Cleaning the Beast!

I was quite pleased to get a rostered cleaning turn on P&O but at the same time quite daunted by the sheer size of the loco. There is a lot to clean! But after collecting wood and oily rags for the fireman I decided to make a start on the wheels and motion and then move onto the brass work as it was looking quite dull.

I was lucky enough to be asked out with the crew but there was also a trainee on the footplate so just helped out with the coupling up and pushing coal forward. Here is a picture of the loco after the first trip.

Overall it was an enjoyable day. 

Dinmore Manor's Leaky Cylinder Cover

Earlier in the week it was reported that Dinmore Manor's left hand cylinder cover was leaking steam and the damper door was not opening fully. Foremark Hall was the loco in service today and was in front of Dinmore but once she had enough steam Foremark was used to shunt Dinmore out of the shed so we could get to work.

The first thing needed to be removed from the loco was the cladding. This was just held on by a couple of machine screws and a bolt. The next job was to remove the nuts holding the cover in place. These were quite tight and were a little more reluctant at being undone.

Once the nuts were all off we found the cylinder cover was stuck fast and there wasn't anyway to get a bar in to lever it away from the face. A puller was needed to be made which the 28xx group assisted with and whilst they were making it we gave the loco a good clean.

Once the cover was off there was no clear reason as to why it was leaking. To help make the cover seal there are 2 rings of copper wire which all looked ok and no sign of damage or wear. The copper rings are annealed and when the nuts are tightened the copper squashes against the 2 faces to create a seal. We took each piece of copper out gave it a quick file to remove any high spots. Then re-annealed it to make it soft so it would squash when we tightened it. The loco is due back in service next week and is being tested on Tuesday.

Just as I was leaving Foremark Hall had returned from the days service and was being prepared on the pit for the Fish and Chip Special that evening.

My first official cleaning turn at the GWSR!

My first cleaning turn was finally here. I left home at 4:30am having hardly slept through excitement and worrying my alarm wouldn't go off!!! I arrived at the GWSR for 5:50am and the engine for the day was GWR 2-8-0-tank 4270.

As a cleaner you don't get much time so you have to be quick to help the fireman, today Chris, prep the loco. Whilst he started to clean out the firebox from the previous days fire I went to collect wood from the store and some oily rags. Once Chris was happy and had everything he needed I started to clean the loco. Starting with the wheels using kerosene to remove the heavy oil and then moving onto the wash wax for the bodywork. In the picture below you can see the results. 

Considering this was my first cleaning turn I was lucky enough to be asked out on the footplate for all three trips. Rather than just be a passenger Chris allowed me to couple and uncouple the loco, carry out some token exchanges and helped me with some route learning. Here is a picture of 4270 after just arriving at Winchcombe on the last trip of the day. 

Once we had shunted the coaching stock back into the head shunt the loco is positioned over the pit for Chris to clean out the fire and the driver to check over the bearings. Once Chris was finished cleaning the fire I then cleaned out the ash pan so the loco can be put back onto the shed roads for the next day.   

My last job of the day is to shovel the ash out of the pit and wheel barrow it onto the ash pile. The day is very long and very physical and at the end of the day was nakered BUT...I had an amazing day! 

Burrell Steam Test

The Burrell did a fair bit of running last year finishing with a 2 1/2 mile sponsored road run from the Copsewood Ground, in Binley, to the Coventry Transport Museum raising money for Zoe's Place Children's Hospice.

During the winter season the motion was stripped down and gently cleaned with wire wool to remove the oily build up and the pipework was taken off and cleaned with Brasso. The tank was drained and the hand pump was removed and the nitrile balls replaced with stainless steel which will last longer.

Last Saturday I had arranged with the club boiler inspector to carry out the steam test in preparation for the Miniature Traction Engine Weekend at Statfold Barn Railway. Here is a picture of the pressure gauge being tested against the master gauge...

Unfortunately the loco didn't pass the steam test due to the water surging in the gauge frame which I suspect is due to scale in the boiler or scale within the gauge glass. So over the coming week a quick strip down of the gauge frame is on the cards and de-scale the boiler. 

Boiler work

The running season at the Gloucester Warwickshire Steam Railway has now started with service trains at weekends until April, then the mid-week service trains begin. Last week the railway ran special service trains, mid-week, for the Cheltenham Gold Cup which proved very popular with race goers and had two eight coach trains, all sold out.

When I arrived on Saturday I was asked if I would like to do some boiler work on 3850's boiler. The boiler is currently being repaired and the outer wrapper needs the bottom third replacing. To try and keep the costs down to a minimum some of the preparation work is to be done at the railway before the boiler is sent away to a boiler-smiths so new platework can be welded in and the new stays inserted.

Before the old section of the plate work can be cut out the stays needed to be removed which is a slow process. The first thing needed to be done is to remove all the nuts from the stays on the inside of the firebox. The method chosen to do this was to grind a slit through the centre of the nut and stay, being careful not to score the copper firebox, and then chisel the nut off. Here is a picture of the nuts being slotted.

  

In the picture above you can see on the right the stays with the nuts removed already and ones to be completed on the left. By the end of the day we had removed 108 stay nuts with 104 left to do. 

During a short break from grinding I managed to get a short video of Dinmore Manor, the locomotive in service that day, return from Cheltenham on the second train of the day. 

5" Gauge Collett 3206 Maintainance

The Collett’s current Hydraulic and Steam Test certificate is due for renewal in March, during this time I am taking the opportunity, whilst the boiler is out of the frames, to upgrade some parts.

The boiler has already been lifted out of the frames leaving the motion and wheels exposed and ready for closer inspection. With the cab removed, the fittings on the back-head of the boiler can be removed, cleaned or blanked off as required, ready for the hydraulic test.

One of the jobs that I keep neglecting is the tender. The hand pump, which mounted inside the tank, has never really delivered a descent amount of water to the boiler when required. To overcome this I have acquired a slightly lager bore hand pump which, as is always the way, has slightly different bolt hole positions. To overcome this I have mounted the pump onto a piece of brass with countersunk screws and soft soldered countersunk screws in the opposite direction to bolt the plate to the tender.

The water connections between the tender have always been tricky to hook up. The main reason for this is that the pipes are made from a semi-rigid plastic pipe which is to stiff and in-flexible.

The aim is to replace the plastic pipe with rubber and try to make the connection look a little more authentic directly in between the loco and the tender. On the end of the pipe there will be a standard pipe nut and olive on a short piece of copper pipe. I will then fit the rubber hose to the copper pipe. The piece that will stick out will be wrapped in some thin wire and covered with a piece of black heat shrink. Hopefully looking a little more like the real thing.

Whilst I don't think the rubber pipe will pull off I made some small brass clips to help hold the pipe in place just in case. After a bit of fiddling about here is the finished product and the progress so far on the new pipework.

4270 Valve Replacement

With only one week left before the timetable starts 4270 needed her valves putting back in and covers putting back on. I have been lucky enough to see this job from start to finish and have written about taking the valves out and cleaning the studs in previous blogs.

Angela was overseeing the project with Richard and myself helping. The first thing that needed to be done was to cover the valve liners and the valves themselves in plenty of steam oil. Here is a picture of myself and Richard coating the valve with oil.

Once fully coated we lifted the valve onto a piece of wood on the running boards and attached a strap around it to take the majority of the weight whilst we maneuvered it into position. Once the back valve had passed through the front liner and into the steam cavity, we carefully lowered the front of the valve to locate the spindle into the gland at the rear of the cylinder. Once located we lifted the front so the shaft was horizontal and square to the port liners and pushed it in until the front valve was in the liner.

Once the valve was in position we put the valve spindle crosshead back onto the shaft and connected it back up to the rocking shaft. Once it was all connected back up we tested it worked correctly by moving the reverser through forward and reverse and once we were satisfied we replaced the front covers. Fingers crossed they hold. 

Cleaning tubes...

With only two weeks to go until the season starts at the Gloucester Warwickshire Railway all the locomotive groups are making their final preparations. The first job of the day was to shunt P&O out of the shed over the pit.

Once this was complete we were tasked to finish cleaning out the tubes. As I was the youngest I was volunteered to go into the firebox armed with a hover and an inspection lamp. Luckily for me P&O's fire hole door is on the generous side. Here is the view from the outside...

Here is the view from the inside...

The next thing I needed to do was to climb over the brick arch to the firebox tubeplate (below) with hoover and light in hand to clean up the soot being pushed through. After we pushed the brush through about half of the tubes I realised that there was not alot of soot coming out. After double checking with the locomotive group it turned out the job had already been completed. Once we had cleared everything away it was time for lunch.

A few weeks ago we removed the valves from 4270 so they could be inspected and they are nearly ready to go back into the valve chest. Before they can go back in, a little prep work was needed to clean up the valve cover faces and the studs. I wire brushed the faces and the studs before Richard ran a die nut down the studs. Here is a before and after shot. Some rag was placed inside the valve chest cavity to prevent any dust and dirt going onto the liner. 

Before cleaning

After cleaning

Richard ran a die nut down all of the studs whilst I gave all the nuts a quick clean before re-assembly. To prevent the face rusting again we coated it with a smear of steam oil and the studs in a graphite paste. Hopefully the valves will be going back in and the covers back on, so 4270 is a step closer to steam.

GWR Top Feed

The winter maintenance continues at the Gloucester Warwickshire Railway. One of the first jobs I was asked to help with was to give the cab floor of 'Foremark Hall' some attention. For this I was teamed up with new volunteer, Nick. We started to wire brush the steel plate with the grinder to remove the surface rust.

We then thoroughly brushed and cleaned down the surface with spirit to make sure it was free from grease. Once that had dried we gave the floor a coat of red oxide paint.

There was also lots of activity going on in the shed and one of the jobs I had a quick look at was the re-building of Dinmore Manor's valves.

Once Angela, pictured above, had these built back up, I was asked to remove Dinmore Manor's safety valve bonnet so that one of the top feeds could be inspected, as it was reported to be slightly passing. There are six brass screws which hold the bonnet in place which are screwed into the cladding. Five were easily removed but one had stiffened up due to the cladding moving through the expansion and contraction from when in steam and not.

After some patience and perseverance I managed to slowly remove the brass screw without damaging the head and lifted the bonnet clear to leave the top feeds exposed.

The next job was to slacken off the top nut (green), undo the stud (pink) which holds the surround for the valve down and then undo and remove the cap (yellow) completely giving access to the valve (red) inside.

The part being replaced is marked in red above which simply lifts out. There was a spare already prepared so it was simply a case of lifting the old one out, giving the inside a quick clean and putting in a new copper washer to improve the seal. I then replaced the valve (red) and tightened it all back down starting with the cap, then the stud and finished by tightening the top nut.

The last job was to put the bonnet back into position and screw it back down with the brass screws. Fingers crossed it will stay trouble free.

Winter work at the GWSR - Valve removal

The winter maintenance is well under way on all the locomotives at the the Gloucester Warwickshire Steam Railway. All the locomotives are drained of water and bunkers/tenders emptied of coal.

One of the jobs I helped with was the valve removal from GWR 42xx tank engine "4270", highlighted in yellow in the drawing below. This involves taking off a piece of the running plate in between the buffer beam and the cylinder block, removing the valve chest cover (highlighted in pink), disconnecting the motion and pulling it out of the front of the cavity.

 

You can see the running boards has been romoved in the picture below.  



The steam chest cover removed and given a clean up with a rag and some deisel and parrafin.

Finally  this is a picture of the valves once they had been completely removed from the stem chest. Unfortunatly there were no spare hands to take a picture of the valve being removed. The steam chests were inspected and other than there being a small amount of soot in the cavity they looked pretty good.

The remainder of the day was spent taking of a rather awkward overflow pipe from the fireman's side injector. This is so it can be re-bent and redirect the steam backwards rather than directly sideways. 

My First Memories of Steam

I cant really remember exactly where my fascination with steam actually started, although, I have three clear stories from my childhood firmly stuck in my head, which I suspect had a big influence.

'Brio'
The title for my first story, 'Brio', is the manufacturer's name of the wooden toy train set I used to play with as a child. I would spend hours playing with this stuff, laying the wooden track from one side of the house to the other. The real highlight was going into Coventry City Centre and playing on the 'Brio' layout displayed in the front window of the Early Learning Centre shop.

On one of my many visits as a child to the city, I was as usual, accompanying my Mum on a shopping trip with the promise of a visit to the Early Learning Centre once she had finished. Now there is only so much time you can spend in BHS as a child and I really wanted to play on the Brio! I knew the way to the Early Learning Centre, so I walked out of the shop and made the quarter mile walk across town on my own. I was only about 4 :-), anyway whilst I had the BHS shop security and my Mum in an utter meltdown, I happily played in the shop window on the wooden train set. I was found about an hour later unharmed, but from that day forth anytime we went to town I was strapped to my Mum with reins.

'The Battlefield Line Railway'
My Grandad is an early member of this railway, then both my Dad and Uncle became working members. From an early age I used to tag along and help them out, passing spanners etc, but my favourite thing to do was to watch the steam locomotives run round the train at Shakerstone Station.

Once the train had come to a stop in platform two, I would watch the fireman from the platform edge uncouple the loco from the train. Then the locomotive would set back from the coaching stock to the point before being given the signal for platform one. In this time I would run up the steps of the mesh footbridge and stand over line 1 to watch the loco pass below me. The fascination was the smell of the smoke as it engulfed the bridge. It is something I think all enthusiasts would agree is addictive. No matter what I did I would also go home filthy, as if I had been on the footplate myself.

'Soot'
My final story comes from a day out on Severn Valley Railway and could have put me off the hobby for life. This is the only thing I can remember from that day and was a painful lesson. I liked sticking my head out of the window to watch and listening to the loco as it went along the line. Even though I had been told time and time again to watch out for soot getting in my eyes I still did it. I didn't see the danger. Well the inevitable happened but rather than telling someone straight away I managed to hide it and got through the rest of the day. The pain just got worse and worse and when I went to bed that night it was unbearable, and spent the rest of the evening in tears at A & E with my Dad. Luckily the doctors removed the soot and I hadn't done any lasting damage.

I'm not sure if it was taken before or after the soot was in my eye, but here is a picture of me from that day.