Of MDs and wheelchairs

25th September 2022

So, in years to come, when my children have tucked me into my wheelchair...

... with a blanket to keep me warm whilst I snooze away an afternoon into the evening of my dotage, and some young person - maybe even a grandchild or great grandchild - asks what I was doing on the day the Queen was buried, I can open one eye and say 'Well son, there was all them people down in London waving flags and throwing marmalade sandwiches, but I was fixing windows in a locomotive'.

Welcome to yet another installment of Weekend Rails. Aren't you tired of all this yet? Yes, as forecast we were back in the shed on Monday progressing work mostly on two of my commercial jobs including the Hudswell 1387 and the EE D1120.

On the Hudswell the remaining front and rear head and marker lamps have been fitted, and some of the cabling up carried out. Meanwhile Andrew has at last broken the back of the pipework on the EE for me, with the completion (bar cosmetics) of the main vac pipe front to rear plus the beginnings of the branch into the rear compartment where the exhauster is located.

The first of the windows went back into the Hudswell too and another floorboard and supports were installed  leaving only the main diamond pattern steel plate over the gearbox to let into the surrounding floorboards so as to be flush for walking on.

I bemoaned the lack of jobbing machinists last week and received a suggestion from one reader of a firm in Kidderminster, and while I will keep the name in mind the fact is that I am often dropping off free-issue material and collecting the finished result so was really looking for someone nearer to home. Indeed, having given up on the firm in Nottingham, I set off early on Tuesday afternoon to drop such a piece of steel in to the firm I have always used only to get there and find them closed. Whether this was an extra day to mark the demise of Lizzie or what I couldn't say, I just got back in the van and went on to Wirksworth. Charlie was reportedly stopped with reports of a 'funny noise' from the alternator and its cooling fan not going round. My task, delegated to me by Andrew, was to investigate and if possible, rectify the defect: our thoughts being that maybe the pulley nut had come loose and so the fan was no longer engaged with the key on the shaft. I took along a suitable socket just in case.

Arriving at Wirksworth I reported to the RO and then wandered up the yard to find Charlie up near the loco shed with another (steam) loco coupled to it. I took the side cover off the casings and here is the view that I was presented with, though I, like you, probably don't see the significance straightaway.

Rolls used to have three 'A' section belts on the crankshaft-water pump-alternator circuit but later switched to four 'Z' section, which only complicates the issues of having the right pulley fitted to any spare alternator you might have lying around. Yes, I could indeed rotate the fan without the adjacent pulley turning, but the 'feel' didn't seem like a fan free on its shaft. Now take a closer look at the picture: (red arrow to help de-mystify) does the pulley (you can see its back edge left of the belt) seem parallel with the face of the alternator and its fan? If I gripped the far side of the pulley and pulled hard, the pulley and its belts swung towards me. And that I concluded was the nub of the problem. The fan wasn't going around because although it was still attached to the armature of the alternator, the pulley itself wasn't, and the 'funny noise' was a pulley being dragged over the shaft and grinding both (and the key supposed to keep it connected) away. (Also the alternator warning light should have been on, but that nugget of information didn't get back to us) I could at this point have taken the alternator off which would have rendered the loco totally immobile, but opted to report back to Andrew.

Wednesday and an e-mail, back from the MD of the silencer manufacturer was that it was at last on its way and I should see it that day, so I hung around the whole time waiting for a lorry to arrive. Late in the afternoon Andrew and I popped down to the shed, and luckily found a pulley suitable for an alternator and with 4 Z grooves on it. I handed him another of my stock alternators, we fitted said pulley to said alternator and he got a small kit of parts and tools together.

Thursday. Andrew went off to a meeting in Derby just after Steph had complained that the tyres on her car looked a little 'soft' so after checking on a rather unusual, deluxe tyre pressure gauge that I keep in the van, I confirmed that indeed they were and took it off to the shed. The compressor and the air main are confined to the far side wall, and so to inflate tyres requires running flex hoses all the way across the floor and out the door. Takes three times as long to set up and put away as to inflate the tyres and I expected any moment to get a call from Steph to say a big lorry with a pallet had arrived. But no, the tyres were suitably re-pressured, the hoses re-stowed, the car returned and Steph was on her way somewhere when a large lorry turned up outside, stopped and rang me to say he didn't know where we were. I was already out the front door by the time he he rang and as he told me that he was lost I told him he was right outside where we lived.

'The Junior Football Club?' he said in astonishment. I suggested he climbed out and said hullo. A short while later the silencer was unloaded and I banked him safely away on to the A6 and his next drop. Late in the afternoon Andrew stopped off at Wirksworth on his way back from his meeting to change the alternator, and although it was indeed a suitable alternator pulley it was a slightly larger pulley which made it a pig to fit.

And so on to Saturday, with normality restored. Or was it? Matt's car had finally fallen to pieces this week: if a rear suspension failure wasn't an omen, the separation of the driver's seat from the vehicle floor was perhaps the car's way of saying it had had enough, so he came in to Matlock by train and walked up. First job was to move the 0-4-0DH Fowler down to just outside the shed as the decision has been taken, reluctantly I must admit, to scrap it though several groups have already been in reserving components to aid their restorations. One was coming in later that day to collect a buffer so I let Matt loose releasing bolts, etc in readiness.

Meanwhile I unpacked the silencer and found to my chagrin that it was not how I expected it. Going back through the sequence of e-mails later that night I realised how the mix-up had occurred. I had thought the price the M.D. had given me was for a side entry, rear exit silencer, but he had merely given the standard price for a front entry, rear exit and expected me to add the 5% extra for the side entry version. As we had been exchanging emails over a couple of weeks and throughout I had said it would have to be side entry, I had just assumed that he, and the subsequent pro-forma he had had sent, referred to that configuration. So, did I wait for a new silencer to be made or re-think the system I had in mind? The two cradles that will be strapped to the silencer were intended to fit to two cross-members on top of the casing sides, which help brace the whole structure. But the rear one had to be forward of the air cleaner we'd fitted, else the filter element couldn't be changed. If I mounted the silencer further back though, the rear tail pipe could be supported better from the back of the silencer and give more space at the front for the pipework to incorporate a bit of flexible duct to allow for engine movement. The only snag, to keep the air cleaner accessible for changing, would be that the rear of the silencer must take its support using hangers from the casing tops: not my first preference, but unlike the casing tops I grew up with at Hills, these were pretty substantial (read bluddy heavy) pieces of plate.

By Saturday night an alternative mounting arrangement had been schemed and another visit to the profilers looks imminent. The front right corner of the cab on the Hudswell had a bash in NCB days and with paint cleaned off the extent of platework let in to the original was obvious. The front window that side was set in rubber mounts but we had a spare front window in stock, which matched the aluminium frame of its neighbour so Matt attempted to fit it. It wouldn't go, and it became obvious that the NCB platework was not quite to the Hudswell drawing. That got left for Sunday.

Our visitor for his buffer and a few other sundries arrived in a vintage Ford Cortina, not the sort of thing you normally expect a railway preservationist to utilise. By now the buffer was on the floor but it was all too obvious that it wasn't going to fit in the Cortina's boot. In the end, they knocked out the cotter and dismantled the buffer, which turned out to be coil sprung (we were expecting volute) which might be due to a past rebuild at Barclays. The barrel and spring went in the boot, the faceplate and shank went on the passenger seat, draped in rags and secured with a seat belt. All it wanted was a smiling mannequin head and it would looked perfectly natural.

Back at work, I glanced over at the security camera monitor and saw a cyclist coming up from the gate. I went out to intercept, assuming it was another one who had mistaken our gateway for the cycle path - after all we once came out to find a man and woman wheeling bikes through the yard insisting that they thought it was the cycle path. But no, he was a cyclist who was also a railway enthusiast, although clearly his knoowledge was limited to main line traction. I suggested he leave his bike and I'd show him around. He declined, saying he was off to Warrington to catch a Deltic coming by. (Don't blame me, I'm, only repeating what he said).

Sunday: it was Peak Rail plc AGM day at the unusual time of 11.30 at the Whitworth, so I didn't do much before setting off up the hill, accompanied by plc Director Gordon Bennet who happened to be walking by at the same time. I have, in the years leading up to the pandemic, attended some pretty uncomfortable AGMs with a certain MD. declaring I had a vendetta against her and feeling like the loner not towing the party line, viz that the Board could no no wrong and that it had a robust defence to anyone who threatened to take the Company to court. (You will recall that Andrew and I were compelled to take the Company to court and to the MD's shock, we won. The Company changed solicitors.) Off the record plenty of shareholders would agree with us and pass on information that they had learned that management didn't want becoming public but they wouldn't put their heads above the parapet.

Now there is a very different Board facing the shareholders and the atmosphere was dramatically different - for the better. But many of those sources still pass info over and we had been warned that Mr Paul Tomlinson, who had resigned from both the plc and Association Boards earlier in the year, was out for revenge and was going to ask embarassing questions at the AGM. It sounded like it might be worth taking pop-corn! In the event, it was something of a damp squib. Mr Tomlinson sat at the back and held two proxies representing a thousand shares, scarcely a significant block. The new Directors co-opted on to the Board after Mrs Statham's death (Gordon Caro, Mark Sealey, Andrew Civil and Roger Hallatt - Roger was of course a former joint MD but was driven to resign and swore he'd never go back while she was still there) were voted formally on and prompted Mr Tomlinson's one and only intervention. He, he declared, had only agreed to make Andrew Civil a Director for three months at the request of Pete Waterman, and didn't they consider that he had a conflict of interest in being there? This had two interesting elements, one that he referred to Waterman as 'Pete' rather than the 'Dr' soubriquet used in the company documentation - was it an affectation of superior friendship? - and secondly that Mr Tomlinson had been compelled to resign allegedly after it was revealed he was acting in a role conflicting with that of his being a director. I presume he was trying to oust one of those he saw as ganging up against him on the same grounds. The 'conflict' is of course that Andrew Civil is a Trustee of the Waterman trust, and that trust has a charge against the company's assets; but Waterman himself is also company president, has locos on the railway, so has as much or more to lose if the railway failed than Mr Tomlinson, who was finally recorded as having made a loan to the company of some £13,000 which had been repaid. The Board all jumped in to disagree with Mr Tominson, and the company secretary, quite rightly, pointed out that Directors are not appointed on fixed terms - once 'on' they are there until they resign, or are voted out by shareholders. Before AoB it was made clear that no votes would be taken and although one member stood up and said we should recognise the work the late MD had done in 'keeping the railway going', like the PRA AGM earlier in the year no minute's silence, nor memorial vote was put forward (though a record was made in the Minutes) and Mr Tomlinson received no vote of thanks for his past efforts. He left immediately after the meeting. For myself, I voted along with the majority of those present - the new Board deserves the support to demonstrate whether it can take the railway forward.

Back at the shed, I was joined by one shareholder who had not been down for quite a while and after tea (and a belated lunch) I took him round to show developments. He was sad to be told the 2HAP was departing - he said its arrival had caused more annoyance to the late MD than we had previously known - and as a member of the p-way department was delighted to learn that the HaTRAMM was operational. I had barely said goobdbye to him than two passing enthusiasts looked in and they received a similar tour. All in all the majority of the day had gone by and my progress had not matched some of the others on site, Andrew, Matt, Tony and Jagger being present. The window aperture on the Hudswell had been enlarged and the last fixed window was in place, a bulkhead light for the cab interior roof had had its bulb holder replaced and was now securely fixed ready and holes drilled for me to add p-clips and trunking. I could at least sort that out ready for one of the last few wires.

And that about brings you up to date. This week is as yet largely clear - another 10 HXAs need taking to Sims to fulfill the contract which we aim to complete by Thursday, and Andrew hopes to take a day off now that his commitment to overseeing his main line fleet during 'Operation London Bridge' has wound down. I hope to be back next week, with or without wheelchair and blanket. See ya then.