Sunday 4 June 2017

Maintenance Update (gala, siphon, nut, slot)

Saturday 27th at Gotherington



Monday 29th at Winchcombe




Wednesday 31st at Toddington.
John G spent the day applying top coats to the 7 rail chairs in the boot scraper production line. He said, “I would have painted more but there weren’t any”. So, he made it stretch out.

Gilbert delivered nuts & bolts of the new tender rear rail guards. Bruce spent much of the day sorting through nuts and reamers. The nuts are for the new plan for adjustable steam valves, and the reamers for the rail guards.

I messed around, completing three boot scrapers and then restocking the two cafes. They had sold seven over the weekend (4 at Winchcombe and 3 at Todders). Then I took four boxes of books (left over from the FLA sales stall) to Broadway to donate to the station group. I had been squirreling away two large enamel signs that we had been given, several years ago. These went up to Broadway for the station, too.

Bruce checked: No additional issues raised over the weekend. 2807 is rostered for 6 consecutive days’ running, starting on Tuesday. Then she will be due for a boiler washout.

Saturday 3rd at Winchcombe.
I called in to get a signature, so seized the opportunity to show you that work really is continuing on the restoration of our siphon van:

Fred, cleaning a brake mechanism

Bill, sanding the subframe

Gilbert, hiding!

Saturday 3rd at Toddington.
I was on Granddad duty during the morning, so I missed Bruce, who popped in for a chat with David about his rail guard iron design. David had mainly come to get his work permit signed. However, he happened to notice that the drain cock operating lever in the cab was loose. The pillar supporting the lever was the problem - a simple tighten of the nuts, you would think? Four hours later …


You see, the pillar is bolted through chequer plates on the cab floor. So, you have to lift up at least one floor panel to get at the nuts underneath. To do that, you have to take the operating lever apart (because the floor panel won’t come up over the lever).

One of the loose nuts was rounded, and proved impossible to tighten properly. It is a struggle getting a spanner under there anyway, so David decided that to do the job properly, the nuts ought to be welded on underneath (and then it is a simple job to tighten the bolt from above).

Two floor panels had to come up to start with. The underneath of these panels was covered in thick ‘gunk’, consisting of oil, coal and dust in a consistency that no doubt protected them from rust, but … Some cleaning thereof was called for.


Eventually, David successfully welded one nut onto a subframe under the panels. To do that necessitated running a bolt through to hold the nut in place while welding it. In welding the second nut, however, some weld spattered onto the protruding bolt’s thread, and David couldn’t get the bolt out again afterwards. Out came the angle-grinder!

While groping in the grime under the floor, David discovered that another bolt in an adjacent panel had no nut on it at all! So, to do the job properly, he decided to weld a nut in place there. In due course, all of the panels were lifted; cleaned; checked for secure fixings, and finally put back together again. Well, the one through which the vertical rod transmits the drain cock operation down to the linkages below the floor didn’t quite fit! The slot for the rod was tight up against the side of the rod, and one of the bolt holes didn’t exactly match where the newly-welded nut resides. The angle-grinder came into play once more to widen the slot, and the bolt hole was “moved” sideways slightly (which meant that the bolt now needed a washer fitting).


Elsewhere, after moving all of the painted rail chairs from the container into the “paint shop” for lettering to be applied, John T kept himself amused for the day, needle-gunning six more rail chairs.


Roger

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