Of coals hopper to Newcastle

23rd June 2024

Or Brine to Seaham.

It is perhaps fortunate that I didn't have a lot of work planned for last week, for my collaborators not only had a tractor unit down but a second driver who was due to start with them was a 'no-show' and so Jeff was running around doing the other work they were already committed to as well as mine. I began to realise this when he rang me at 09.30 Monday morning to let me know he was just 'tipped' (Unloaded) in Nottingham and was about to head back to base to pick up my trailer and join me at Rocks by Rail. Previously I had expected him at 11.00: the revised schedule was 1pm.

I was at that point barely 30 minutes away from R by R so wasn't best pleased. I was told when I started transport work that I didn't have to be the cheapest, many customers would much rather I was reliable, and turned up when I said I would. It had become something of a badge of honour and I can remember occasions when I had arrived on site, assured the customer that the low loader would be here for 10.00 (or whatever) and it had rolled up almost to the minute. But at least if I am there, not at the other end of a phone with a long list of progressively more unbelievable excuses to work through, it reassures the customer when the odd snag occurs.

This was one such occasion and I passed the time with another engineer at R by R helping to identify certain air valves on two other locos and what was missing from around them. Finally Jeff arrived and we set to to load Yorkshire 0-6-0DE 1382.

This may look familiar to regular readers, indeed it spent some time at Darley Dale under the auspices of another group and if memory serves, its departure to Cottesmore was one of the last jobs undertaken on Andrew's original low load trailer. By half two it was aboard and after topping up the coolant on the DAF, we set off for Quainton Road.

I had the bright idea of cutting across country but didn't have a map with me and shunning satnav, had to keep stopping to memorise the next bit of the journey from my phone, although it did seem as though the roads weren't quite the same as the screen showed. Nevetheless I was at Q Road by about half four ahead of both the locomotive's new owners and the loco itself. By the time Jeff got there he was in the last few minutes of his legal driving time for the day so after unloading him he parked up just outside so as to make an early start.

I got home for about 10pm. Tuesday morning I was down at the shed so that another trailer fitter could inspect and quote for the work on T2. He too was keen to carry out the work like the one that came in last weekend, in contrast to two earlier parties that had been reluctant to take it on. After that I had paperwork and the usual incidentals through to Wednesday, the latter included a trip in to Chesterfield for a supplier. Thursday I was expecting to be at Butterley first thing but after Monday's delays I waited until Wednesday afternoon to check with Jeff as to what he had on his jobs list and sure enough it was going to be late afternoon before he would get there. Once again I got there well in advance to assure whomever that we were coming and that big HAA was going to depart from outside their shed. In the end, with the evening rush hour starting early so that everyone could get home to watch England play somebody at -er- Football, Jeff rolled up at about quarter to six and by 7pm we were loaded and backing out of the site.

The guys at Chasewater had also promised to stay on, and we got there a bit after 8pm. Usually we face west on the loading area but as the wagon we were due to exchange was in the yard just beyond a turnout, we backed around to face east, discharged the HAA to the mercy of a loco on one track, whereupon the loco on the adjacent track presented us with a smaller hopper.

This was painted up in NCB Seaham colours, and there was a small logo of 3 chain links enclosing the letters BRNE and NCB, celebrating BR's North Eastern region working in partnership with the coal board. As you glance at things your brain creates bits in order to make sense, and in this case I read the first link as Brine and for a moment the 'SEAHAM' became 'SEAWATER' but it was turning into a long day. The wagon was aboard and Jeff was away just after 9pm, leaving me to arrive home at 11.

At quarter to seven Friday morning I was on the road and heading north to Newcastle. The new van has cruise control and I spent much of the trip up the A1 practicing operating it. The hopper was due to be delivered to the Stephenson Railway Museum and I was able to get straight to it via the Tyne Tunnel, though Jeff had to circumnavigate around. Thus I had time to enjoy a tea and swap stories with a volunteer, and recall my one and only previous visit when I came to inspect an old diesel-mechnical rail crane on behalf of a potential purchaser. That had been about 15 years before and the sale hadn't proceeded, so the crane is still there. Anyway Jeff arrived and we unloaded and cleared away in just over an hour.

I couldn't resist a photo of their weather stone:

On my way home I called at my daughters' on Darlington, and then Andrew rang to ask if I could pick up a couple of filters, as Bagnall the Barclay was suffering and it sounded like blocked filters.

Saturday I was down to the shed before 10.00 as Andrew hoped to be across 'early'. Target for the day was to progress T2 and get it ready for whosoever is chosen to carry out the repairs. As I hinted last week thne refurbished motor and new pump set that I had trialled on T1 (and had to swap it back and get the motor seen to) was now going on to T2 and I had received a second new pump during the week which I now attached to a second refurb motor ready to fit back on T1 (when Andrew makes me up the bracket). Anyway I went through the assembly sequence that I had on T1, dropping the motor in as best as it will go, measuring as near as I can, marking it out underneath and drilling up with a pilot hole to see if I come out in the right place - the antipathy of a Tunnel Boriong machine I suppose.

With a small extra drainage hole (!) the pump was mounted and piped up, leaving just the electrics to complete. King used a starter motor contactor (the pump motor is about the same physical size) but the previous owner had substituted a heavy duty relay but not, to my mind, suited for the current and inductive load of a big motor. Oddly enough Saturday morning had seen the delivery of a qood quality 24v starter contactor that I had bought off an ebay seller so that may well get used.

I looked at doing the same conversion on T2 as I had on T1, namely split the operation of the locking cylinders and king pin on to separate valves, but when I came to look at it closely it was piped in much smaller bore than T1 and Andrew, back from Rowsley after changing the fuel ilters, reported that when he had operated it (on its arrival here) it had been much slower to function than T1 which might explain it. Further examination also revealed that the control valve (which ought to be a 5/2) appears to have been replaced with a 3/2 labelled 'pull to shunt' - or in other words, changed for a non-suitable valve that was to hand. It will be re-piped and valved before it goes into traffic.(Actually I haven't quite workeout how it operates at all at the moment!). Andrew was concentrating on clearing all the pallisade fence pailings, concrete lumps, etc off the trailer so that it is almost ready to go away for repair.

Sunday and after a morning carrying out some prep work, I headed down to the shed to resume work on Alstom's loco without any distractions. During the week I'd figuered that the deadmans messages needed moving higher up the stack so I had rewritten the screen pages and the PLC software saying where to access them, and added a condition on the vigilance software that prevented it detecting motion until the speedo tacho module had powered up and started working. This silenced a annoying alarm that bleeped as soon as I turned the power on but stopped before I could get up into the cab and identify it. I also tried turning lights on and discovered that yes, the alarm did sound when the lights came on, but also when they went off, although there was no connection. More annoyingly the message lines didn't resolve themselves straight away and indeed some of the messages correctly displaying before now didn't show. I had another speedo tacho module which I had decided to substitute and send the old one back for a fresh PIC chip to see if it cured that delay problem but when I put this in place all sorts of things happened. Although the loco was standing still I could see the standstill input on the PLC going off and coming on again at random intervals, so I reverted back to the original module. Clearly the later firmware was more sensitive (I had already concluded that the light switches were putting a spike on the system that the card misunderstood).

I went through the program that controls which message was displayed by the screen when and found one line that purported to show screen number 98 but as I hadn't got any text logged on that screen it would have been blank, so I deleted it and re-loaded the program yet again. Up to now I had been working with the engine at idle as the throttle system hadn't worked and was on my snag list. I thought I might as well snag it now and found that I had omitted to connect a return wire from the actuator to battery neg. Duh! I fired the loco up and to my satisfaction, after the engine had had its obligatory 5 seconds of warm up it accelerated automatically up to about 1200 rpm to build the air up, then throttled back and after I had taken control I was able to drive the throttle manually.

But my euphoria was very short lived as meanwhile the vigilance system had been triggered by the standstill input going off and the speedo needle moved up the scale. Opening the throttle manually and the needle went full scale (40mph) falling back to half way as the throttle increased. Still, taking my foot off the vigilance pedals proved that the messages were working as they should, though my forward/reverse control routine needs a bit of further reinforcement as I was able to change direction on the gearbox even though the PLC was being told we were moving (at 40mph). Given that this is some electrical noise at a fairly high frequency rather than genuine motion, this is not unduly concerning, but a few extra checks in the program lines to prevent glitches being treated as fact should be incorporated without too much difficulty. In the meantime half an hour on the phone with my electronics consultant has given me a number of things to try and see what is effective.

So that is about it for this week. A meeting about insurance tomorrow morning, followed by a run out with the van, crack on with Alstom's loco and get on with T2's contactor for later in the week sounds like my forecast. I wonder what Roly's weather stone has in mind?. Until next week - See ya then.