Of inauspicious beginnings 

11th February 2024

But they say things can only get better...

I'm still suffering a bit from 3 weeks continuous low loader work but this week started off reasonably quietly and I managed to get a whole day in without interruption on paperwork and such, though I still didn't feel that I'd got ahead of things. By late on Monday though my mind was moving towards the 'presentation' that I was to make in Derby on Tuesday night and I finished part two of the show and printed paper copies so that I could, at a pinch, follow the sequence and know which slide was due next. On Tuesday therefore I decided to concentrate on the 'show' and first stage of that was to set up the hardware and prove it all worked. My little laptop was probably struggling a bit with the file sizes, but it ran through them so I set up the projector and coupled them together. Now, I acquired this projector secondhand some time before Covid and the software within it at the time was telling me the bulb was u/s (they have a limited service life) so I bought a new one. It's a long time ago now but I doubt if I would ever have installed and not tested it, so it is a reasonable bet that it functioned and then was put up on a shelf in my office to await a call to talk about 'my life with locos' or 'RS8 and my part in its resurrection' or some such. And here I was a few hours away from the enigmatically entitled 'Down in Darkest Darley Dale' and the red light on the projector flashed at me and the instruction book assured me that meant - bulb failure.

Now I'm not saying that Darley Dale is some sort of backwater but there isn't anywhere here, or in Matlock, that I'm likely to get a spare bulb of this type. Indeed even Amazon wouldn't promise one in less than 3 days (from Bulgaria or Latvia or somewhere) so I began to panic. I could hardly deliver my talk with the audience crowding around the 8 inch screen of my little laptop. I made some phone calls, and Dave Lathrope, he of Station Master Darley Dale fame, suggested someone that he and Steph both knew who kindly leant me her husband's (!) projector which I set up back at home and worked correctly. Most of the day had gone by through this but after an early tea I set off for Rail Group Alexander in Derby. The pub was easy to find, as was the venue inside, where they had a laptop and projector and screen already set up. All the gear I had brought was not required (though I did plug my USB mouse in as I don't get on with those touch pads), all that was a needed was the memory stick.

I can't say it was a large audience - a combination of the weather and possibly the enigmatic title kept them away (or maybe they deciphered the enigmatic title and thought it wasn't for them) - but from my point of view the show ran OK - Part 1 a few minutes over time, Part 2 a few minutes under. Curiously one page that displayed OK on my laptop 'lost' a picture with their bigger, better more prestigious laptop (it displayed 4 and left a big white space in the top row). With so few present I felt bad taking a few quid for expenses off their Treasurer but then some people will put a tenner in the Donations tin at the shed just for me showing them round and telling them what each loco is. As a footnote to all this I found someone offering an 'opened but unused' bulb on ebay so that should be on its way to me shortly and I'll ascertain that the projector definitely works. Maybe I should set up a display for a forthcoming enthusiast group visit to keep the projector in working order...

Wednesday was the last chance I had to change the method of holding the Lister power pack on the neck of T1, (the girder clamp idea having proved an inauspicious failure) so in the morning I was up there (plus changing the rear marker light that Phil killed) and in the afternoon I was out and about calling on 3 suppliers. It was arranged that the departing loco would be loaded Thursday and delivered Friday, but as I drove back down the back lane in to Darley Dale I had a phone call from the railway to the effect that Reids, who had been due to collect two 'Thumper' carriages for scrap on Thursday, had reported they would be in fact be in Friday morning, so don't get down too early.

As it was, with snow forecast on Thursday afternoon we had opted to bring the loading forward to Thursday morning. At 8.15 I had a phone call to say they were at the trailer (there was a king pin lock on so they couldn't couple up) but as we'd said half eight and I still needed to get a couple of things from the shed (like the battery for the donkey engine) I couldn't get straight there. But by nine a.m. they had hooked on, and turned around and I was sorting out Bagnall the Barclay to go over and get the Fowler into position for loading.

When I had driven in the loading area was clear, but twenty minutes later there was a white van parked right in the way and the Merc tractor unit looked down menacingly at it. I glanced in and there were two bone-shaped biscuits on the passenger seat so I surmised that it was a dog walker. A few minutes later a man and his collie appeared from the riverbank and drove away without apology.

Unlike previous loads with Heanors, this time I was acting in a role of tutor so had to explain everything as we went along, which for a 70+ year old asthmatic put a strain on my lung capacity! Added to that it was raining, so it was waterproof jacket on, and of course, the water drained down, through my overalls and jeans below as the morning continued. By the time we had finished loading (which went quite smoothly) the rain had turned to sleet and an hour or so after I'd got home, to snow: the view out of my window was very wintry.

First thing Friday morning I set off for Blunsdon. For once I'd allowed 4 hours for a journey which actually took three-and-a quarter, though when I set off an accident had closed the M1 north and south near Lutterworth so I thought a diversion via the A42/M42 might be neccessary. But they re-opened southbound as I reached Nottingham and I sailed past a re-sculpted TKMaxx lorry and the screens on the other side. Arriving at Blunsdon I found Reids still there, though the second lorry was just re-attaching. I phoned Jeff and was told he was about 15 minutes out, and 6 minutes later he swung into the yard, enabling me to get these 'David and Goliath' type photos before the Reids vehicles convoyed away.

I hadn't really wanted us to be there at the same time (though actually I hadn't fancied the idea of them meeting us on any of the narrow roads around either) - just to avoid any incidents that might marr what I hoped would be a smoothly-executed first collaboration. With Reids disappearing away we started to reverse the trailer around to the unloading position - and the trailer steering declined to function. A short while later Jeff observed we had a leak from under the deck - one of the hoses had failed. It's coming up 5 years since I bought the trailer and this was the first time it had happened, so apart from the annoyance that this had occurred the first time I was out with the new partners, I also had a panic as to what to do. But a phone call to Pirtek (and painful call-out charge) got things sorted, at least as far as the hose - which had been chafing on a chassis member and had developed an 'ole in one side. I had enough oil in the van to keep things operational though topping up the reservoir involved using a 1/2 litre jug which took some time to achieve, we then had to bleed the system which was only partially succesful.

In part this was because the electric pump kept cutting out, and as this had happened at Bitton (where I thought it was just a loose connection) it became apparent that the motor has a built-in temperature cut out. This galvanised my thinking that firstly we should be able to use the Lister engine and pump to drive the trailer hydraulics if needed and secondly that if the motor was getting that hot that quickly, it was not in the prime of its life. Anyway much later than planned, in intermittent rain and with light fading, the Fowler was winched down on to S&C rails and drawn away by their 03. And hence why I got none of the customary 'succesfully unloaded' pictures of it. We packed up, and made our seperate ways back to the north.

Saturday: Andrew was elsewhere and with neither Andy or Matt H's for company it was a quiet afternoon at the shed. After the debacle with the hydraulic oil reservoir on DL34 I had drawn up a base for the second res and for safety cut a cardboard template to check it fitted and decide what else to add around it. CAD can be lovely but sometimes a representation of the actual bit in the real loco gives you a chance to see how things will go together. In this case I could place one of the hydraulic valves and picture the other important one and where the hoses would be routed, thus more confident of getting the real parts lasered.

Elsewhere I dug out one of the Bosch pump sets with a view to installing it on T1. The present unit is by Haldex - and it certainly isn't cheap - and scouring the net confirmed that it does indeed have built-in over-temp protection, and that the pump was a mere 2.46cc/rev. But this means nothing without knowing the motor's nominal speed, and nowhere seemed to give out that vital statistic. The Bosch motor was 6 inch diameter, the Haldex 5, but they're both 3kW machines so logically either the Haldex is far higher stressed (and hence the need for temperature protection) or running at much higher speed. Equally frustating, nowhere could I find the spec for the pump on the Bosch motor - it can only have been discontinued and neither could I find any supercessions. Still, if I was going to mount a 6 inch motor in place of a five inch, I was going to need different mountings. The Haldex was essentially a small bracket with a tee-clamp around it, but I had none that size in our stores. Then an idea flashed into my mind - Rolls used to use 6 inch starter motors and favoured a strap mount which we never liked. Was there a spare bracket around? RS8's old engine provided me one, but as it is designed to mount to a raised part of the engine block, some alteration will be required, and is under way.

Back home and having found a rotational speed for the Haldex motor I ran the figures and confirmed the performance, while the King manual revealed that plumbing the Lister power unit into the trailer hydraulics is actually quite straightforward.

Sunday: Andrew would be over later so I didn't rush down, even though I knew that trains were running as Peak Rail dipped its toes in the half-term market - something a previous management would not countenance. Moreover it was the first day in PR service of Waleswood, but when I got down the signalman told me things were running late - Waleswood was having trouble maintaining steam and thus also vacuum. It wasn't just me off to an inauspicious start! Neverthless it looked good as it steamed past, see what you think.

An enthusiast with a notebook on the footpath gladly accepted my offer to come in and look around properly. Andrew arrived and resumed work on welding pipework up for DL34, while I tackled a troublesome pipe on the forklift which had been allowing air to enter the fuel system. A test at the end revealed that the next pipe up is now leaking out, but as Andrew observed, at least it meant the lift pump was pressurising properly.

And that really is about it. No transport work booked for the next few days so apart from its obligatory 6 weekly inspection back at Heanors, it will return with various property of ours which we will need to extract, plus do my planned mods. Then there's the Davis loco to get on with, DL34, Alstom's baby (which with a temporary air manifold in place will now operate its gearbox but something else blocks me getting the clutch engaged), some customers' property to collect from repairs, drawings to finish off. parts to order... Boredom is not on my radar. But that's it for this week's edition. Until the next instalment - same time, same website - See ya then.