Latest News
Last night at around midnight, No. 70013 Oliver Cromwell arrived back at Southall Shed after a day out working a Cathedrals Express to Oxford - the City of Dreaming Spires. It had been a hot and sticky sort of day, following on from a hot and sticky sort of week. Wednesday’s highlight included having to pinch-bar the locomotive out of the shed at Southall so that our friendly neighbourhood coal driver from Wolverhampton (the lorry is from Hilton Main Construction, delivering coal from Charlton Whitehouse Fuels) could load coal into the tender ready for the trip. Unfortunately, if the coal lorry arrives early before we have steam up, and there is no diesel driver on site, we have to rely on good old-fashioned sweat, muscle and pinch bars to move the engine outside the shed. Still, it keeps us fit I suppose.
Other highlights of the week included some routine maintenance by David Wright of Locomotive Maintenance Services – David oversees a lot of our engineering work, he is also a valued member of the support crew and a fireman for West Coast Railways. While he was getting ready for the return leg of the trip yesterday he had the opportunity for a little Engineman’s MIC when the gauge glass on 70013 broke; instead of simply changing it himself, he took the trouble to refresh a couple of our support crew in the finer points of gauge-glass installation. Thanks Dave!
I’m not going to say much about the trip to Oxford yesterday, mainly because I have been promised a report from one of the other support crew members who was also on the trip, but he is due to work tomorrow’s trip to Norwich, so it may be a few days before he can put finger to keyboard to send me the promised report.
By Info | Friday, August 14, 2009 | Tags : 70013