Collateral Damage

After what was purportedly a whole month's worth of rain delivered in a two day period, Saturday was a blessed relief, without the slightest hint of precipitation.  Hopefully the rains had arrived late enough in the week for this new patch of concrete outside the David Page shed to have cured after being poured on Monday.

Building up the apron outside the David Page shed

 This newly poured section between roads 8 & 9 was of course indoors and was spared from the deluge at the tail end of last week.

New concrete inside the shed

My task for the day was to fire dear old 5542, The Planet's Favourite Prairie (PFP) in the company of Sean as my driver and Aaron as cleaner.

Sean oiling up 5542

Aaron started at the top and cleaned his way down.

Somewhere in the darkest recesses of Dan's Facebook page, there is a photo of Sean and myself peering out of the cab of the 8F two years ago when he was a trainee driver and I was a trainee fireman which Dan had entitled "A Future Crew?".   On Saturday, Dan's question was answered, Sean and I were indeed a crew, motley perhaps, but a crew nonetheless.  

Two years ago.  Photo courtesy of Dan Wigg

One of the wheel barrows had come to grief during the week, its solitary wheel having acquired a puncture.

Ade having just removed the punctured tyre

John fits a replacement, Ben supervises

 A little while later, John was back inside the David Page shed working on more of the shuttering for the concreting of the David Page shed, here he is welding up some angle iron to seperate the inner edge of the track from the concrete.

John welding

 The steel reinforcing for the concrete needs to be tied to spacing sections to give it structure.  Ade cracks on with that on the section in road 7.

Ade at work

Eleanor was doing the same further along road 7

The PFP had just been through a wash out and Ian, our Pressure Vessel Responsible Person wanted to check her over at varying pressures, 20 PSI, 100 PSI and when she was blowing off to make sure that everything was still OK.  This is a poor fireman's get out of jail free card, being instructed to make the loco blow off before going off shed.  Not being  a complete idiot, I let her blow for a few minutes to get myself back a bit of water space in the boiler before finally running an injector.

Officially blowing off.

The PFP had been left with not as much coal in the bunker as might have been desired and the decision was taken to give it an extra bucket load.  Ordinarily the driver would be expected to operate the fork lift truck to do this, however Sean declared that when coaling up, he was "About as accurate as the American Air Force on a bombing raid" and asked Ade to do it for him.  I would very much like to distance myself from Sean's comment and even more importantly, distance myself from Sean should the American Air Force send in a retaliatory strike.  I spent the day anxiously scanning the skies for B52s and stealth drones, but mercifully none were to be seen.

Ade topping up the PFP's bunker.

Even with Ade at the controls of the fork lift truck, there was a certain amount of collateral damage.

Oops, missed!

 I was booked onto train two on the red timetable, a late start, early finish and a long break in the middle, if only the day job had such civilised hours.

Must be 10:00,  4270 running as train 1 is setting off in the background

 We didn't need to set off until ten past eleven

Sean gets us under way

The view from the office window

 The cab of 5542 was really meant for two people, three is a bit of a crowd.  If you're the third person in there, then you're going to end up doing things otherwise you'll be in the way of somebody who needs to be where you're stood.

Aaron ended up on token management duties.

As seems to have become the norm, we were delayed setting off on the return journey from Cheltenham, we were ready to go on time, but we didn't get the green flag for another 8 minutes.  Sean was complimentary about that fact that I managed to keep the PFP from blowing off during the delay.  Compliments from any quarter are few and far between, I've logged it in my diary.

Waiting for the green flag

Before we set off from Cheltenham, we noticed somebody loitering around in the 4' up by the section signal.  We approached with caution, intending to give them some grief when we got there, only to find that it was Bill, who was about to undertake some routine maintenance of the signal.  His hi-viz vest hadn't been quite as highly visible as it might have been.

Bill in his not so highly visible hi-viz.

 Speaking of Bill, he emailed me a photo of him moonlighting on the Talyllin Railway during their recent Alice in Wonderland themed gala.

Bill (with the tea) on Duncan, photo with kind permission of Barbara Fuller

 As far as I can make out, the hardest part of driving a steam loco is getting them to stop in the right place.  Sean's stopping was excellent throughout the day, with just one exception at Gotherington where he stopped a bit short.  Sean complained, with some justification that this was the only occasion that I chose to take a photograph and not on any of the others.

The end of the 1st coach is supposed to be at this end of the white line

Crossing 4270 at Winchcombe

 It was on the approach to Winchcombe that we encountered a problem.  The front damper has a couple of notches in the control to admit air under the grate.  When in the fully opened position, the damper can be a tad tricky to close again, a subtle blend of psychology and extreme physical force is sometimes required.  On this occasion, full use of all the brute force and ignorance that I could muster proved to be inadequate and the damper remained stubbornly open.

The recalcitrant damper on the left

 We stopped for water and then nipped onto the ash pit during the run round for running repairs.  Before I could even get down from the cab, Dan had nipped underneath the PFP and nudged the right bit of the damper mechanism with a broom, the damper dropped and we were able to continue on our way.  It was all over and done with so quickly that I didn't even get a chance for a photo.

Sean operating the water just before we headed over to the pit.

I gave Aaron the chance to fire the second trip and made sure that nobody was about on the platform at Toddington as he damped down the coal in the bunker with the pep pipe.

Aaron damps down the coal

Either I proved to be too tempting a target or Aaron's aim was as bad as Sean's.

Wet trousers!

I was beginning to regret my decision to give him a go at firing.

The field on the Cotswold side of the line between Winchcombe station and Greet tunnel had recently been mown and the hay stacked as close to the line as possible.  I don't think that the farmer had thought this one through.

Line side fire waiting to happen.

Aaron made a good job of firing down to Cheltenham, but managed to add just one or two more lumps of coal than was strictly necessary. 

Aaron hides his face behind his cap whilst the safety valves tell their own story.

There are just one or two members of the Steam Loco Dept who are not above playing the odd practical joke.  I don't usually report their activities here, but people being sent to look for tins of tartan paint or cans of elbow grease are not exactly unheard of.  I won't name the guilty party or the victim here (suffice it to say that I was neither, so it shouldn't be too hard to work out), but the token arrived on the footplate with a liberal coating of grease on the hoop.

Just as well it wipes off easily enough.

The return journey was a much better affair by Aaron, with plenty of pressure and water in the glass, yet no blowing off, and everything was in good order when we arrived at Toddington for disposal and then to hand over to the evening crew on a fish and chip special.

Aaron, no problems at all on the way back

During the final top up of water before disposal, Sean suddenly got camera shy, that's him hiding behind the water column.

Must have been starting to feel guilty by now

Aaron got out his camera and took his revenge

You can run, but you can't hide!

As we pulled up adjacent to the mess coach on our way to the pit we were met by the cheery smile from Mike who asked us if we'd like tea.   Mike will go far.

Service with a smile

Disposal was accompanied by a running commentary from the GWSR heckling team locomotive disposal advisory panel.

David H, David F & Nigel

Nigel is modelling this year's must have item of fashionable railway apparel, an Italian designer label hi-viz t-shirt.  We'll have to get one for Bill.  I wonder if David H will be stocking them in the Toddington station shop?

The two Davids and Mike had been working on Dinmore Manor's tender:

I believe that this is part of the brake actuating mechanism...

...more painting had occurred...

... and half the horn guide ties appeared to be complete.

Speaking of Dinmore Manor, Phil has been holidaying in Paignton with his family this week and has kindly provided a few photos of Dinmore Manor at work on the DSR.

Dinmore Manor passing the beach huts at Goodrington

Same location a bit later in the day.

Both the above photos courtesy of Phil Grange.  Phil hopes to get time off for good behaviour later in the week and take a ride along the line.

And finally, photos of last week's momentous event, the first steaming of 35006 in preservation broke late in the day, pictures only arriving in my email folder minutes before I had been about to hit the publish button on the blog.  Since then, a variety of videos have surfaced on Youtube, so should you be interested, here are a couple.

First Clip

Second Clip

I have also received a DVD from Steve Parker containing a number of video clips of the day, which I have uploaded to Youtube myself.  Here are the links concerned.  Many thanks to Steve for making them available to me.

Clip one

Clip two

Clip three

Clip four

Clip five

Fifty one years since withdrawal by BR, with a fire in her belly and steam in her cylinders (well OK, two out of three ain't bad according to Meatloaf), she finally moved herself again.  A marvellous achievement and a great credit to everybody who has been involved in her restoration over the years.