Of marketplace@

5th June 2022

E-commerce and e-mail. How did we cope before?

Well it has been a bit of a strange week. I have some bits coming in from overseas and early on Monday I received a call from High Wycombe. A lady with a strong accent who was from DHL told me there was an import duty charge to pay. I wasn't surprised, actually I was more surprised that I was managing to piece together what she was saying through the accent. Anyway, she told me that she'd send me an e-mail with the payment details and was my e-mail address marketplace-at something or other - I didn't listen to the rest but I think it might have been the e-mail address of the vendor, in which case the country code might have given her a clue that it wasn't ,mine. I patiently spelt out my e-mail address, she repeated it back, and rang off.

In the afternoon it was time for Tom to move home and head up to Rowsley. Years ago, when negotiating the agreement under which I built the shed, I asked if I was to pay a ground rent and was told that Peak Rail was perfectly happy with our provision of works locos and this therefore was the 'rent'. Then after a disagreement with Mrs Statham over payments due on 14 901 and her attempt to introduce new conditions, she decided that as 'we' were in breach Peak Rail (i.e. she) didn't need to pay anything and we had to take her to Court and demonstrate that the law wasn't what suited her. After that she declared that 'Peak Rail will never use any of your locos ever again'. But the Statham era is over and we are to provide a works loco for use at Rowsley and Tom is 'it' for the present. Monday afternoon Harvey C and I moved it up. As it was a one way trip I drove up first in the van and collected Harvey, leaving him to go back to work at Rowsley after the move while I walked back to Darley Dale.

Later in the day Andrew put some bids in on an auction house in Ossett. It was a Jewelery and collectables auction which makes it all the more strange that he was bidding on, and won, 3 instanter coupling chains, two screw couplers and two portable BR pattern headlights with chargers. There were also a pile of 6 or 8 check rail spacer blocks but as we aren't really in to p/way he left them alone. The invoice came through late in the afternoon and he paid up immediately, because I had arranged to go up to my oil suppliers near Mirfield on Tuesday so could pick them up during the afternoon. The van was already loaded with an empty 45 gallon drum and five 25 litre plastic cans as I get a better price supplying my own containers. After an early lunch on Tuesday I set off north, dropped the empties off at the oil firm to fill, then returned east, first stopping at my battery supplier to pick up a fresh set for Charlie, whose own ones appear to be flagging somewhat.

The auctioneers turned out to be a very large unit on an industrial estate with the floor completely taken up with furniture and some tables with smaller stuff on. Three cars were parked outside the roller shutters and auctioneers staff were milling around, bringing their goods out to them on little trollies. I produced the paperwork Andrew had given me and was directed to another table inside, where a member of staff traced his paperwork against mine and started to look around for them. They weren't hard to spot, given that most of the tables were covered with low-lieing bric-a-brac, the headlamps and couplings did rather stand out. 'This one's heavy' said the staff member to his a colleague with the trolley. I couldn't resist a smile as this was one of the headlamps, how would he categorise a screw coupler? I never got to find out as they were the second trolley load as I transferred the first to the van.

Back at my oil suppliers, he finally told me he was calling it a day, winding the business down over the next 2-3 months. This was not entirely a surprise, he'd promised to warn me in good time. He runs the firm single-handed: he's tried more than once to bring in a young man as an apprentice to do the day-to-day leg work but they haven't stayed long. I sympathised as I sometimes feel that young people today expect to get well paid jobs which don't require much 'work'. But it's a blow in so much as this was a man who really knew his product and we could turn to him to manufacture one or two unique blends of oils if the need had arisen.

Back home in the evening we tried charging the portable headlamps but although they'd light up on the chargers, the batteries were obviously very dead.

Wednesday lunchtime Andrew was at work and rang me to check that I had received his text about the weedkilling contractors. I hadn't heard my phone tinkle so was unaware that they were aiming to arrive between 12 and 12.30, and it was now five to. That morning the postman had delivered a box containing more panel light LEDs, so I grabbed these and headed down. In fact, not long after I got there it had started to rain lightly, so the weedkillers called the visit off (they need dry weather before and after for it to be effective) but I remained for a couple of hours, changing more and more of the HaTRAMMs panel indicators over to LEDs as I worked my way through reds and ambers. Each of these secondhand ones came with a seperate diode and a jumper so you could make them so that they only lit when the polarity was one way round, but as the bulbs they were replacing were not so choosy, and I would have had to find each lamp in the circuit diagram to determine which way the polarity ought to be, it seemed as simple to remove the diodes and jumpers and wire them directly in place.

After a late lunch I made time to create a program for the PLC on a loco that I've been rewiring. As the imported bits hadn't yet arrived, and I wanted to have complete control over each function, I wrote a few lines in Ladder that would enable me to crank the engine, get it to start and run but with instant ability to kill it if anything was wrong. For this purpose the energise-to-run solenoid, which is controlled by the PLC, is only turned on when I have my foot on the Deadmans pedal, so I can stop the engine at the first instant of anything untoward. On Thursday I was back down the shed.

Work proceeded on the Fowler 0-6-0 whose brake weighshaft was now on the ground but whose centre-bearing was solid. In the end it was neccessary to use heat to get it to budge along the weighshaft. It appears that Fowler machined this as one parallel shaft. It would have been much easier for assembly if they'd stepped it down a bit, like an axle, so that the bearing parts could pass easily over the smaller diameter and only need any brute force at its seat. (Axle design on a drive axle, for example, uses its biggest diameter at the centre where the final, drive gearwheel sits, slightly smaller where the gearbox bearings go, and then progressively smaller at axlebearing and wheelseats (or wheelseats, axlebearings and flycranks if it's outside framed) with smaller section in between). With the weightshaft and bearing heated, the two came apart but so much heat was required in such large metal lumps that it had to be left the rest of the day to cool off!

I meanwhile used up almost all of the LEDs on the HaTRAMM (I'm now mostly in need of greens) then set up my laptop in the loco cab and attempted to load up my mini-program to its PLC. It's the first time I've done this in a few years so of course it didn't go smoothly but eventually as dim memories came back the neccessary menu options responded and that magical moment happens when the green LED on the processor module comes on to say its running...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Just before lunch I got a phone call from Steph, who was at Sainsbury's in Matlock and the car wouldn't start. First day of a two day Bank Holiday and I had her car to rescue. I got cleaned and dashed down to Matlock. I was hoping it would just be a poor battery connection, but no, everything appeared to work OK, right up to the moment the starter should crank but it just didn't. I gave up and passed things over to the AA. Later that afternoon it was recovered back to the Briddon Country Pile.

On Friday I received another call from DHL, this time from a Derby number and without an accent. Before he got far I interrupted him to point out that I was still waiting for an e-mail promised on Monday by High Wycombe. 'Oh,'he said, 'Is your e-mail marketplace-at...' 'No!' I interrupted again, and gave it to him. This time it not only came through as an e-mail, but as a text as well so at lunchtime I followed up the internet link for their 'e-pay'. But all this gave me was a yellow and red DHL band at the top, and a yellow band at the bottom, and blank screen in between.

This is what I saw, and no amount of clicking on 'Pay Now' would encourage it to display anything else. As an alternative, it said, I could phone an 03 number, but this had a recorded message to say it was closed until Monday. I tried ringing Derby back: it went to voicemail.

Back at the shed, work continued on a now cool brake weighshaft and after several miles of emery cloth had been consumed, and copious amounts of grease applied, the weighshaft was lifted back into the frames and loosely secured. You could now turn the weighshaft by hand, the return springs were able to do their job, but with one further snag. Because the weighshaft has been stuck for so long one of the hanger top pins, - one of the two farthest from the weighshaft - is now also seized. This awaits further attention.

I also spent some time on 2895. The plan is that we will drive the vacuum exhauster with a hydraulic motor, and that requires a means of driving the 3 bolt flange which used to be where the electric motor connected. I've just engineered one such drive and it required a rather expensive spacer but the adaptor on the end of the propshaft that had been employed for the purpose at Elsecar seemed that it might offer possibilities to adapt it more cheaply.

So I extracted it from the front of the propshaft and loosely put it on the exhauster to see how it looked and what I could do next. It's aluminium, which is not something I'd use and it's presumably a piece of stock material that was turned as it has not a great deal of material outside the drive bolts but it is presumably adequate for the purpose. And as the weather was pleasant and I had tools out, I set about unbolting those two pads on the side frames where the engine mounts were as my new mounts will go direct to the side frames. One of these pads had insect activity a couple of weeks ago but it is all quiet now. Andrew appeared at much this time and together we drifted out the bolts and allowed the pads to drop away.

Saturday, and as Andrew had plans with his son, I had allocated my time to a hunt-the-starter-motor. Andrew and I had extricated the old one Friday night, but none of the places I tried that were open Saturday morning had any so in the end I ordered one for Monday and largely gave up on the day. Sunday, and I was back down for 10.00 to get the news that Peak Rail's manager had approved the plan to use the HaTRAMM on a working party trip into Matlock station, though the date is yet to be settled. Apparently the platform has become overgrown with weeds through disuse, so this party will take large bags and tools and de-weed the platform to make it look cared for again. A special event to celebrate the Jubilee was scheduled in the Whitworth park adjacent to Darley Dale station, so Peak Rail was running additional trains up to six thirty-ish as it was hoped that a free parking at Rowsley plus train ride would swell numbers. However, overnight a group of vandals apparently set about destroying lighting, tables and such and Whitworth staff and their participants had to come in from six a.m. to get the event on track, but the weather had turned wet and so it wasn't as well-supported as they'd hoped.

My first task was to put the batteries of the loco on charge as my first attempts on Friday to get it to crank through the PLC had been thwarted by lack of oomph. Leaving them on charge I switched to another task as I was on my own until Jagger rolled up at about 12.15. As the loco hadn't been run for about 10 years my plan had been to crank it over and see oil pressure before allowing the ETR to engage, and for an engine probably quite dry and stiff this would be quite a task for anything but fully charged batteries. After lunch I had a short go and got it to turn, but too slow and no visible pressure on the gauge, so put the batteries back on charge. Andrew appeared, having taken his son go-karting and suggested we should crack on with a shunt, as some re-organisation of the yard was due in order to access certain locos more easily.

Given that 144V is in such poor condition externally, but the engine appears to have been properly protected for storage so may be in good order, Andrew is looking at getting the engine to run (possibly with another, overhauled, fuel pump) and if satisfactory, extract it and install it into James, whose C6S (supercharged) has a suspect cylinder head or liner. That 144V's engine is only normally aspirated (so may be only 179bhp gross against James's 233) is of little concern as with a relatively high gear ratio and small driving wheels, Andrew questions the selection of the C6S by Yorkshire in the first place. Another C6N would then be sorted out for 144V, which will require a considerable amount of work to bring it back to a fit condition. As a Yorkshire 0-4-0DE is shortly to depart and access to James might be needed before too long, RS8 was employed for a re-arrangement between tracks 1, 2 and 3A was implemented.

By about 4pm the batteries were recovered and another attempt at starting the loco made. This time it cranked faster and I allowed the ETR to come on - the engine fired and a moment later the oil pressure registered, but Andrew in his normal cautious way signalled at me to stop it again (to prove it would answer). With the oil now circulating the batteries had no difficulty in restarting and after a short time the converter filled and registered pressure too. We could hear a lot of air escaping - I checked that the straight air brake responded to the desk control but although I should have been able to get the gearbox to switch and the clutch to come in and out, it didn't appear to work, though the pressures may have simply been insufficient, I got the feeling I may have some more valves and leaks to chase through.

And that's about it for the week. Andrew is trying to get some outstanding leave in this week, so hopefully there'll be days on Tom and Charlie, plus getting Steph's car back into action, and visitors due on Saturday. And maybe those imported bits will finally arrive, probably addressed to Marketplace at Darley Dale or something else to confuse things. I can't wait. See ya then