover another from James. Now so far as I know, James' cooler wasn't leaking and other than it needed a good flush through (if only because James' converter is still filled with diesel) I'd have been inclined to get it on to RS8 as is and stripped RS8's, following the time-honoured mantra that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Andrew however favoured overhauling it now and I didn't argue. But first we had to shove the train back on road 1, and when I came to start Tom , it repeated its party-trick and refused to start. The symptoms changed though. On the one hand, it was apparent that the stop solenoid was pulling over but not closing the contacts at the end of the travel. OK, brief explanation. On these, the energise-to-run solenoid is two in one. A large coil pulls the lever on the pump over, but when the solenoid has reached the end, it opens a contact which breaks the circuit to the big coil but leaves the smaller, inner coil engaged to hold the lever there until the electricity goes away. That big coil pulls about 40 amps and if left in circuit, burns out in about 10 minutes. The small one only consumes 2 or 3 and can remain on indefinitely. The ammeter indicated that the big coil was still on, a fact confirmed when Andrew saw smoke coming off the wiring nearby and for myself when I felt the solenoid body a bit later and it was still uncomfortably warm.

I disconnected the wires to the solenoid but found that now nothing in the loco's desk was lighting up and I couldn't even crank the engine. Clearly something else has burnt out but as Tom's wiring is a curious amalgam of Sentinel with later Thomas Hill practice I don't have a wiring diagram that puts it all together. Seems I will have to do some detective work. We got Tom running with hot wires and pulled the train back as by now Bryan L had arrived on a cute little lorry bearing a Cummins engine Andrew had bought from an e-bay vendor in South Wales.

Earmarked for a loco that we'll introduce in a few weeks time, being on a bedframe with both radiator and a transmission (of which we know nothing) it was close to the limits of the long-suffering forklift. But we got it safely down and Bryan got on his way. Tom was started up again and put the whole train back into place.

Having stripped the end covers off the heat exchanger, Andrew opted to press the stacks out on the press, but having got most of the way on the first, the 'dolly' spreading the load turned at an angle and the stack jammed. Blue language followed as neither the stack nor the dolly would budge, but did not seem to be in contact with one another. In the end, as tea-time loomed, I set the press up applying maybe a couple of tons on the tube stack (through the hole in the middle of the dolly) and left it overnight.

First thing Sunday Andrew took grandson to try his young hands at go-karting, and I headed down to the shed as Tony S was due over. Tony and I found that last night's pressure had gone, and with only a little resistance, the tube stack made it out with the dolly miraculously on top. Tony made a minor mod to the dolly and then we pressed the second tube stack out as well without incident. The stacks want cleaning but should go back OK with new rings, which I don't think we have in stock (though I thought I'd bought extra last time).

Andrew arrived after lunch and assisted Tony on the railcar, while I moved between several projects, mostly measuring components for re-use after re-arrangement. Andrew marked up some angle for the cement van, ready for Jagger to manufacture when he comes next, and we jointly discussed various jobs, engineering arrangements and timescales over teas and fresh buns.

That's about all for this week. What's on the horizon for this one I'm not sure, all my plans seem to have been disrupted for now. Still I'm sure there'll be something to write about. See ya then.