Of smoke and steroids

2nd March 2025

Steroids? No mirrors?

First thing Monday morning I was on the road. I had intended travelling up to Darlington Sunday night but in the end was too tired and too late. So a 5.30 alarm and away before 7, aiming to be on site by 09.30. And site that day was Teesport. We'd said 10.00 to meet up, but knowing Jeff I suspected he'd be there for half nine and when I arrived about quarter to ten he had just parked up. We got through security and headed on to the quayside, and set up to load an 08 that needed a repair that couldn't be carried out on site.

It was straightforward work but I was a little out of practice and we were half way up the ramp when it occurred to me that the deck rails were in the wrong place. There are rails flat on the deck but we seldom use them as (a) they offer little gradient assistance to getting the things off again and (b) the deck is just a bit too short for many of the locos. By running the loco onto rails that are blocked about half way up the slope between the deck and the rear wheels, we get extra length (the buffers and 'beams are now into fresh air) and still within the clearance for bridges, even with a thing like an 08. But for longer, lighter vehicles we have an upper stop that brings the deck rails level with strips added over the trailer wheels, and they were still in this position from an earlier load. That would have but the top of the 08 perilously close to the underside of bridges so we paused loading and slid the rails back down and re-packed them. I left the Lister engine (which powers the winch) running throughout this, which turned out not to be a good move, since with loading resumed, and the loco was 3/4 of the way on, the Lister ran out of diesel.

It took rather too long to fill the tank and bleed it through, and in consequence it was just after noon before we set off. It is just over a year since I spent a steady couple of weeks removing RMS Locotec locos from Wolsingham, but here we were, bringing one back in as the repairs were due to be performed there. It was just before two that Jeff arrived, and the day's dramas weren't over, as having detached the trailer neck, Jeff backed around to bring the Lister near to the winch with smoke pouring out the compartment that contains the electric pump. I hurriedly turned it off and cautiously opened the door in case it was actually on fire, but aside from a lot of 'hot electrical smell' there was nothing but fumes. The motor was one I raided from T2 (fitting it out with a refurbished motor and new pump) and it was inclined to overheat and shutdown if run for too long so it was always on borrowed time. The loco was unloaded, and with just the trailer neck to lift back up and in short bursts, the departure was completed.

I stopped off at Darlington to pick Steph up and we returned to the Briddon Country Pile together. She had started with a cold though. Tuesday and another early start but this time only to Worksop. An incomplete 08 was waiting to be taken to EMR Attercliffe for scrap. We lowered the trailer neck on the old pump and while Jeff got on with the ramp, I set about changing the assembly for another refurbished Bosch motor and new pump. (I got these motors from an MoD surplus place a few years ago, thinking they might come in handy.) One 10mm stud on the old motor refused to undo, but Jeff had a battery grinder with him and I was able to cut the nut without damaging the cable lug. Not so one of the switch connectors where a wire pulled out of its crimp, but Jeff had a crimp kit (in my rush I hadn't packed anything electrical) and we got it going.

I had a while to wait at Attercliffe until Jeff arrived (longer route for abnormals); EMR cleared us a space to get it off and then dragged it away so we could reconnect. (I was back 2 days later for other reasons and it had disappeared.)

Wednesday. Andrew had arranged that the guy who installed the new SLI system on the crane come back in and do a LOLER exam on it and the Hatramm crane to ensure compliance with the railway's requirements. It was cleverly timed so that after he left, two guys would arrive from North Wales with a trailer to collect one of the four ex-TfL BE trolleys that arrived a week or so ago. But all good plans go awry and they were several hours late. Not entirely their fault, as unbeknown to me, they were bringing a trolley in exchange, and had been hunting for its engine which was 'around somewhere' but eventually had to depart without it. The incomer is apparently Wkm 4816, and a 15" gauge one. This is what we got.

Anyway, they had been promised one particular trolley/trailer combo (the best one that had been lightly used in the training centre) and with it secured to an Ifor Williams car trailer, they set off back for Amlwch.

Thursday: I'd arranged for a visitor to come. He'd declared his itinerary to be Cleckheaton, then me, and he'd ring as he left Cleckheaton, so I judged I had time to nip in to Sheffield and around for profiles, etc. As I neared Sheffield a text came in, but being a law-abiding citizen I didn't read it on the move and only remembered after the profiles had been loaded in the van. My visitor had changed his plan and would be at Darley Dale in 20 minutes. I texted back to him to slow down and charged back to Darley. He had come to take a look at various parts he might be interested in from the EE 0-6-0 and I now have a list to cost up. We also had a play with RS8 (as you do) before he set off for Cleckheaton.

Friday. Picking up where I left off, but adding more in, I set off first for Kiveton but then west to a village on the other side of Retford. I had bought, through ebay, a length of 400mm diameter spiral ducting to replace the box duct that minilok had fitted. The only thing was that it was 3m long and the van won't take that, so I had with me a battery grinder and ear defenders. I was slightly miffed as the ebay entry had listed the 'location' as Worksop, and I had considered zipping around on Tuesday after loading, but it wasn't in Worksop at all, it was past Retford (10 miles beyond Worksop) and then some. Anyway, the vendor had said it would be out 'the front' waiting for me and as there was no-one in I set about marking and cutting it into two equal lengths (I only need about 1100 or 1200mm) constantly wondering if the noise would attract attention in this quiet village. The boys in blue did not arrive before I had escaped back west. A further collection in Sheffield and I got back about half-three, another day of late lunch. Andrew offered to pop down about 4pm and help me unload. I waited, and finally set about self unloading, walking the heavier lumps onto a pallet behind the van. Then Andrew arrived.

Oh, and by now Steph, who had had a miserable few days with her cold, had passed it over to me, and I was beginning to feel bunged up, and coughing. Curiously though, I don't seem to get it half as bad as she does. Indeed, she observed, even though she and Andrew both experienced Covid I had sailed through without any apparent illness. This may be because I had had the 'jabs', but, I was also musing, my medication for asthma is primarily an inhaler which contains a proportion of a steroids - I wonder whether a side effect is that my immune system is kept on its toes? As I write this, Steph is still coughing but I'm about back to normal.

Saturday: I didn't go down until after lunch as I had had some paperwork to do in the morning. When I arrived, the owner of Station House was at work repairing the boundary fence that had blown down - well, bowed anyway - during recent gales. We had a natter and I showed him work progressing on the container (Jordan and his pal Clayton had spent 2 days on it earlier in the week and it now sports a lot more green than its original grey) that is scheduled to go behind his fence where currently a decrepit van body stands. He was thoroughly approving of what an improvement it will be, as the decrepit van is an eyesore protruding above the fence line.

One of the profiles I had collected was a 'conversion' plate for the throttle pedal on the big minilok and I had tapped the holes on Friday afternoon, so I started spray painting it so that it could be drying while I took a look at the smaller minilok. The target here was to examine closely two plugs and sockets, the Deutz agent indicating that the faults shown up on the ECU I had returned usually came down to these.

But I could find no sign of damaged or corroded pins, bad contact or other defect and after photographing it all thoroughly, boxed it off, though I did first disconnect the throttle unit as this had been a problem on the big minilok.

Back on the big minilok, I was able to assemble the pedal to its adaptor plate and bolt it in position, testing the result for egonomic suitability. As an interim measure, the 'plan' is to get the throttle running in manual only (it'll be a while before we - I - can sort the wiring enough to get the radio control functional) and for that I need to make use of the wires that already go down to the amplifier to connect to the pedal. For that day, it was left.

Sunday: I have said before that originally Arnold conceived that all the control and interlocking on minilok would take place in a suite of pcbs that would have basic diagnostic LEDs amd was called DIGAN. DIGAN contains half a dozen plug-in automotive type relays (things that look like a sugar cube on steroids) but Arnold failed to anticipate what the future might require (I did so myself with YEC's 'DEMS' back in the 90s) and as a result, a seperate 'Verteiler' panel not only carries fuses but a scary number of additional relays which grew with each new minilok. I learnt a lot from minilok - their use of multi-core cables, each cable having a number printed on it every six inches or so, and then compiling a written table for each multi-core whereby you know what each cable is for, was a revelation and a practice I still follow. But the massive Verteiler, with multi-cores and lesser cores coming in to it and a mass of relays and interconnecting wires in and behind, was not one of its better features when you come to fault-find. And a sugar cube relay has no diagnostic and little means of testing whether a voltage is there or not. A better advert for switching it all to a PLC I cannot call to mind.

In addition, I have misplaced the cable schedule and wiring diagrams I have for this minilok and after an hour or two of trying to find them, I determined to do it the hard way. There are 3 big plugs attached to Verteiler, labelled VD, VT and VL. No jokes about the first one, it means it is going from the Verteiler to Digan. My target was VL - Verteiler to the Lok (loco) and with a test wire attached to the other end of the cable (at the amplifier plug) I set about identifying which cable it was (out of 40 pins).Eventually I located all 3 I needed, but could not find where they turned up in the relays. (We had detached two earlier which according to the (misplaced) diagram were the throttle relays but I got no continuity there!) So I had to detach the entire panel, pull it out so that I could see around the back and identify the wires coming off the other side of the socket and snip them off. This of course I was double-checking at every step, the last thing I wanted was to cut the wrong wire and stop the whole machine from working at all. With sufficient wire to bring the three of them out to the front I wangled Verteiler back into position (almost - another reason to dislike it) tested all 3 wires through again (and noting each combo down from the colour of the pedal wire through to the pin number back at the amplifier plug). To get the throttle system functional I had stripped out the original enclosure from the minilok, but then built up another using some of the cabling, the new amplifier and ramp generator and a switch on a wander lead which enabled me to ramp the throttle up or down by flicking a switch, as you would do under radio control. Although I have two more amplifiers on order, impatience got the better of me and as Andrew turned up late in the afternoon I was starting to build the original minilok enclosure back up but to contain this newer amplifier unit which I had to rob from my own module. By 6pm it was time to pack up even though another hour or so should see it completed and the prospect of driving it properly beckons.

Transport work is on the cards again next week, what else I'm not sure, so come back and find out. See ya then.