After a bit of a hiccup to the start of the season the engine has run well and all in all done what she has supposed to do. We are now rapidly approaching winter maintenance time with a reasonable list of jobs to do. The current plan is the engine will be out after Christmas doing the mixed traffic days as well as some of the other days to end the year to complete our contracted steaming’s.
Fitted to the side of the Safety Valve are two Clack Valves. These are in effect non return valves that allow water into the boiler but not let steam from the boiler back out. We are going to make some ones as the originals that are in there, where new when we restored the engine originally. However these have been refurbished a couple of times by John Hancock so we are planning some new ones as these bits do wear out.
We also have an issue with the whistle valves leaking Steam so again John H will be looking at these once the season comes to an end. I have also ordered two new sets of Snifting Valves castings from Tysley. These are a very simple job to change as they are located of the two steam supply pipes that come out of the Smokebox and go to the top of the cylinders. These again are leaking and as they are original BR parts we think it might be time to make new ones. The casting will be quite old so it could be there is a crack somewhere so once we have fitted new ones we will look to see if there is any hope of repairing the old ones.
We are also making a couple of new cylinder drain cocks. We have the castings and raw materials and we are getting them machined up as a paid job. The reason is that we have one on the engine that no matter what we do seems to keep blowing by. We are making a couple of new ones so as we can have spares to fit, as its only a few minutes job so as the faulty one can be investigated at leisure whilst the engine is still working.
The engine has been in the shed since the end of September so we have made and fitted a new piece of Steam Heat pipe that sits under the rear half of the tender. We, Nick Peppit and I made this new in the 1990’s and at the very rear it had rusted right through. We have replaced it in Stainless Steel pipe this time and then fitted new lagging and painted it. This pipework had suffered badly from corrosion both inside and out hence the decision to replace in Stainless. Hence we should not need to go back to it as it should not corrode. My original intention was to leave the front half of the tender pipework but decided recently we may as well do the front tender section as well then it is totally completed. This is well advanced, pipe is bent to shape and flanges welded on and should be finished by the end of November. In fact it has to be as it looks as though we might be doing some of the first Santa trains after all as one of the locomotives rostered has developed a valve problem.
Part 2
Since starting to write this, the tender pipework has been fitted and John Hancock and a couple of the GWSR boys are steam testing the engine ready for the weekend 1st & 2nd December.
I have also attached some photo’s of this work, original and now to show what we have done. The last part of the job was to lag the pipework even though it is Stainless we need to lag it in case a member of the crew touched as it burn.
After some deliberation we the 7903 Ltd Directors have also ordered a new set of tyres for the six coupled wheels of the engine plus tyres for the bogie. We are in a position to do this as the bequest left to us by Chris Webb will fund the cost of £21k. Whilst the engine does not need new tyres just yet we have purchased them ready for the day when we will need them as the lead time from South Africa is months not weeks. These will be stored until we need them.