Of getting back to business

1st January 2023

A new year and good intentions.

As you will have gathered by last week's mini-post, things were not running altogether smoothly at the Bridddon Country Pile. My plans to put extra time in at the shed went for a burton as all I did instead was binge-watch the tv since I did not feel like doing anything remotely physical.. A social meet-up with our daughter and son-in-law was something I should have skipped: as it was Andrew drove me back early, and it was as much as I could do to get in to bed. That night it was physically tiring just to breathe and making it to the loo was as much as I could do to move. I finally got up on Saturday evening (by which time getting downstairs was my limit) and Sunday - Christmas Day - I was at least up but not up to much. Monday and Tuesday this week showed little progress: but by about Thursday I felt up to spending a couple of hours at the shed.

We had already had several goes at cranking the EE Stephenson loco and knew that the exhauster was functioning, but the batteries fitted to the loco seemed unable to sustain cranking to get it going. By the time we got the first smoke, the cranking speed was tailing off (not that it had been all that lively to begin with).. Not only that the batteries, by Yuasa, had unusual terminations, with a 8mm screw doing down vertically into a terminal post that barely came above the battery top, as opposed to the big round posts that we are used to. It was of course Andrew who went on to Yuasa's website and found that they still make this battery, and it is intended for forklift trucks and golf buggies, and doesn't have the cold cranking characteristic required for starting a big diesel engine. That explains the terminations, which would carry jumper plates to the adjacent cells.

Andrew and I pulled the Yuasa batteries in their wooden cases off the loco and slid in their places two chunky 'proper' batteries that virtually filled the space. The existing cables had the old type lugs thatare cast brass and form a flat plate in line with the cable and with two holes for bolting to a  particular lug that clamps around the battery terminal. You don't see that type much (or at all) nowadays but fortunately I had a set of those old battery lugs,  otherwise I'd have spent quite some time cutting off the ends of all the cables and crimping new lugs on. As it was my last expedition before becoming ill had been to purchase some new battery terminals, so we're well stocked with them for now.

On Friday a cheque arrived in the mail. This was a long-awaited event, partly as very few customers pay by cheque nowadays, but mainly because they had assured me (and I believe them) that they had posted it about the 13th, and here it was arriving on the 30th. Darley Dale long ago lost its last bank branch (it's now the Co-op) and though I could pay it in through my local post office, I already held the post office itself responsible for the poor service that had taken this long and wanted it in to the banking sysytem that day. So leaving Andrew to do a bit down at the shed, I headed over to Woodseats in Sheffield where I knew a branch of my bank was alive and well and parking shouldn't be too hard. (There is a branch in Chesterfield but parking would have been another matter.) By the time I got down to the shed, Andrew had shunted the EE out and was filling the cooling system (plain water at this stage until we know how watertight it is). So here we were, a slight drip off the bottom rad conection to be dealt with, and seemingly all ready to burst in to life, but the Dorman wasn't having anything of it. We cranked, it smoked, but it wouldn't go. Eventually we drained the coolant back down and pushed it back in the shed with RS8.

We spent most of Saturday boosting the batteries back up as they are spaced so far apart that it becomes difficult to charge them as a 24V bank and instead must charge them as 2 x 12Vs in turn. Rain fell steadily throughout the day, so there was little incentive to drag it outside: Andrew completed manufacture and installation of his Mk1 discharge silencer for the EE's exhauster and cleaned off a damaged exhaust silencer from another loco that awaits repair. I returned to Hudswell 1387 and set about altering the air delivery point at which we have individual taps to isolate the main electropneumatic valve manifold, the sander valve or the line to the wiper motors, but didn't complete it. I must also pick up where I left off with the new cab heater, but didn't get on to that at all.

New Years Day and after some morning rain had ceased, we went back down and RS8 dragged the EE out of the shed again. This time, after a lot of cranking the engine condescended to start, littering the casing top and the running plates with carbon from the silencers. It threw up some more leaks to attend to, and we hadn't got the control air side set up correctly yet, but we were holding some 17 inches of vac at idle despite a significant leak on the rear vac hose.

With that success we had a celebratory cuppa and attended to the bottom rad hose leak (we had tightened the jubilee clips up but it had mode no difference) this time having drained it all again we put in a new length of hose with Tee clamps. Jubilee or worm drive clamps are common but actually do not apply an even clamping force, a Tee clamp, as you've seen us fit before, is more even and preferred in many applications. The only snag is that unlike worm drive clips, the tee clamp is limited in its size range with typically only 5 or 6mm between its minimum and maximum diameters. We just end up making sure we have a few of most sizes to hand.

Later in the afternoon I returned to 1387: I had tried to find an adaptor to suit the air inlet port on the Westinghouse sanding valve but without success: today I realised that was because it had an Enots adaptor in situ so brought the valve out of the loco and extracted the adaptor in the vice. The hex of the Enots part only just cleared the Westinghouse bits on either side such that no socket or ring spanner would fit and I resorted to tapping an open-ended spanner on (actually a 23mm) and eventually getting it to unscrew. No sooner was it back in and connected than I decided that I didn't like the arrangement I'd put in yesterday anyway, it was untidy so I've removed it all and will try to come up with something neater tomorrow.

And that is about it. If it seems a little 'light' it is because I'm still not 100%, Andrew also has some sort of bug that has him coughing every other minute so between us we barely make a fit person. Never mind, things can only get better. If nothing else the initial performance of the hydraulic vac exhauster drive encourages us to use a more sophisticated version on Yorkshire 2895 (actually It is almost tempting to put in on to the 03, but I haven't mentioned that thought to Andrew). Anyway, now it is 2023. I only say that to try and get used to the idea of writing -3 rather than -2. So far it looks much the same as last year. But we shall see, starting with next Sunday when another edition will be compiled. See ya then.