Progress June 2023

Week Four

Half of the team spent most of Tuesday and Friday continuing working on the P Way department’s tamper by dismantling the track lifting units which, as they’re outside was hot work.

Most of the components are seized solid so a degree of drilling out and hammering was required and, once separated, a lot of effort to clean off the rust and old paint.

Others were crawling all over 4253 rubbing down the bunker prior to another coat,

finishing off the painting of the inside motion

and making a cover for the slot in the front running plate for the pony truck oil lines.

Charwelton’s buffers got their final coat of paint and more parts were extracted from storage and loaded into stillages for collection. 

There was also some ‘housekeeping’ jobs done which included cutting and fitting a new worktop for our sink as the original was rotting and sagging plus making a new stand for our large water container.

Sunday was the hottest day we’ve had yet so we concentrated on jobs that didn’t require too much physical effort.  The positioning of the lamp brackets on the front running plate was marked out once the outer plates had been bolted into place

after which the mounting holes were drilled and support plates made for underneath to bridge gaps in the framework.  All the fixing holes for the front plates also had the threads re-tapped to remove any surplus paint.

Finally, our new combined brake ejector and blower unit has been returned after machining

together with the slacker pipe control valve and steam heat drain valve.

Week Three

Tuesday started with pressing the final bush into place in the driver’s side intermediate rod

and then trial fitting that one and the driver’s trailing rod onto the crank pins with both sliding straight on.  After that, the large front running plate which was put on for the final time recently had to come off again as we found the slot for the pony truck oil feed pipes was too tight and would cause chaffing.  A quick enlarging of the hole with the plasma cutter was followed by some paint and refitting.

As well as that. we took on a job for the P Way department’s tamper, stripping and cleaning parts for NDT testing with the final plan being assembling two working units from the four dismantled ones.

A start was made on collecting together all the motion parts for Charwelton from various storage corners and getting them all loaded onto pallets and this job continued on Friday,

as did the repainting of Charwelton’s buffers.

Sunday’s workforce was a little depleted it being Father’s Day but we continued with the painting of 4253’s bunker

and the second batch of cleat joiners for the crinolines were finished by heating and bending to the right curvature and then milling a taper onto the leading edges.

Week Two

This week it was mainly work on trial fitting more rods after new bushes had been pressed in.  These are heavy beasts and require some lifting gear to take the load and quite a few people to manoeuvre them onto the crank pins.

Also, checking the coupling rod connections involves a lot of lifting and packing to get the alignment right.

While this was going on, others continued painting various bits on 4253 and did some more work on Charwelton including temporarily replacing the front buffer beam

and continuing with the repaint of the buffers themselves.

The small crinoline cleats that were made last week also had the right angle bends put into them.

On Sunday, a set of larger ones was cut, bent, drilled and shaped with just some milling of the longer arms to be done to finish them off.

One of the rod bushes was found to still be a bit tight so that was moved to the machine shop and had a few thou taken off it.

Finally, the cross heads were oiled up and moved backwards and forwards on the slide bars and the piston rod gland packing was taken out of storage to check.

Week One

During the week, it was all rubbing down and painting.  The last of the red bits on the inside of the frames and the motion were finished off in top coat, the cab side of the bunker and the toolbox shelf were undercoated,

the vacuum pump covers, cab doors and sliding side covers were rubbed down and undercoated

and Projects 1 & 2 had the filler lids and top surfaces glossed.  On top of that, we started rubbing down and painting the buffers from Charwelton as well.

On Sunday it was mainly work on the side rods on the fireman’s side.  The loco was jacked up to get the weight off the wheels which were then turned to get all the crank pins in the 3 o’clock position.  This involved a bit of improvisation using bits of wood to lever the wheels round assisted by Scott standing on the crank pin.

The newly machined bushes were trial fitted to the crank pins 

and then the rods were lifted one at a time onto the hydraulic press so the bushes could be pressed in.

It was then a case of lifting each rod one end at a time and trial fitting the bush onto the pin once again.

By day’s end we had just one bush that was too tight on the pin having compressed slightly when being pressed in.  This will be remedied next week.  

We also progressed the crinolines with the eight cleats that will be used to bolt the ends of the cladding retaining hoops together cut, a taper milled onto one surface,

and, finally. the ends rounded off.

It just remains for the ends to be bent at right angles which, again, will be done during the coming week.