The Perils of Grubby Gloves

Once again, events (well OK, the day job) conspired to prevent me getting to Toddington on Saturday.  I went along on the rather quieter (in terms of volunteer activities) Sunday to catch up with what was going on.

It turned out to be a rather important day for Eleanor, as it was her first official fireman training session.  I say "fireman", I didn't ask her if she would prefer to be known as a firewoman or perhaps fireperson instead.  You can't be too careful in these politically correct times.  Tina was her instructor, and she does prefer to be called a fireman.

Eleanor checks Foremarke Hall's smokebox, Tina watches on.

 Some time later, Foremarke Hall was off down the line:

As usual, driver Andy opened the drain cocks as he set off...

...in fact he kept them open most of the way to the signal box...

 It was a nice clear and fairly crisp day, excellent for lineside photography. 

They can see where they're going at last

It transpired that David Hasselhoff (one time star of Baywatch & Knight Rider) was around and filming some sort of promotional item, which appeared on various forms of social media later. Much has been made of the fact on a certain popular social media site, that Eleanor failed to reciprocate the high five that David Hasselhoff offered.  Upon questioning afterwards, she had no idea who this strange man might be (curiously Baywatch wasn't required viewing for her) and she didn't think that he would be too keen on making contact with the rather grubby gloves that she was wearing.  She also thought that he was having the same thoughts as he too pulled back when he noticed the gloves.  I suggested to Eleanor that a good title for this blog post might be "Babewatch", but I received the sort of frosty glare more usually reported in Kelvin than Centigrade which suggested that there may be better alternatives if I was to just think a little bit harder.

Mike kindly forwarded a few photos of work that had taken place on 3850 to prepare it for lifting off of its wheels:

Sam (l) & Roger removing a spring from 3850 (photo courtesy of Mike Solloway)

At the end of Saturday, a collection of 6 removed springs (photo courtesy of Mike Solloway)

Almost everything required has been taken off now to permit removal of the wheels.

All the coupling rods are now off

 I had hoped that the cracked cylinder block might just have been a bad dream, but with the front running plate now completely removed, it was entirely obvious that it was real and went all the way from top to bottom of the casting.

Ouch.

Roger was back again on the Sunday too, and together we made more progress with 3850's boiler.

Roger wielding an angle grinder with wire brush attachment

The backhead is slowly getting there.

 You may remember that I recently failed to remove a couple of the safety valve retaining studs, which obstinately refused to budge for love nor money.  After lunch, with rejuvenated brute force and an ample helping of ignorance, I rejoined battle with the last two studs.

The two recalcitrant studs

 In spite of its complete obstinacy last time round, this time, the first stud pretty much threw in the towel straight away and came out with hardly a whimper.  The final one put up a little bit more of a fight, but again, nothing like last time.  Maybe I'd had three shredded wheat for breakfast and forgotten about it.

And then there was one.

 And finally, I coaxed the last one out.

Victory at last

  There will doubtless be many more such little victories to be won before 3850 steams again, but it was enormously satisfying.

I noticed that both 3850's & 2874's vacuum cylinders had been removed

Inside the shed, Chey took it upon himself to make himself useful by disposing of the ash on the grates and in the smoke boxes of 4270, Dinmore Manor and 35006.

Chey clears ash out of 4270's smoke box

 Sunday is usually the day that the Cotswold Diesel Railcar (DMU) group get on with restoring bubble car 55003, but on this occasion, they were rather thin on the ground.

55003

 The list of jobs to be done was posted nearby

The to do list

 One of the statements amused me.

I guess that rules me out then

 Ash and his dad spent some of their time working on Mavis (one of the diesel shunters) which is coming back to life.   Quite why it had a teddy bear on its buffer beam though defeated me.

If you go down in the shed today....

 Ash was for a while to be seen wandering about with his mobile phone in his mouth and didn't manage to remove it quickly enough when I got my camera out.

Poor lad must have been hungry.

 And finally, at the end of the month (Sat October 29th) we'll be having our annual "Steam & Scream" Halloween themed event.  As you might expect, posters have been appearing advertising it.

Steam & Scream

 Check out the opening paragraph a little more carefully:

That's right, you'll go from Toddington to Winchcombe via Greet tunnel, now that really would be spooky.   I'll alert the chaps over at Ordnance Survey, they'll need to update their maps.

It was nice to note that the image used at the bottom, was a variation of Donna's 5542 artwork, complete with a pumpkin doubling as a headlamp.

PFP... Planet's Favourite Pumpkin