Of fame and traffic lights

27th March 2022

To be, or not to be, a celebrittee.

The clocks have gone forward, the sun has shone, the temperature was so high on Wednesday I had to discard a woolly because it was so hot.. Eh? No I mean a sweater not a sheep. And they say we may have snow later this week. Lucky us.

It's not far short of twelve years since this blog first took its tentative steps in the real world. I'm not bucking for a special award from the annual HRA shindig or anything, but it is rather flattering when someone comes out and says how they liked 'this' or 'that' on last week's instalment. It has happened again this week and if it goes on I might even start calling myself a celebrity: after all, they have people on my TV every day whom they claim are celebrities and I've never seen or heard of them before. OK, we're all entitled to 15 minutes of fame they say, and I had mine when doing Scrapheap Challenge back in 2004 (I believe you can still find it on Youtube, complete with my rendition of 'Where have all the power tools gone...') but I wouldn't mind a little more. Just to show that I'm still around and kicking.

I have said in the past that one of the local 'sports' is to see how much of a shambles you can make by installing temporary lights on the A6. The building site just south of the Doctors raised the bar of late with a 4-way set that caused utter misery. Indeed so good was it they have staged an encore over the weekend. Then barely half a mile further on contractors repairing a garden wall decided they needed to obstruct one lane so added a set of lights of their own, and not to be outdone, on Monday another contractor placed a set right in the middle of Matlock eclipsing the delays and queuing normally brought about by the pedestrian lights. I found much of this out this week as I attempted to go over to Via Gellia to drop off a bit for machining and on my return decided to detour via Tansley to pick up some cable tray. Indeed, even the A619 out of Matlock up the hill to Tansley had set of lights all of its own. It is of course, nearly the end of the tax year and so many authorities haven't managed to allocate all their budgets because of Covid restrictions, so there is a frantic spend, spend session and hirers of 'Traffic management' equipment are singing all the way to the Bank (if you can find a branch that hasn't been turned into a co-op, chinese restaraunt or a charity shop).

I got back to that customer's loco this week and having refitted the driver's brake valve and swapped another old worn out Lang Pneumatic valve, pumped the air up from their shop compressor only to find the loco's compressor unloader valve leaking badly. (It shouldn't have blown off at all). So I started up the loco's engine, detached the shop-air line, and had the loco moving to and fro, but the leak was so severe (or the loco compressor so worn) that even as I celebrated getting it moving (and stopping!), the pressure was falling and I had to bring things to a close. To cap it all part of an adjustable spanner of mine came adrift and sailed gracefuly down into the pit. It didn't float like the biro did and the water being now a good four or five inches deep it has remained out of reach.

We had one transport job booked this week and something of a deja-vu event as we collected aother gronk from Long Marston and took it to Shackerstone. Simon P and his merry men were in full flow on the 08 we had taken in previously, and as we were leaving they were trying to get it to start and run, and in between singing the praises of the little battery electric loco that has become the Shackerstone station runabout.

The latter half of the week was taken up with paperwork and visits from customers, real or potential. Saturday we expected a full house and largely got it, with variously the owner of D9500 dropping by for more bits that Andrew had uncovered since it left, Dom B stopping in for tea and a chat having gauged and lubricated our access crossover, and Jagger and girlfriend Rochelle at work on a loco and his temporarily resident JCB. But first and foremost (in so far as the HaTRAMM has been featuring so much of late) Andy M was back after a change in work plans means it would be his last weekend here for a while. So first thing Saturday the HaTRAMM moved up to the turnout so that he could get back underneath. Let me introduce you to what Andy calls the 'Junction Box from hell'. You've previously seen pictures of the wiring under the driver's feet up in the cab, but this is underneath the chassis, and you might guess from the awkward angle of shot, has obstructions that prevent looking at it square on.

Some of this wiring is redundant, some not (we have recovered half a mile of cable suitable for re-use) all of it means working in uncomfortable positions. Added to all of this he had removed some conduit covers last weekend and had e-mailed during the week to say that they were wanted for re-fitting, which was unfortunate as I had thrown them in the scrap bin as part of the drive to tidy up. Fortunately when I climbed up they were still close to the top and were recovered for him.

The next stage for the HaTRAMM was to refill the hydraulics and for this purpose the old oil needed draining from the tank. Quite how much was in there we didn't know - merely that it was out of the sight glass on the tank side. The hydraulics on the HaTRAMM has two main functions, the first being to drive the crane, but the second function is an independent 'creep' hydrostatic drive so that the vehicle can be re-positioned carefully while carrying out site duties, leaving the normal torque converter/powershift transmission for tripping to or from base.

To get the hydrostatic drives to engage, you need to admit air to certain cylinders and we already knew that the control valves were leaking so had isolated them. In the course of Saturday I was variously directing tasks on one loco, carrying on cabling up another and assisting Andy M detaching wires from the HaTRAMM. (I was on top, as befits my greater years and celebrity status). We did at least shunt it down to just outside the shed so it wasn't as far away to superintend.

First thing Sunday we deployed the transfer pump assembly and took the 45 gallon drum of grade 46 oil to refill the tank. This succesfully completed (and about time since this drum was acquired for the purpose by Terry Day long before he passed on) we opened the isolating cocks, the hydrostatic drive engaged (on came the appropriate lights) and we could move it forwards and backwards by means of an entirely different throttle lever. Before we could try out the crane we needed to get the stabilisers down. Now on lorry cranes you have probably seen them - long extending arms with rams at their periphery that take some of the lorry's weight off its wheels.

The HaTRAMM is somewhat different: over the rear axle two rams come down and act directly on the axleboxes. Limit switches detect that they're down and without these, the crane don't work, but we had no luck initially getting them to function. Andrew had now arrived with lunch and afterwards he and Andy proved that the valve that routed the oil to the stabiliser controls not only wasn't working, but blew the circuit breaker when you tried.

A temporary feed direct however resolved this (so likely a cable fault to trace or circumvent) the stabiliers went down the lights came on and we should have had crane control. It took a while longer to deduce that there is another fault somewhere and a second temporary feed to the crane control panel gave us the pleasure of action.

Under Andrew's cautious eye it was unfolded, raised and extended, with a close look out for any hose issues, worn pins or slides, leaking rams, etc.

It all looked in surprisingly good condition, though once the known defects have been traced and rectified, it must receive a professional inspection and certification before it is used, that everything appears to work as it should mechanically was gratifying. Switching it back to normal - retracting the stabilisers, disengaging the hydrostatics, is still a bit of a chore for the moment, but I'm sure that we are a lot nearer getting it fully-functional.

Towards the end of the day we had a big shunt around to get the HaTRAMM back out and swap two locos over from inside and outside the shed. More locos to move this week, plus a return to that loco to resolve its unloader valve and get my bit of adjustable spanner back. After that I'm sure there'll be another busy weekend plus Peak Rail coming to life and resuming services. So I'll leave it there and hope you'll be dropping by again next week. See ya then.