Gil & Bruce started the day at Todders. They finished off the tender steam heat pipework by attaching the final section (the bit with the hose on it) at the back of the tender. Bruce painted the new bracket and tidied up the lagging on the pipe, which had unravelled where the welding was needed. Gil escaped to Winchcombe to help Fred restoring the siphon van.
Two Loco Dept chaps, Pete & Roger, applied a second coat of bitumen paint to the tender's coal space. The rear section with the dome in it could also do with a second coat.
I had to give a lighting-up training course (theory) during the morning. After lunch, I tackled the remaining loco brake rods & linkages. I cleaned all but two. These were the heaviest ones, and my back was aching by then! The problem is all of the bending over while scraping, brushing, wiping and polishing the things!
Bruce moved on to the die block in the right-hand expansion link. There was too much slack (sideways movement) in the block as it slid up & down in the expansion link. Essentially, it is a lump of brass with a steel plate on each side. So, the brass needs about 1mm shaving off it. Removing the side plates turned out to be a challenge. There are four rivets holding the assembly together. They have counter-sunk heads, and Bruce started by trying to drill out a head. He soon discovered that they had become work-hardened, and refused to be drilled. So, it took him some of the morning and all afternoon, re-sharpening drills; threatening it with a masonry drill; persuading it with a mallet; and finally extracting the rivets. At least one of these had had a spot of weld on it. Bruce's thought was that at some stage (during BR days) the rivets had worked loose, and the quick answer was weld! Certainly, we have never had this apart, whereas we did have the LHS one apart when up at Llangollen. That one was also loose, and I believe that assembly was held together with counter-sunk bolts. We sent that to South Devon to be riveted together.
Saturday 8th
Gil popped in to see Bruce (and sneak a cup of tea + biscuit!) then buzzed off to Winchcombe, where they were about to move the siphon into the "barn".
Bruce began by moving the compressor and removing the (other) end for Carpo and the inspector to inspect. The he took a multitude of measurements of the die block and expansion link. Then went home.
I attacked the loco pipes and rods, cleaning the grot off of the last three, ready for when the loco comes back.
Then I decided that the tender's buffer beam looked very faded, so I applied Signal Red to it during the afternoon. I did do a (mental) risk assessment, and figured that if I didn't do it today, it might rain, so I did it today, despite the presence of visitors (the railway is open again). Actually, I stuck four "Wet Paint" signs all over it, too! It was nice to have people come up to me and ask to which loco this was the tender.
Roger
P.S.
Rearrange the following words into a well-known phrase or saying:
"The north facing tender is still".
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