Of shunts and pigeons

23rd April 2023

The excitement of last week's gala operation is well behind and its back to the normal diet of loco moves and repairs. Haven't got around to bringing the locos back from Rowsley yet: who knows what may happen.

As I was saying, it was an early start last Monday but a relatively easy one for me to Whaley Bridge, rather less so for Adam, who had, despite my earlier warning, come up with the 8 x 4 and arrived in W-B from the A6 down past the canal basin where the CH&PR once terminated. I had however arrived from the Chapel en le Frith direction, which involved a low (14ft3) bridge. Access to the yard where the loco awaited us involved turning off this road then a sharp right turn along a relatively narrow road serving houses, past a nursing home and then a nasty little twist into a lane only a little wider than the trailer. The houses along the way had been mailshotted to the effect that a low loader would be coming in Monday morning and it would be appreciated if they could keep their cars clear, and for the most part they did, although a Fiat 500 parked on a corner just before the nursing home either didn't get the message or didn't realise just how much their little car did effectively reduce the overall width.

But before we could get that far we had to get together and Adam having had his route proscribed by software based on its postcode was quite close but at the other way, which was impossible to use. Trouble is, what he described to me over the phone didn't tally with what I remembered from a couple of weeks before, but eventually it became apparent where he was, and after I'd assured him he didn't have to traverse the 14ft 3 bridge, he arrived where I was waiting and brought the trailer onto site. This rather inauspicious start was then compounded when he saw just where he had to get in (and why I had suggested the 6x2 rather than the 8x4). It would have been easy to say - sorry, c**k up, we'll come back tomorrow - but it would have mucked too many people around so instead we set about winching the loco out of its shed and out of the flangeways, turnng it 45 degrees, moving it a few yards forward, then turning it another 80 degrees until it was roughly in line with the trailer, building a ramp and winching it on.

All this took of course, rather longer than the one and a half hours I usually allow or the two I had expected on this occasion: it was about 1 o'clock by the time we were ready to depart, or about three and a half hours. But that wasn't the end of it, there wasn't room to turn and so we must reverse all the way past the nursing home and the houses, out on to a busier road by the bridge from whence we could set off forwards, and all this took around 30 minutes.

Since Adam's route involved the M60 (Manchester outer ring) and there is an abnormal load ban after 3.30 he was anxious to get going, and thus, the first locomotive to travel under the newly refurbished railway bridge in Whaley Bridge passed by. I took my time, walking back to get the van, exchanging pleasantries with locals who'd watched it pass by, etc before setting off in pursuit. Ah yes, but I haven't told you what it is. It's a Barclay 0-4-0ST, built for what is now the Tanfield Raiiway, but its latterday owner/restorer had moved away and brought the loco down with him a decade ago. Now it was ready for return.

Originally our plan would have seen us at Tanfield by about 4pm, but that was now out of the question, especially as the overheads on the M62 were warning us that the A1M was closed north of Darlington. By the time I got towards Scotch Corner I had just managed to overtake them, but the warnings were still for a 45 minute delay and Adam needed to stop for a 45 minute break anyway. I didn't but took the A167 to skirt past Durham, and eventually rolled in to Tanfield East station at about 6.15. To my surprise, a ring of about a dozen Tanfield members were waiting patiently, and a Ruston 165DE and a barrier wagon waited nearby.

I checked with Adam who gave me an ETA of 7pm and almost to the minute the wagon arrived and I directed them to swing round and straight over the unloading track. We split the tractor and trailer and started to assemble the ramp, whereupon we were mobbed by Tanfield members who proceeded to copy all we did and the ramp was down in double-quick time. While we could have winched it down, as we were tired we accepted the barriered unloading and the Barclay was on 'home' rails less than 30 minutes after arrival and the Tanfield crew were just as enthusiastic putting the ramp back as putting it down.

Adam and Ian opted to stay there the night as Adam had little enough time left. I set off for my daughter's in Darlington and got home around midnight. Tuesday, and on their way south it was arranged that they'd drop into Barrow Hill and pick up a loco bound for Cardiff on Wednesday rather than come up for it the next morning. So I met them and assisted loading before returning home.

Wednesday and Adam had said that he'd aim to be at Cardiff between 5 and 5.30 pm and so I set off at half twelve determined to have a pleasant journey without fretting if there were any delays en route. There were hardly any and by 4.40 I was at a Tesco in Cardiff pondering how to pass the time. When I did touch base with Adam he was still at Monmouth and finally arrived just before 6. We drove onto the works in convoy and I started by deploying my cones again at front and rear. No Polish lorry drivers again but we did get one of their security staff asking why the road was blocked and my casual explaining the 'Health & Safety requirement' to create a 'safe working area' for unloading purposes seemed to floor him. Anyway, the loco was unloaded and towed away by another, we packed up, reopened the road amd set off back, once again it was a midnight arrival home.

Thursday was quiet by comparison, but late afternoon Andrew and I popped in to Rowsley as where we had left the 03 and RS8 after last weekend had blocked in E1 so we moved them to free it up. We'll probably bring RS8 back shortly but after its success at the gala, and as we don't have any immediate plans to pull it back apart and 'permanent-ise' current power unit installation, the 03 is likely to be rostered for another Saturday turn with 3 or 4 carriages solo. Watch this space or the Peak Rail website.

Friday: two locos today. Firstly down to Long Marston for nine o'clock to collect a two axle Vanguard. They brought this loco around to us very slowly and when we came to winch it I suddenly felt that the winch was making hard work of what should be an easy, 35ton roller bearinged loco. Just that it was one with the brakes hard on. This is a personal bugbear of mine. If you are parking loco at the day's end, DO NOT apply the airbrakes to full emergency, then wind the handbrake up as tight as you can and walk away. Why? Well for starters it doesn't need that amount of brake force to hold a loco stationary, or if you are parking on a slope that steep you should find somewhere else to stable it. Secondly, the handbrake linkage will have been designed around the force the average man can apply through the handwheel, this is much less than the air cylinders and so as the air leaks off the linkage comes under much greater stress than it was ever intended for. Thirdly, and quite possibly crucially, if you can't start the engine for some reason, or can't blow the air back up, just how do you expect to get the brake off again? When we bought what we called Beverley from the Shropshire collection, that had its brakes locked on and it was slid up the Allelys ramp to their low loader. Here by moving slowly the wheels had gone round but with tremendous drag.

The irony of this was both the loco we were collecting and the loco propelling it around to us had the TH tandem system (much of which hailed from Westinghouse) and included a straight air brake pipe connection and a twin pipe air brake system, so one way or another they could have put the air in to the loco and released the brake, but by the time I realised their loco had gone and it took Adam, me and a 3ft bar 15 minutes to force the handbrake off. Given that the first stage of the handbrake linkage is a 1/2inch pitch roller chain which was being somewhat overloaded, had this snapped we would have been stuffed. As it was we got it aboard, and half an hour or so later than I'd planned, we set off for Shackerstone.

At Shackerstone the Vanguard was discharged and exchanged for yet another 08, with a in hole in a coolant pipe that squirted coolant over ther deck of my trailer. Adam and Ian headed back to the yard where it has weekended before heading on to its new owner tomorrow.

Saturday. With the pressure of getting the 03 ready behind us, it was a return to more mundane activities and in particular two of the outstanding commercial jobs of mine. The Hudswell 0-4-0DH which you have read much of had yet to move under its own power, indeed I had begun to realise that the subroutine that engaged the clutch and direction didn't seem to be doing anything at all. I did wonder whether or not I had put in the line to 'call' the subroutine but on checking found that I had, but had put a condition in before it. Nowhere in the manual does it say not to do this, nor does it come up as an error or a warning within the compilation software, but when I removed said condition suddenly it started working. Andrew had adjusted the engine idling speed, I pressed the button for one direction and the opposite direction lamp came on as the gears went home. Well, this being a Hudswell own gearbox rather than the RF11 I had guessed which cylinder was forward and which reverse and the valves had ended up the wrong way round, five minutes with a spanner swapping pipes over and the loco moved correctly to and fro. I continued to test various sub-routines, stop and re-program amendments and try again. Hudswell gearboxes are bad at reversing when cold - they tend to go tooth-on-tooth and ratchet when you try to get the clutch in. This one hadn't operated for several years and took a while to remember what it was supposed to do

In addition, I had introduced a dump valve into the torque converter system so that when the clutch is 'out' the base pressure is dumped back to tank. Then when the clutch comes back 'in' it does so without the severe clunk as the converter isn't as 'active'. It seems to be working but as I tidied up some program lines and tried again the reversal was so swift that the pressure didn't have time to dissipate. I'll develop this when we get back to the 03.. Andrew, aided by Andy M meanwhile, having shunted things out the way, had brought the Hunslet 0-6-0DH Louise down for a dose of diesel, then shunted the locos off 3B and with it brought out the Janus with a view to running. That didn't get so far thanks to the discovery of a leak on one end which had drained a lot of coolant.

Late in the afternoon I went over and drew the token, not that we were going for a jolly but rather that we had a big shunt planned and the yard headshunt wasn't long enough. Louise is with us in part because the Elsecar railway changed its torque converter to that from Yorkshire 2895. Louise though has a C8 engine with a horsepower around 325, the Yorkshire a C6 engine of about 233. Louise's converter is the 11500 series Twin Disc, which means the impeller is 11.5 inches broad. The Yorkshire's is a 10,000, and, yes, you've guseed it, its impeller is 10 inches. The two converters are physically interchangeable, but internally are very different. We could see something was wrong when we watched it shunting at Elsecar (though to be fair we had already seen Louise's converter 'on the floor') and experience at Darley Dale backs this up. Revving up to 1200rpm does give a tolerable performance, but above that makes almost no difference and in all probability the converter is so overwhelmed that it is converting it to heat (in extreme cases it can cause blading to work loose) - shunting 7 locos through the reverse turnouts and slight gradient required gentle throttle and patience.

In addition one of those being moved was none other than the NB 0-6-0 which we used to refer to as our 0-5-0 as we were ordered to move it down from Rowsley despite the leading left axlebox being stuck in the hornguide such that the tread was a half-inch above the rails. it derailed in Rowsley yard when moved and nearly derailed again within Darley yard, but it seems that in the time it has waited at Darley the axlebox has dropped and all 6 are again in contact. Either way it is now 5th in line on track 2 rather than first.

Another distraction for Saturday was the appearance of a pigeon which flew in and couldn't seem to find its way out. It did not like us waving flags at it (though the saying 'Like a red flag to a pigeon' doesn't have quite same impact as the original) and kept trying to flutter its way through the skylights. Eventually we gave up trying to steer it out through the large, open roller shutters and it found its own way out later on.

Sunday and it was a repeat (without the pigeon). FirstIy I returned the token to the blockman (without it Peak Rail couldn't run trains). Andy M drained the coolant and rejointed the offending flange on the Janus while I had another go with programming mods. By now the Hudswell was moving up and down though the engine is rather smoky. Indeed, the odometer has notched up its first mile and some of my snag list has been crossed off. The Janus was now started up and tested on each end in turn. We had set the resistor values back to the 'official' ones in the manual but initially we got no traction at all but traced a wiring error and soon had the loco moving up and down, though its performance leaves a lot to be desired with No.2 end working harder than No.1 but neither matching what a Janus should do.

Next it's the tedious task of adjusting resistor values to get the performance and the engines to share the load equally, with maybe a test run on the main line for good measure. But for now that's about it. Early start again tomorrow to see that 08 in to its new home, then another 3 locos during the week - all 08s (yuk). So until next week, same time, same website, I'll be off. See ya then.