Of things that should but haven't

9th October 2022

How can you plan when others let you down?

Gonna have to be a quick one tonight as I must be up at silly o'clock in the morning. Oh, but I left you on tenterhooks didn't I? Had I copped for the Covid that had beset both Steph and Andrew? And I think the answer may well have been yes-ish. Monday/Tuesday I felt a bit rough, and Steph forecast that I would be really suffering the next day, but aside from a couple of migraines and stomach cramps, which may well not have been related to Covid but circumstances outside, that was it, I felt about as well as I ever do. Rightly or wrongly I didn't get myself tested, but did stay out of the way of people for a few days as we lived out of the freezer. As I said before, asthmatics were statistically 'under-represented' in hospital admissions during the pandemic and my own suspicion is that my (our?) lung capacities tend to be much less than 'normal' people, so we don't breathe in as much 'viral load' and our immune systems have a better chance of coping.

Anyway, you will recall that I had been promised a delivery 'Friday or Monday' and it hadn't come on Friday so I was looking forward to Monday. But it didn't come on Monday either, nor Tuesday, so on Wednesday I chased them up. It was a different person on the phone line (I said Stoke last week but it was actually Telford) who started the same spiel about the C groove pulley not being in stock so I stopped him mid-flow. I pointed out that we'd gone through all this and it had been changed to a bigger pulley they did have in stock. It seems though that although my order was 're-entered' with the additional pulley for the hydraulic pump, in an oversight the re-entered order carried forward the same size C pulley as before and strange to say, it still wasn't in stock. Also my pump pulley was at 'another branch' he said and hadn't arrived there for despatch - yet. We sorted out the C pulley and I wondered whether it hadn't arrived from the other branch because there too, the computer said stock but the shelf said not.

On Thursday a package arrived - the C pulley - direct from Dunlop. I knew this as it had no paperwork but the carriers' label included the sender. By the end of the day my new drawing to machine it into a jockey pulley was complete.

At the beginning of the week I ordered up the neccessary clamps for the exhaust system and some new bobbins to raise the front of the silencer, and on Thursday ordered up some last few bits for the coolant and fuel systems. The idea was to have a bumper bundle of little tasks ticked off over the weekend that would bring the whole job nearer completion. In the event on Friday I deemed it safe enough to go to Ashbourne and collect the clamps, and stop by at the machinists to drop off the C pulley and its drawing and see if they'd got anywhere with the flange for the radiator fan on the Alstom loco. The latter visit was rather depressing: no, they hadn't started and yes, they had loads of outstanding work and no, they couldn't tell me when they'd get around to it.

The bits I ordered on Thursday, should, as per their on-line sales system, have been despatched Friday and delivered Saturday which I thought a little surprising but you believe what on-line sales systems tell you, don't you? It's not like they're programmed to lie. By Friday night the weekend  was already teetering on anti-climax.. The bobbins hadn't arrived, nor had the pump pulley (and with it the two belts for the Hudswell's alternator which had seemed logical to tag on the order to save carriage). So I went to the shed Saturday morning fearing that Matt and I would have rather less to go at, but at least those hoses and such would arrive during the day. But then I had a text fom Matt to say he wasn't going to make it...

To cap it all, Andrew had been scheduled to take grandson back to his mother's Saturday evening so would need to rest a while Saturday afternoon before a late night drive, but then mid-morning that got rescheduled to Monday by grandson's mother so at least he could get to the shed for a while to keep me company. He moved on to D1120, welding in the dummy brackets and remaining pipe clamps.

The tail end of the Hudswell's exhaust pipe, where it curls up and out to the cab roof, was easily clamped together. The exhaust 'cowl' cover has a large hole in the front that had been covered at the back with a gauze, heavily infilled with paint. Originally Hudswells used this hole to house the front headlamp, but the casing will have cast a large shadow so they moved the lamp to the casing front and instead mounted the air horn peeping out the cowl. This Hudswell didn't have that either (to me it was too close to the exhaust pipe amyway) and as the gauze was damaged and unsightly I removed it, but keep looking at the hole and wondering what I could put in its place - a cuckoo or maybe a squirrel peeping out?  Either way, it is an enormous exhaust cowl to contain one vertical pipe and on another occasion I might have been tempted to give it a make-over.

Andrew assisted me in refitting the fan drive assembly after which I re-fitted the fan. Giving it a spin now does gives an impressive on-going movement which slows down only very slowly.

When I got back Saturday night it was to find, not the promised delivery but an e-mail announcing that the order had been despatched that day, with a triumphal fanafare as though it was an achievement to be proud of rather than 24 hours behind shedule. Not only that, this was timed at 07.41, but the tracking number, when interrogated, revealed the message that the supplier had merely 'informed the Royal Mail that they had a package to go' some six and a half hours later. I'm not impressed, and without those and the bobbins, and still no sign of pump pulley or belts, this has been a growing catalogue of disappointments. Even Amazon's delivery of rabbit food was late - or was it delivered to another house in the street again? - and the rabbit was nearly having to make a menu choice from the freezer contents also.

Sunday: Matt got there just ahead of me. Andrew had said we must be down for 09.00 as we had visitors due at 09.30 but as he was only just out of bed at 09.15 this was not going to happen. We were all down by twenty to ten though and as the visitors had gone to Rowsley by mistake it bought us a little time. Hunslet Louise was started up to pull the train back so we could bring the forklift out and extract 3 from Buffer Towers to go into their van, after which they tore off back to Ruddington, and our side of the yard was back to normal before the first service train headed south. Matt and I cracked on with the exhaust system on the Hudswell, adjusting the pipe butting up to the turbo and building the graceful sweep up to the silencer.

As a temporary measure this was packed up by 10mm on its bobbins (you can see one packer sticking out in the photo above) to get a better alignment but will have to be undone and lifted to change them when their replacements  arrive.There is a  short length of flex pipe between the bends and the silencer, Ideally it should be longer to allow for engine movement but as the silencer is itself flexibly-mounted on its bobbins (and the tail ppe supported from it) this shouldn't be an issue. The exhaust cowl, which had only been laid in position yesterday, was duly secured and then the two intermediate casing pieces reinstated which enabled the two side handrails to go into place after cleaning the 3/4 Whit threads from exposure to rain and the elements for several years.

I had some other miscellaneous tasks which included getting stuff into the van ready for this early start Monday, and cutting some packer pieces ready for lifting D1120's exhauster by 6mm. Meanwhile Andrew spent most of his available time outside, recovering parts from Fowler 4220015. So that's about it. Sorry but if you're reading this on Monday I hope to be in Scotland on a day-trip. Yep another 500 mile day. Tell you more (and on when things finally arrive) next week. See ya then.