Of night time texting

13th August 2023

A fair amount of variety this week with new motive power on Peak Rail and some progress for those who like to see us get up to a bit of engineering.

The 60s piece last week appears to have been well received from the comments I've had. Although others seem to have taken it more seriously than I intended. I did think that having passengers dress up as mailbags would give the game away.

I've spent quite a lot of time in or about the workshops this week. Andy H was back in on Monday carrying on getting the new burglar alarm installed. It was close to complete by Tuesday night but needed that little bit longer at the end of the day, and besides, I hadn't up to that point activated the SIM card. Neither of us could make Wednesday so we settled on a return run on Thursday to wrap up the details.

In line with Adam's request to limit the transport work at present we only had the one move this week and that was Wednesday, picking up an 08 from Burton on Trent bound for Barrow Hill. Loading was achieved in about an hour and twenty minutes, but backing out and into the traffic added another 15. Nevertheless we were in to Barrow Hill in about an hour twenty and off in about an hour. So quite an easy day.

Back in the shed Thursday, the SIM card was live, some adjustments made to the PIRs to ensure they covered as much of the shed as possible and then it was down to programming. By lunch time it was all set up and running and Andy headed home, while I tried to catch up on paperwork (a never-ending process). I was out that evening and was just getting to bed at about half-past midnight when my phone received a text-message from the Shed Alarm. It didn't make any sense but I feared tbe worst and me and Andrew dashed down lest it was either a genuine trip or a false alarm that might annoy the neighbours. But the system was sat there minding its own business and we came home a few minutes later. It was all very well but we had to be down first thing as we had deliveries booked for 07.30 and 08.00. The 07.30 one was EMR with a new scrap skip but at 07.00 the driver rang to say he was just up the road and querying the address as he had been given the postcode of the Briddon Country Pile. I re-directed him and dashed down, followed by Andrew. With the crane sat in the way it was only a matter of backing him in and getting the skip off, but just as he was about to leave the second delivery arrived 35 minutes early and blocked him, but it was only a length of 50 x 30 steel bar so they were both quickly on their way and we went home to finish breakfast.

Andrew had gone through all the paperwork and discovered refrence to the system issuing status reports and that a program change could alter the interval. It had been 12 hours from when I had turned it on to when I got the message so presumably it was set for that. At first we tried turning it off but after a few minutes had second thoughts and set it to 24 hours.

Then it was back again for the next visitor, a man representing the manufacturers of the crane's SLI (Safe Load indicator) which is clearly not working correctly. He was able to tell us that the cab electronics are original (1986) but the device that tells it how far the jib is extended is not. But he hadn't seen one of these 80s vintage circuit boards for over 10 years and after doing some basic checks we agreed that he put together a quote to bring the SLI up to latest standards re-using whatever he can. By the time he left Jagger and his friend had arrived for a day on his Yorkshire 0-4-0DH so I left them to it, saying I'd come back at two-fifteen to lock up.

Peak Rail's succesful test run of Cathryn (not it seems to carry its plates but to be known as S102) had prompted a full test with 5 carriages scheduled for Friday and if satisfactory, Peak Rail would run a service on Saturday with two of its 'own' steam locomotives. I didn't have my camera on me so these are taken on my phone which had some odd focussing affects.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, about a quarter hour later than it had done on Friday, the Shed alarm sent me another update. This time though I slept through.

Andrew had had to take grandson home on Friday night so was late up Saturday. I went down though and was joined by Andy M. We had barely got over the pleasantries when a visitor arrived who had been in touch with Andrew and arranged a visit, primarily to see 14 901. But he accepted a cup of tea and listened attentively while I told him about all the other locos. Andrew arrived just as the tour finished and fired Louise up to draw the train back, while setting Andy to work cutting more hollow section pieces for tie bars and then the 50 x 30 bar cut and drilled to make two spacers for the winch to go on to T1. Over lunch I deduced the logic over the alarm reports and after changing the time interval a couple of times, got it to report every 24 hours during the daytime..

The weather was alternating with sun and rain so while Andrew operated the crane I was the one to get wet outside. First task was to put an old car trailer (which had been lifted out during the week) into the EMR skip then take the pair of them south of the shed where the trailer could go in the existing scrap skip and then the two skips swapped places. Amongst our pallisade collection were two pairs of gates that we won't need, so these were carefully laid out for photography then re-stacked on a pallet. Yorkshire 2895's casings, that had been stacked by the fence in front of the shed for the last 16 months, were forklifted around to the back and then the departing skip was brought forward to the front of the shed and with weather deteriorating, we headed back inside. There Andy had finished drilling the two spacers so we lifted the winch bracket on to the fab bench, lined the spacers up and tacked them, and spotting a break in the rain, took it around to T1, lifted it in to place to check the holes lined up before taking it back inside.

Sunday and Andy M and I made a start on T1 while we waited for Andrew. Off came the cover for the control panel and I drilled said panel for a 'new' pneumatic switch while Andy opened up the adjacent pump switch and added a pair of wires while fixing the operating knob which had worked loose. As King arranged it, a single changeover air valve made two cylinders operate at the same time. I wanted to control the two valves independently and this new switch was to achieve that by breaking into the existing pneumatics. Andrew had arrived and welded up the two spacers on the winch base and then needed to drill two holes in the spacers through the winch base so called on me to assist by being in charge of coolant control on the mag drill. Meanwhile Andy M finished the pneumatic mods and mounted the radio control unit, but as I hadn't brought any wiring notes down the final connections are still on hold.

S102 meantime was in sole charge of PR trains

After lunch it was time to re-unite the winch with its base and then take it round and fit it to T1.

The 'old' T1 winch (now on T3) has no disconnect on its drive so pulling out the winch cable is a slow motoring - actually it has a pneumatic disconnect but we've never rigged it up. The WARN winch has a mechanical one so Andrew proceeded to pull out the first 10metres or so of rope and we found a couple of defects in the rope which means it is unfit for further use. I carried on starting to mount the control valve adjacent to the winch while Andrew and Andy M used the Hatramm to put the casings back on 2895.

This is not so much a postponement of work as a tidy up of parts taking up space, but does at least restore the neat lines of this late Yorkshire design, without the 'orrible bulge put in it by Elsecar. This was one of several new designs of YE locos, shown to the press in late 1963 and possibly 'the' one used in publicity photos of the time. Had United Steels not shut YEC down, it might have been a worthy competitor to Sentinel/Thomas Hill - certainly superior to the Hunslet which appeared the following year. Given that Andrew owns the first YE diesel, an intermediate (2675) and 3 late ones (2895, 2940 and 2952) it has become something of a Yorkshire collection and it will be interesting to stand 2940 (a late 48ton 0-6-0) and 2895 (the lighter 0-6-0 version) side by side in due course.

And that is about it for the week. Apart from a visit to the dentist and an asthma clinic appointment which I set up on the same day (for economy) and then managed to arrange some transport work to overlap (but Adam said he'll manage) there is a loco chassis to bring to Rowsley and a list of miscellaneous jobs to get through. More on all of this, same time next week. See ya then.