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The weekend just gone was the Great Central Railway’s Winter Steam Gala at which No. 30777 “Sir Lamiel” and No. 70013 “Oliver Cromwell” starred. Apart, that is, from Lamiel’s unfortunate and unplanned absence on Friday due to a leaking packing on the boiler water-gauge frame. This is not a major problem and is easy to fix... but as it entails taking the offending fitting off the back-head it can’t be fixed when the boiler is full of water and steam, so although the fault occurred early in the day on Friday, it couldn’t be fixed until the steam had been vented and the boiler partially drained. So Lamiel was absent from the proceedings for all of Friday and Tom finally got the packing fixed quite late on in the evening, but in time for Lamiel to be in traffic for Saturday.
While the two locos were off shed we were able to concentrate on the support coach. On Friday Alan Cooke progressed the brake gear and bogie components. On Saturday we had a group of up to five people working on the coach, so there was a lot of progress: Hugh spent the day on the south end and it is now scraped and primed.
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Allistair and Mark cut, bent, threaded and installed conduit, and Gary spent the afternoon on the coach after a morning on the O4 so there is less rust on various body components, (mostly the door sill on the south-west corner) and I concentrated on the other buckeye which is cleaned and primed.
The Buckeye at the start of the cleaning process
Inside the coach there has been a fair amount of progress since the last bulletin (mostly on Wednesday evenings – Wednesday Night is Work Night): the lino is fitted in the corridor, which means that the sliding doors for the compartments can be re-fitted. More panelling and skirting board is in place and there are progressively fewer components in the cage area.
The corridor, with lino in place (and protective cardboard) and some of the sliding doors in position.
Meanwhile, at a railway away from Loughborough, the Five’s boiler continues to receive stays, which were manufactured by a machining company to Tyseley’s measurement list.
In the nerve-centre (on the mess-room wall) Tom and the team have drawn up job lists for both 70013 and 30777, these lists indicate all of the planned maintenance on each engine. They range from very minor (adjust driver’s wind-shield) to more major such as the recent valve-setting on the Brit. The main thing is that as time passes, the number of crossed out jobs is increasing thanks to the hard work of all the team.