I picked up half-a-dozen rail chairs from Winchcombe and took them to Todders. Stumbled upon a 1940 one and recalled Jane mentioning getting a 1940 one for her father's birthday. Painted six undercoats; fed the mouse, and buzzed off home.
Monday 17th
Toddled off to the surgery to drop a letter in, and on the way back happened to pass Jane's house. So, I thought I might as well pop in and mention the 1940 rail chair. Jane was quite excited about it. However, she's already got her father a Christmas prezzie, so could give it to him for his birthday in February. "Well, well", quoth I …. that 1940 chair happens to be February 1940 !!! Jane exclaimed, "It was obviously meant to be!"
Todders was like the Marie Celeste!
One fresh issue raised, but is almost a repeat of Issue 37: "Left rear drain cock not always closing" [IW]; (37 was left front drain cock sticking). All drain cocks ought to be cleaned out, as it is likely to be grot inside jamming the valve.
Slapped a top coat on the six and then, joy-of-joys, had eleven black bottoms to paint! Fed the mouse, and buzzed off home.
Tuesday 18th
Lovely day - sun shone; would have gone for a bike ride, but came down with a cold & sore throat on Monday. Popped down to paint the lettering on the six, instead. F&W was open, so I restocked the boot scraper trolley. Fed the mouse. It started to rain, so buzzed off home.
Wednesday 19th
John tackled an issue whereby the ejector in the cab was sometimes leaking-by. It was decided to remove the ejector front and examine the internals. Removing the handle proved to be a something of a challenge, as it refused to come off! Eventually (after lunch, I think) John won, and then once the thing was apart, it became obvious that the valve inside was not seating properly. In fact, two high spots were visible, meaning that it was possibly only ever about half shut.
Bruce was concerned about 2807's beat, as it had chuffed up & down recently. He puzzled over what might cause the beat to vary, and began examining all of the links and components in the valve gear. He discovered a loose nut, which led to the discovery of a loose taper pin connecting to the rocking shaft.
Bruce and Gilbert dismantled the links and mused over what the pin ought to look like (as opposed to what it does look like!). It became clear that the taper part of the pin was loose in its tapered hole such that it was going in right tight up to the shoulder. While the errant nut was tight, the shoulder was holding the pin OK, but the strain of the motion must have gradually loosened the nut. Then the taper was not holding it rigid.
I decided that, since there had been two reports of cylinder drain cocks failing to close properly, the drain cocks needed to be cleaned out. It is likely that grot inside the body is jamming the plunger.
Starting with the left rear (which was the most recent report) it became clear what had caused the problem - fragments of a piston ring (probably from the piston valve) were inside the body! Not good news. Even more not-good news was that I found a further fragment in the right-hand side … and the fragments could not migrate from one side to the other, which means there's a broken ring in both sides!
As B&G were already playing with the RHS valve gear, we decided to start by taking that valve out, so I started to remove the front cladding followed by the nuts securing the valve cover. That's the easy part. The rear cladding can only be removed after taking off an oil pot. Meanwhile, B&G had removed the link between rocking shaft and valve rod. By now it was 3.15 pm, and there was no way we would get the valve piston out before dark. So, we decided to pack away and restart on Saturday.
However, this does mean that 2807 will not be in service for a few weeks (at best) … depending on what we find and what is needed to fix it. We will not be in service again this year, so we might as well start on winter maintenance.
Thursday 20th
Nipped in to fit brushes to the six completed chairs. We now have a few in case of late Christmas present requests. Fed Maurice, of course.
Friday 21st
Slapped a primer coat on 7 green (GWR) chairs plus 4 red (BR. LMS & MR).
Saturday 22nd
We had heaps of help from Loco Dept guys, and removed both valves. The LHS was badly disintegrated! Also, it revealed that the LHS centre drain cock (drains the steam chest of the valve) was totally blocked. I'll explain more + photos in a subsequent post, as there is already lots in this one.
Gil is going to contact Tyseley to see about getting new valves assembled.
Roger
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