No lions at Toddington

A complaint has been received by your blogger.  As you may have heard, the mark 1 blog photo capturing device came to an untimely end a few weeks ago and has recently been replaced by what will hopefully prove to be a rather more robust item.  Heritage railways are a camera hostile environment, so the mark 2 device was selected as much for its rugged construction as for its optical quality.  Anyway, the complaint hasd been made saying that it made a certain fireman "Look fat".  I have sent the camera back to the manufacturers who have given it a thorough examination, and double checked the calibration.   They returned it to me with a note saying "No fault found".  They went on to suggest that the diet of the fireman concerned which primarily consists of pizza and Doom Bar was the more likely cause.


Nobody informed in me in advance, but it turns out thet there was a  "Mr Universe" style challenge taking place at Toddington on Saturday.  The challenge was for one person to single handedly push Foremarke Hall's tender in and out of the David Page shed.  Steve had a go at it first:

Steve, putting his back into it

 I have little doubt that some wag was stood on the other end of the tender rubbing in the hand brake to make it harder for him.

John had a go at pushing it back in a little later on

Joihn, pushing it back

 Nobody reported back to me the best times for the challenge, so I'm afraid that I can't say who the winner was.  I can say however that while the tender was out basking in the sunshine, more coats of paint were applied.

Steve(l) & Sean, busy painting

 Cliff meanwhile got on with removing the old paint from Foremarke Hall's eccentrics with a view to starting to paint them later.

Cliff at work

I'm not at all sure how he managed it, but Cliff was to be seen wandering abound with a very blackened end to his nose for much of the day.

Cliff, sporting a black nose.

The restoration of Dinmore Manor's own tender, whilst progressing well has always had a small thorn in its side.  The intermediate buffer springs are of an obscure design with a square cross section.  The problem being that the tender didn't have any springs in it when bought and the springs themselves were hand hewn out of solid billets of pure unobtainium which were then rolled like the finest Cuban cigars on the thighs of dusky maidens in Havana.  Getting replacements manufactured in the UK had proved to be impossible.  When spring manufacturers had been approached, the standard reponse had been a sharp intake of breath followed by some implausible reason why, if they could be made at all, it would cost at least an order of magnitude more than had been budgeted for.  The good news is that Mark has finally managed to track down not one, but four original springs and was apparently to be seen on a train on Thursday carrying two of them back in a ruck sack.  They're remarkably heavy things, I can only imagine that Mark is in training for the next GWSR tender pushing competition.  The other pair of springs have been earmarked for 2874.

A pair of springs, ready for shot blasting

Mark, eats 3 Shredded Wheat for breakfast (other cereals do exist)

 The cups that locate the tender springs in place have recently been machined and painted.  The brackets that they fit into had also been painted.  The thicknesses of several coats of paint and a few odd spots of rust in the deeper and more inaccessible regions of the brakets meant that the cups no longer fitted in the brackets quite as they should have done.  Eleanor had the task of making them fit again.  It didn't help that although nominally the same size, the aperture in the brackets seemed to vary.  Some fitted after just a little work with emery paper or files, others required rather more persuasion to fit.  

Eleanor gets persuasive with an angle grinder with wire brush attachment

Most members of the SLD have long since tumbled to the fact that no good at all will come of telling family/friends/colleagues about the existence of this blog, even less good will come of them letting me know about family/friends etc knowing about this blog.  Eleanor made the school boy girl error of telling me that her parents read this blog to find out what she has been up to.  I'm now working on Photoshopping a picture of a couple of our locos running side by side along our line with Eleanor tight rope walking between them.  

For the benefit of those who can't quite imagine how the suspension arrangement works, here is a photo of a similar arrangement on the Foremarke Hall's tender.  The spring centre is on top of the axle box, on either side, links hang down which are secured in the previously mentioned cups located into brackets on the tender frames.

How it will look when finished.

It turned out that only half of the cups were at Toddington, the other half were squirreled away at DMLL's own workshop, not too many miles away.  Never having been there before, finding it turned out to be something of a challenge.  The postcode plugged when punched into a sat nav takes you to a location two or three miles away, after that it's all guess work. The only benefit to driving around in circles for some considerable time on a hot day was that I got to see DMLL's fourth and largely forgotten loco, ex-GWR 2884 class, 2-8-0, 3845.  Last in the queue behind 3850 and 2874 for restoration.

DMLL's Cinderella loco, 3845, waiting for her fairy godmother to turn up

 Dinmore Manor's tender tank is also out there, sat ready and waiting for the tender to be re-wheeled, after which it can be taken to Toddington and fitted.

Not long now.

 The tender tank has all the internal baffles etc fitted, it needs the float installing (it's quite cramped in there, not the easiest job in the world), along with the tool boxes, other than that, it's pretty much ready for action.  Well, ok, it needs painting black to match Dinmore Manor too.  Shouldn't take too long, Mick and the boys seem keen to crack on with it.

A recent starter, Roger, turned up on Saturday as well and was found useful jobs to do on Dinmore Manor's tender.

Roger.... a blur of activity

 Welcome aboard Roger.

There is still a fair amount of painting to be done on the bits of the tender that are at Toddington:

Tim applies grey undercoat to the safety links

David applies black undercoat to the tender frames

I don't think that we're a million miles away from putting the tender back on its wheels now, Mark and Graham were working on the stays that steady the bottoms of the horn guides.

Graham measuring the dimensions of the stays

Mark, measuring the dimensions of the horn guides

 Getting the stays machined accurately to fit is an important factor in making sure that the frames don't crack.

35006 disappeared off out into the sunshine early on in the day and has been the subject of much activity.

Steve preparing to fit part of 35006's motion

 Plastic drip trays to catch oil have been sourced and located at strategic points in the David Page shed in an attempt to keep the parts of the floor that have been concreted so far clean. 

This drip tray had been under 35006 until it was wheeled out of the shed

Re-fitting 35006's driver's side smoke deflector

Driver's side con rod, temporarily fitted

Fireman's side con rod, on for good.

So to recap, the driver's side con rod has been trial fitted, the fireman's side con rod is now on for the forseeable future, the centre one is waiting its turn for installation.

If you take a look at the timatable for 2015, you'll notice that there are precious few Fridays that we run a regular timetable service, Friday's normally being set aside for footplate experience trains.  This coming Friday is an exception however.  There was supposed to be a car auction taking place on Friday 7th August and to coincide with that, the decision was taken to make the most of the event and add the date to the timetable. As luck would have it, the auction organisers decided to change the date to last Friday, but they made the change after our timetable had been published.  The upshot is that we're committed to running on the 7th, when most people won't be expecting it and when there won't be an event to tie in with.  I mention this as the steam loco on the blue timetable service (including a trip to Laverton on the first round trip) will be crewed by Ian, Chris & myself.  I have visions of there being more people on the footplate than in the carriages so if you're free on Friday, give yourself a treat and come along too, we'll be delighted to see you.

Speaking of Ian, he had been seen applying some sort of coating to the area above one of the cabs on the bubble car, 55003.  It involved mixing varying proportions of ingredients together, which apparently cured very quickly.

Newly recoated bubble car cab roof

This neatly ties in with the fact that the station shop on platform one of Toddington station now has a stock of the Dapol N gauge 122 class bubble cars, number 55003.  If you have a N gauge model railway, or know somebody who has and would appreciate one for their birthday or Christmas, then do pop along and obtain one. They cost £124 and come complete with Broadway and Cheltenham destination blinds.  Stocks of the OO gauge Hornby models of 2807 are running low, so if you're thinking of getting one of those, you'd best be quick. The 2807 models are excellent value at £105 instead of the £143 list price.  I am advised that there are also now supplies of embossed logo GWSR pocket diaries available at £6.50.

And finally, one of the Steam Loco Dept's volunteers is a retired dentist.  He turned up on Wednesday and again on Saturday fully expecting some fallout after the recent "Cecil the lion" incident in Zimbabwe, he wasn't disappointed.  He would like to make it known that he is not the dentist concerned and that he doesn't even own a gun, never mind used one to shoot any lions.  All I can say to that is that I didn't see a single lion all day at Toddington on Saturday, make of that what you will.  The retired dentist concerned was also keen to point out that dentistry is not the career path of choice for traffic wardens who have found that their job doesn't quite fulfill their desires for inflicting pain on other people.  Well we all know that's true, traffic wardens progress on to become politicians.