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This week saw a major milestone in progress on the support coach when it was put back on its own (newly overhauled) bogies instead of the frankly elderly accommodation bogies which have been holding it for the last year.


As is the case with all things railway, there was no straight path to the goal; the main event began with a huge Loughborough Mega-Shunt. The shunt had three main aims: to re-arrange bits of Oliver Cromwell in place for work to be done this coming week, to dig out a coach for the traffic department so that it could be sent to the C&W department for attention, and to get coach and its bogies in place ready for re-wheeling, which meant moving everything out of the middle road in the shed, including various motion rods for the Standard 5 which are stored across the track at the back of the shed. Moving the bogies meant pushing them by hand, one of them had to go all the way up three-road out of the way for a while, and then come back (uphill!) ready for use.


Once the shunt was complete, we ‘just’ had to position the jacks, the lifting beams and the control box for the jacks. Each jack took three people to wheel it around, the beams need four or so people to lift them and the control box can (just) be moved by two people so long as you don’t want to steer it at all.


Once the jacks and beams were in place it should have been relatively straight-forward, but a minor electrical problem in the control box meant that Mark who was at home with ‘Flu got a telephone call begging him to come in and help us. The actual re-wheeling went relatively smoothly and was completed by early evening. Seeing the coach on proper bogies was a great reward for tired people who then had to put everything away – so ‘just’ taking the beams & jacks out of the way, re-shunting the yard and moving the motion rods back into the shed. Thanks to Kevin, Gary, Jim, Chris, Hugh, Mark, Alison, Tom, Ash, Robin, Andy, Alan, Gerry and Jamie (and everyone else who was on shed yesterday – I think that everyone got involved at one time or another.)


Meanwhile Alan, Alex, Gerry, Amy, Jamie and Fred (and probably others who I’ve missed out) were busy painting various bits of Cromwell’s tender, cladding and cab, and very smart it is starting to look, too. Alan bought himself a new air-sander after the last one bit the dust at Easter and it’s been getting a work-out preparing the cladding sheets. There is a limit to what I can say about painting – well, actually there isn’t I could go into exhaustive detail, but there is certainly a limit to what you are going to want to read about paint drying so I’ll leave it at that.


Andy the Webmaster has made some changes to the website which allow me to add pictures to news articles, so here is a photo of Kevin in charge of the jacking operation.



 

By Info | Sunday, March 30, 2008 | Tags : 70013


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