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The 5305 Locomotive Association are very proud that we have been chosen to look after three national collection engines therefore it is very nice to hear that today (Friday 30th January 2009) is not only the first day of the Great Central Railway’s 2009 Winter Steam Gala. But it is also National Railway Museum Day at the GC with motive power provided by three NRM engines - two of which are locomotives in our care: No. 70013 “Oliver Cromwell” and No. 30777 “Sir Lamiel”, the third is O4 No. 63601, which isn’t in our care – our third charge is the Class 33 diesel No. D6535. It is planned that over the rest of the weekend, the three NRM steam locos will be joined by other engines from a pool of seven engines at the GCR. (Full details on the GCR’s website, just follow the link in the side bar.)
Since returning to Loughborough we have had the opportunity to carry out various minor-but-important pieces of maintenance on the NRM two locomotives which spent the summer on the Main Line, among these tasks was adjusting the valve setting on Cromwell, which had been slightly off-beat since she first entered traffic at the GCR last May. Dick Hardy’s comment when he rode with us to Norwich in the summer was along the lines of “we had one like that at Norwich when I was in charge, it was one of the best”. Despite his kind words, both Kevin and Tom wanted to adjust the valves to make it right, but this type of adjustment is not best suited to “field engineering” so we had to wait until she was back at Loughborough.