Of wet racking

4th July 2021

The usual mix, but into our lives a little rain must fall.

First of all, when I was wrapping up the story of the arriving German flat wagon last week, I forgot to add a footnote that one of my readers - Lewis M - had been kind enough to point out that the last wagon of the four, which I thought was still at Fawley Hill was in fact now on the Helston Railway. It was remiss of me not to acknowledge that contribution and also to observe that it must surely be as far west as any of those wagons has ever ventured. So, I've racked up another 800 miles this week with Carlisle and Leeming Bar in my sights ( I like to think I was 'mobbed by a fan' at the latter) amongst other exotic places, with Adam and Ian moving both locos and wagons.

We now have a few days break thanks to the holiday season, but plenty more work is in prospect.

By Friday though I was ready for a quiet day and with Andy H for company, a day was planned for the workshops, tied in with the visit of the contractor for the annual weedkilling. Work was progressing, amongst other things, on an export job that is coming together, but time was also spent on Charlie, which now features a working low-level warning light for the transmission oil reservoir and a replacement sand ejector for the one damaged some months ago. For myself, while I told myself I really ought to be catching up on commercial jobs, the fact that the weather was favourable and there were no trains running, I opted to continue stripping off the body sheets from the cement van at the 'main line' side with the result that the entire southern end was revealed.

It was at lunchtime on Friday that Andy H drew my attention to the fact that a mouse was running down the shed floor towards us. This I think was a field mouse, well it certainly didn't look as big as the grey domestic variety as I have encountered in student bedsits and the like, and didn't move as fast as they do when confronted by a human in big boots. We shall have to encourage it to relocate, though thanks to the incident a month or two ago when half a pizza disappeared one evening that might not be simple. Andrew popped down after work and proceeded to cut the welds holding the corroded floor plate at that end, so that that too was finally released. From now on it's clean and prime the steelwork, replace the steel sheet and build the ends back in the stock plywood, though it was tempting to replace the body in a mixture of timber and perspex, and create some sort of verandah where we can sip G&Ts and watch the trains go by.

We have for several years been monitoring one of Charlie's springs. This has a clamp arrangement in the buckle which stripped its thread long before I can remember, and even when Charlie was down filming Murder on the Orient Express I had to take the weight and hammer the leaves back into position. One of Andrew's jobs on Saturday was to weld the buckle and baseplate together from profiles I had made many moons ago as we prepare to deal with that, and a few other issues over the next few weeks.

He also finished the afternoon by cutting out a plate to fit a hole in the back of the Fowler 0-4-0DH step assembly with the plasma cutter and then welding it into place, from which after a bit of paint it should be about ready to refit.

If Saturday was concentrated on commercial jobs of mine, Sunday was very much the opposite, though not the day of rest some look forward to. With the Janus loco out of the Matterson area, not only have we been cleaning, sealing and painting the 'ornamental pond' section (a second coat of grey went on on Thursday evening) but Andrew had decreed that we were going to re-arrange and tidy up this part of the shed before any more work came in for lifting. Many moons ago we had assembled there some racking from two van loads I had brought back from just outside Scunthorpe. We also had a Polstore (a heavy duty unit like a cross between a plan chest and a filing cabinet) and the tool truck along the same wall, but the space wasn't being used as efficiently as it ought.

First part of the day was to empty the draws of the Polstore and drag the structure out so that the tool truck could be wheeled up to the column. Each draw of the tool truck is on roller bearing runners and is very free moving: you can push a draw shut, turn your back and a few seconds later two or three have silently slid themselves open. If enough draws do so together the whole thing becomes unstable and falls over, so after checking its present attitude with a spirit level we jacked it up and slid packers under the nearside wheels to ensure gravity helps keep them shut. The Polstore too, moved to its new home just south of the tool truck, was assessed with the spirit level and a pair of packers added to the same side - there is clearly a slight slope to the floor. By lunchtime we had replaced the first 4 or 5 draws to the bottom of the Polstore, but Andrew's plan required a rearrangement of the shelf allocation. When the 'store was first asembled here, we had allocated shelves for taps. dies, etc roughly in proportion with the quantities of those taps and dies we possessed. But our collection has burgeoned, and latterly for example the draw that contained metric and BSP could not be closed because they were piled too high. Indeed, a 2 inch BSP tap wouldn't even fit within the draw previously allocated. So we spent a happy hour or more going through each tap, die and die nut putting it into a vague order in newly allotted draws, BS Whit in one, BSF in another and BSP in a third (and so on). Even this hit a snag as we have two boxed sets of die nuts, which are both BSW and BSF, and sawing the boxes in two in order to fit with the 'system' was not judged sensible.

So far so good but now we turned our attention to the rack. Amongst many pieces occupying the shelves were windows from Adolf, axles, springs and other bits from the Wickham, a quantity of Paxman RPH cylinder liners and other spares, fabrications awaiting the return of Cheedale, etc., etc. All this Andrew passed down to me, to carry some way away and stack. When it had been achieved we broke for a cup of tea, but hearing a rumble of thunder, decided now would be a good time to bring inside some of the 'new' racking which was to replace it. This was part of a consignment Andrew had collected in the van, filling it to the brim, a year or more ago. It is of a different pattern to the earlier rack and has pre-formed shelving pieces which drop over the orange bearers rather than the chipboard inserts of the previous, which will in due course join its brethren in the container. And so we started to assemble the mark 2 racking, the resulting structure forming two bays with greater shelf space. By the time the first bay of the two was up, the rain had eased and I was able to bring in a quantity of shelving pieces from the pallet outside, but by the time the second was complete, the rain was returning and there was nothing to do but brave it while Andrew remained inside, in the dry, putting the shelves on and wiping off the excess moisture.

Then, guess what? I had to pick up the bits I'd stacked and bring them back to him to put on the shelves in the new racking, in the order he selected. Two shelves are though allocated to me, and I have populated them with various parts including brake block patterns and some of the composite blocks I stock. A little more of the shed floor has re-appeared as a result. The next phase of the re-organisation is to reposition the second Polstore alongside the first, which neccessitates it roughly changing places with a workbench, and putting the pillar drill next to it, under the striplight, and thus next to all the drill bits. That will take another full day, I suspect.

So for now I will wish you all a good week and hope you'll be back again next time. See ya then.