Of early starts

23rd March 2025

It has been a busy week; not so much in miles driven - though that has been enough - but in things happening. Take Monday - in the afternoon my favourite Deutz agent arrived. We plugged in one of the ECUs but the fault light continued to show on the minilok console and he couldn't seem to establish contact with the processor. Then he remembered something from the distant past when he had to do this regularly. A change of interface cable and immediately an indicator on the laptop display went from red to green. Most of the errors that it had been displaying previously disappeared, just leaving two, both to do with throttle. But he insisted that the ECU was actually governing the engine, as it was maintaining (once started up) a steady 1200 rpm, albeit that it also spat oil out of the hole where the stop solenoid should mount and some fuel leaks on the spill pipes looked worse than when I had had it idling.

What was all too apparent was that the throttle electronics were u/s (which I already suspected) so he would have to come back and calibrate the throttle,. i.e. tell the ECU what input voltage represented idle and what voltage meant full revs, within a range of 0-5 volts. He went off with the suspect stop solenoid to see if he could locate another. Enthused by all this and the good weather I returned on Tuesday and spent some time progressing the throttle system, checking the wires to each pin in the ECU plug and mounting the 'ramp unit' which I had been playing with on the big minilok into the enclosure which the old electronics had occupied.

One slight snag, the ECU was looking for a 0-5V signal but the ramp unit doesn't have a specific 0-5V output. It has a -5V to +5V output, so I attempted to use that, with a setting on the unit that gave me a 'start' at 50% i.e. 0V. In addition the old electronics used a common neg, but the new unit has DC-DC isolation so requiring a separate return to battery. Anyway, lashed up and with meters in strategic places, I could ramp the throttle up from 0 to 5V, but ramping down... ah. It might start at 50% but that didn't mean it stopped there once started: it ramped all the way down to -5V. The only way therefore was to configure the unit to provide a 0-20mA output instead and give it a permanent load in the shape of a couple of resistors so that the voltage range should be consistent. Also I couldn't seem to get any signal from the wires linked to the throttle pedal in the cab (which might in itself have to do with why the old electronics didn't function) so for now it must operate from the up/hold/down switch I made up when first playing with the big minilok.

Back on Monday I had chased up the scrap company about collecting the skip and had been told it would either be Wednesday or Thursday and I rather hoped, when I got back to the Briddon Country Pile on Tuesday evening, that there might be an email letting me know a bit more, as I had rung my contacts and got voicemails. So just in case I set my alarm early for Wednesday and got down to the shed for 07.00 in a temperature of minus 3. The usual time they arrived was between 07.00 and 07.15, so I waited - shiverring- until 07.30 before returning and finding an email (timed at 07.20) assuring me that it would be first job Thursday.

I thawed out and then set off for a couple of suppliers, one of whom has this annoying habit, even though the order is marked 'Ring when ready for collection', of assuming by some telepathy that I will know when they have the parts finished. In the end I ring up and they act almost surprised that I was not aware of it, and when I get there can't remember where they have been put.

Thursday morning it is by comparison to Wednesday positively spring-like at 07.00. But I might as well have got a bit more shut-eye. At ten past eight my contact checked his screen and assured me that the skip lorry was passing Junction 32 on the M1 and he didn't know what had happened to delay it. From there it is 45 minutes in my van and I take back roads and have more acceleration - sure enough it was just after nine when the lorry arrived and lifted on my skip. The answer was of course was that I was not his first collection, he had been prior to my once-employer Stanley Tools at Hellaby whose scrap they collect every 3 days.

I returned home to finish my breakfast (though by now feeling like a Hobbit enjoying 'second breakfast') before returning to Sheffield and the fabricators, off-loading a large number of profiles for welding up into brake carriers. I started dealing with this family firm back when mother and father and a good friend of father's ran it. They retired and handed it over to their son and daughter and a senior employee, who are now slowly handing it over to the next generation. Makes me feel very old. On the way back I picked up some spare fuel filters for the big minilok (it is reluctant to start after it has been left for a few days and I suspect that the flow is restricted, as Bosch fuel pumps need to generate an internal pressure before they inject properly), and get the van loaded ready for the next day.

Friday was an equally early start, but by 07.45 I was at Barrow Hill. Sat awaiting us was an 08 bound for Shackerstone, and Shackerstone had been expecting me on Thursday so there had been a flurry of phone calls and arm twisting so that we could get in there on Friday (as I had always planned). A firm of building contractors were adjacent to the loading area and they seemed interested as to why I was opening the gates that close off the tracks. Jeff arrived just before eight, we lined up and took the neck off the trailer, built up the ramp and made ready to winch it aboard.

Slight snag. The 08 is sat on a wooden scotch and it won't budge. We do have a Ram pinch bar on the trailer, but the handle is cracked and when we tried to tease the loco back a bit the handle cracked all the way. So I dug the jack out of the van, set it up and jacked the axlebox until sufficient weight came off to extract the scotch. The building workers stopped and watched as one 08 crept slowly up the ramp and on to the trailer. We had just about finished chaining when the boss came out from a meeting and wished he had been around to watch it. I assured him his employees could give him a commentary!

Despite the delay it was about half-nine when Jeff hit the road, anticipating an hour and a half to Shackerstone. I'd reckoned on 2 hours and had given them an ETA between 11.30 and noon, and was waiting for Jeff at the junction when he rolled up at 11.30. Access to Shackerstone is somewhat awkward. You can only approach from the north as the road southwards has a hump over the original railway bridge, then a sharp twist and a much more pronounced hump over the canal. The other road at the junction is a minor one with passing places, so not one to meet an artic with a 48ton loco on. But if you turn right at the junction (before the bridge) you would then need to do a 180 degree to get on to the trackbed which forms the access road to Shackerstone station, so instead Jeff pulled up onto the bridge, backed down the side road until he passed the turning on to the trackbed, and then pulled forward on to it, with a 1/4 mile or so of rough road to traverse until the station environs are met.

The unloading track is curved and climbs a bit at the far end (where it is straightest) so it is a compromise in alignment, and when the loco comes off it stops once the first axle hits the Shackerstone rails as gravity is equalised. I went and found our friend who fired up another 08 - this one running as an A-1-A - and I assisted in finishing getting our arrival off and into a siding, then returning with another to head back north. This one was winched on and the unit reassembled, then Jeff had to reverse all the way as there is nowhere to turn around. I banked him out onto the side road, then at the top of the hill at the junction I saw him out to turn north, briefly scraping the underside of the trailer on the tarmac. My route from Shackerstone to Worksop is straightforward: I could probably do it in 60-70 minutes if need be but I dragged it out to get there about 4pm. Jeff rolled up at about ten to five after the combination of circuitous route and Friday afternoon traffic had taken his travelling time to 3 hours.

A couple of staff were around and as soon as we had rolled the 08 down on to their track they obligingly towed it away. Jeff headed back to base, I pointed the van to Darley Dale, getting home just about 7pm: twelve hours after setting off.

You might think that I had deserved a lie in, but no, Andrew had asked Steph and me to collect grandson from his mother's as the injury to his knee (he slipped on ice in January and tore a cartilage) gives him problems in driving long distances at present. So we were on the road by 07.45 heading for Norfolk and by the time we got back I was ready for a snooze, so nothing of railway interest took place.

And today too, I was denied a lie in as Mr Flood of Railcar fame had arranged for another of the TfL railcars to go to a group in Darlington and they had elected to be here at 09.00. And almost to time a large 4x4 and a 4 wheeled trailer backed in. The two occupants had in former lives worked for RMS so we had a chance to reminisce after they had packed driving car and trailer into the trailer. We then followed that with 'tea and tour' and they got away about 11 am.

My main target for the day was to tidy up the throttle electronics installation on the little minilok, that is to put the wiring in properly within the enclosure, mount the enclosure back on the loco and to do some other tweaks to the cabling in the battery bay. I also hoped to get underneath and trace the throttle pedal wires, but whereas the big minilok has the ability to tip the cab for better access, the little one is a cost-reduced version and doesn't have the same luxuries. And anyway, it registered in my dull brain that the driver's pedal wiring would go through relays in the Verteiler and also went up to the DIGAN, and I had little enough wiring info on this minilok. Instead I set about making a plug connection for the temporary switch unit so that the electronics could be finish wired in the enclosure. Late in the afternoon I had hoped to get that fuel filter changed on the other minilok but an extensive search failed to reveal the whereabouts of my strap wrench. I might invest in a new one anyway as the strap was getting a little frayed - like me.

So that's been my week. No transport jobs expected this week, Jeff is booked with other work, but hopefully some other jobs at the workshops should see progress. On which, and how far, you'll have to return next week and find out. See ya then.