October

Sunday 4th was yet another cold day out in the field and the short days beginning to hinder progress slightly. Alan and Chris drew up a design for a tool for removing injectors from the cylinder heads, found the parts needed and left them with Moff to construct the tool. Guidance was sought regarding the hole in the traction motor cooling ducting and it was decided to try to use a fibreglass patch to fully enclose the ducting once more. Joan cooked the lunch again and kept the other team members supplied with tea as well as cleaning off the pipes removed from the rear bulkhead of Number 2 Cab and gave them a first coat of paint with Doug’s assistance. Doug continued his painting expedition of the locomotive’s various pipe work systems with both the engine room and Number 2 nose receiving his attention. The fitting of heaters into Number 2 Cab was commenced and by the end of the day, 2 had been persuaded to sit properly on the Secondman’s side. A survey of the remaining heaters available led to two heaters being cannibalised to provide sufficient heaters to complete the task. Alan continued with painting Number 2 Cab into top coat and the result is very good so far. Adrian and Chris commenced refitting varios parts that had been removed for painting. It was discovered that there were two holes missing in the cab floor and so the original holes were re-drilled removing the sheared-off old bolts in the process. All bolts are now present on the higher part of the cab floor and await the arrival of the crew seats when they are purchased.

Sunday 11th saw just Alan on site working in Number 2 Cab. After cleaning up the area surrounding the hole in the traction motor cooling ducting, Alan fibre-glassed the hole as welding would be a nightmare due to having to remove numerous bits of floor crossmembers in order to access the area. The fibreglass patch will be monitored when the loco is in service and if there is a problem, then another solution will be found.

Friday 16th saw an impromptu working party formed of Doug, John, Alan and Chris. John commenced wiring the heaters in Number 1 Cab as well as carrying out checks on the engine. Doug completed painting the control air valve situated just inside the engine room at Number 2 End, finishing the painting with highlighting the details in Western Region brown! Alan and Chris worked in Number 2 Cab fitting all but one of the remaining heaters – the heater under the Driver’s desk remains to be completed after being built from parts recovered from other heaters. John started the task of refitting the equipment that is mounted on the bulkhead of Number 2 Cab by refitting the repainted change-end switch with a little bit of help from Chris.

Sunday 18th had the usual suspects in attendance. Joan cooked the extremely popular bacon and sausage sarnies and received lots of approval from the steam lads as the smell of Joan’s cooking drifted across the site! Doug continued the never-ending task of painting pipe work this time working in Number 2 nose from the outside – rumours of Doug’s next job painting the Forth Bridge are currently being investigated! Adrian and Chris fitted the overhauled DSD pedal assembly after fitting the last heater in Number 2 Cab – the heater under the Driver’s desk needed a bit of fettling to make it sit square but we got there in the end! Joan completed sanding down the grab rails from Number 2 Cab and then painted them with anti-corrosive primer as well as giving the container a bit of a tidy up and finding several long lost tools in the process!

During the following week, Joan painted the door from Number 2 Cab that leads to the nose–end compartment as well as the grab rails that are mounted in the ceiling above the doorway in Number 2 Cab. Joan painted the items over several days in the kitchen and did a magnificent job (see photo).

A cold Sunday 25th saw just Adrian and Chris working in Number 2 Cab. The repainted nose-end door was refitted in the cab and now awaits glass and a top coat of paint on the nose side of the door together with refitting the handle on the nose side. With the door completed as far as was practical, reassembly of the rear bulkhead equipment was continued. The AWS timing reservoir was refitted as well as part of the Baldwin Valve. Once those components had been fitted, the next exercise was to fit the air pipe work that connects the various components – easier said than done. Each piece of pipe work goes on in a set order and this led to the rear half of the Baldwin valve being slackened off

December started with the first two weekends being complete washouts preventing any work being done on the loco itself. Progress was steadily made with the technical reference library that we are gathering for the loco. A CD of scanned manuals and diagrams was taken to one of the local printers by Doug and after several hours we now had 2824 pages to file away! Having the library both on CD and on hard copy will make life easier when trying to find answers to faults and other such tasks that take up valuable time. Thanks to Tony for his assistance with this part of the project.