Today was my first cleaning turn at the North Norfolk Railway. I'm doing three pre-arranged 'shadowed' turns where one of the crews for the day agrees to look after the new boy, before I start to be rostered for turns as a normal cleaner.
Today, we are going to be looking after 53809, the ex-Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway 7F, a 2-8-0 tender locomotive designed by Henry Fowler and built at Derby in 1925.
However, it's been raining for days and the NNR's policy in this case is to leave the paintwork alone, so we are in for some light duties, made lighter by the fact that the 7F has been rostered most of the week and will have been cleaned relatively recently.
Signing on at 06:00, Duty Fitter Bob is already there and we are soon joined by 3rd Man Pete, a very jolly fellow indeed. When signing on, you have to read the notices and the log books; there's a few notes about 53809 in the Driver's log - it's blowing on one piston gland and the vacuum ejector is playing up; the Cleaner's log has not been filled in for almost a week so I will do that later.
Getting out into the wet yard and onto the engine, the first thing you do is take ownership of the NTBM board put it on one of the lamp irons. Next, do the safety checks - water gauges, handbrake, reverser, regulator, cylinder cocks etc. You notice that this loco has no steps to climb onto it - to get to the smokebox door entails climbing out of the cab and inching down the narrow boards outside the cab, before you reach the wider running boards to move along the boiler; all well and good until you realise you don't have the spanner for the toggle-latches on this typical Fowler smokebox and have to go back. Indeed, the spanner took a bit of finding until we realised there are two lockers on this tender... When I finally got there, a strategically placed wheelbarrow, a shovel and a torch took care of the smokebox cleaning and inspection, first time I have done that!
Next stop, the cab - and yesterday's crew have left so much wood in there you can hardly swing a shovel. Mustn't complain though, saves me going to get it. We drop the grate, and some work with the fire irons manoeuvring ash and clinker into the pan and we are good to make up the fire. Between us, Pete and I build up the bed of coal. Today the coal is very wet, and there are lots of little bits - not so good. Pete takes the left handed turn & I shovel right handed, as it's good practice to be able to fire both left and right. Soon we have the bed built up and while Pete loads the wood over the top, I go for rags and paraffin.
The Swan matches we have are damp and next to useless - must remember to put a lighter in my bag. Pete uses another few matches in the shelter of the firehole and off it goes.
The fire is important, but the most important thing to a steam engine is water. The tender looks like it is about half full, so I toddle off down the muddy yard to fetch the hose, while Pete climbs up the ladder at the rear of the tender to open the tank. By this time, Driver Martin has appeared, followed closely by Fireman Christian. With all the footplate crew present, it's time for me to resume my normal role, cleaning the engine.
Here, I've got a bucket of paraffin with about 25% steam oil mixed into it, and I've started to polish up the buffer beam and the smokebox door.
3rd Man Pete is on the tender, breaking up lumps of coal. You can see how powdery it is today.
Here's a view of Weybourne Yard, on a quiet Thursday morning. The London Transport Class 20 is rostered with the 7F today.
I don't just sit and write blog posts you know.
Driver Martin wanted an oil can (called an oil feeder) that he could top up the vacuum system oiler with - the one we had was a bit small for steam oil, which has the consistency of thick clear honey when it's cold. So what do you do? Send the Cleaner to go and find one. This little stash is in one of the tender lockers on 90775, the WD 2-10-0; we borrowed that 'NNR' oil feeder for a while and returned it later. In this locker, there is also a spare pair of water gauge glasses and seals, should one break on the road - Fitter Alan later told me all engines carry spares.
Here's the backhead of the 2-10-0, pictured just because I happened to be on the footplate.
The 7F went off-shed about 09:30, and I returned to yard cleaning duties. This is the Cleaner's Store at Weybourne - there are three rag bins, one for dirty rags (for lighting up) one for clean rags (donated clothes mostly), and one for chopped rags. There are also several buckets, brooms, wheel brushes, shovels, bow saws and a special tool for breaking up wooden pallets for the wood store.
I spent the next hour chopping rags up with the guillotine - the bin on the left was full by the time I left.
Before the 7F went off shed (she's on the headshunt, around the corner in this shot) 3rd man Pete and I cleared the ash pit. An easy job for two, and we are only cleaning the ash we have made this morning; yesterdays crew will have cleaned the pit out when they dropped the fire during disposal, yesterday evening.
Two hours later, a Class 37 appeared outside the cleaners store where I was working and dragged the WD away to the ash pit. She left this in my nice clean pit. I spent the next hour cleaning it out again.
I took this nice 'view from an ash pit' shot of the Class 11 shunter. This one, one of the last, was built at BR Darlington works in 1952:
And I found this little chap amongst the mess in the bottom. I fished him out and washed him down, and he hopped off into the fields next door.
And here is the beastie herself, loitering in the yard and waiting for the NNR Mixed Traction Gala, starting the next weekend. She had been out of service for a boiler washout, so she was stone cold. The WD is one of the biggest locos in the heritage railway world and takes 8-9 hours to raise steam from cold, and we had to light a warming fire to get her ready for service the following day. Alan and Bob showed me how to build a warming fire, and I built a bed of coal under the firehole door, loading it up with timber. I took this shot while filling a bucket with rags and paraffin:
The B12 and the J15 are both just inside the shed.
It was coming to the end of the shift now, so I spent a few minutes pottering about the yard, emptying the cleaner's bin and tidying up. I collected a few bits of broken firebar for recycling, one of which I had recovered from the WD ash pile. I told Fitter Alan about this, and learned that these things are disposable - he had just replaced one on the WD, so who knows where the other half of it went:
So that's it. At the end of the shift, about 13:00, Duty Fitter Bob signed off my log sheet to record what I had done that day, and I took the Cleaner's Log down to the store to fill it in, and went home for a shower and some lunch.
Next, in a few weeks time, we have a Mutual Improvement Class on Loco Preparation and Disposal and I have another cleaning turn a week or so later.
Bring it on.
Today, we are going to be looking after 53809, the ex-Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway 7F, a 2-8-0 tender locomotive designed by Henry Fowler and built at Derby in 1925.
However, it's been raining for days and the NNR's policy in this case is to leave the paintwork alone, so we are in for some light duties, made lighter by the fact that the 7F has been rostered most of the week and will have been cleaned relatively recently.
Signing on at 06:00, Duty Fitter Bob is already there and we are soon joined by 3rd Man Pete, a very jolly fellow indeed. When signing on, you have to read the notices and the log books; there's a few notes about 53809 in the Driver's log - it's blowing on one piston gland and the vacuum ejector is playing up; the Cleaner's log has not been filled in for almost a week so I will do that later.
Getting out into the wet yard and onto the engine, the first thing you do is take ownership of the NTBM board put it on one of the lamp irons. Next, do the safety checks - water gauges, handbrake, reverser, regulator, cylinder cocks etc. You notice that this loco has no steps to climb onto it - to get to the smokebox door entails climbing out of the cab and inching down the narrow boards outside the cab, before you reach the wider running boards to move along the boiler; all well and good until you realise you don't have the spanner for the toggle-latches on this typical Fowler smokebox and have to go back. Indeed, the spanner took a bit of finding until we realised there are two lockers on this tender... When I finally got there, a strategically placed wheelbarrow, a shovel and a torch took care of the smokebox cleaning and inspection, first time I have done that!
Next stop, the cab - and yesterday's crew have left so much wood in there you can hardly swing a shovel. Mustn't complain though, saves me going to get it. We drop the grate, and some work with the fire irons manoeuvring ash and clinker into the pan and we are good to make up the fire. Between us, Pete and I build up the bed of coal. Today the coal is very wet, and there are lots of little bits - not so good. Pete takes the left handed turn & I shovel right handed, as it's good practice to be able to fire both left and right. Soon we have the bed built up and while Pete loads the wood over the top, I go for rags and paraffin.
The Swan matches we have are damp and next to useless - must remember to put a lighter in my bag. Pete uses another few matches in the shelter of the firehole and off it goes.
The fire is important, but the most important thing to a steam engine is water. The tender looks like it is about half full, so I toddle off down the muddy yard to fetch the hose, while Pete climbs up the ladder at the rear of the tender to open the tank. By this time, Driver Martin has appeared, followed closely by Fireman Christian. With all the footplate crew present, it's time for me to resume my normal role, cleaning the engine.
Here, I've got a bucket of paraffin with about 25% steam oil mixed into it, and I've started to polish up the buffer beam and the smokebox door.
3rd Man Pete is on the tender, breaking up lumps of coal. You can see how powdery it is today.
Here's a view of Weybourne Yard, on a quiet Thursday morning. The London Transport Class 20 is rostered with the 7F today.
I don't just sit and write blog posts you know.
Driver Martin wanted an oil can (called an oil feeder) that he could top up the vacuum system oiler with - the one we had was a bit small for steam oil, which has the consistency of thick clear honey when it's cold. So what do you do? Send the Cleaner to go and find one. This little stash is in one of the tender lockers on 90775, the WD 2-10-0; we borrowed that 'NNR' oil feeder for a while and returned it later. In this locker, there is also a spare pair of water gauge glasses and seals, should one break on the road - Fitter Alan later told me all engines carry spares.
Here's the backhead of the 2-10-0, pictured just because I happened to be on the footplate.
The 7F went off-shed about 09:30, and I returned to yard cleaning duties. This is the Cleaner's Store at Weybourne - there are three rag bins, one for dirty rags (for lighting up) one for clean rags (donated clothes mostly), and one for chopped rags. There are also several buckets, brooms, wheel brushes, shovels, bow saws and a special tool for breaking up wooden pallets for the wood store.
I spent the next hour chopping rags up with the guillotine - the bin on the left was full by the time I left.
Before the 7F went off shed (she's on the headshunt, around the corner in this shot) 3rd man Pete and I cleared the ash pit. An easy job for two, and we are only cleaning the ash we have made this morning; yesterdays crew will have cleaned the pit out when they dropped the fire during disposal, yesterday evening.
Two hours later, a Class 37 appeared outside the cleaners store where I was working and dragged the WD away to the ash pit. She left this in my nice clean pit. I spent the next hour cleaning it out again.
I took this nice 'view from an ash pit' shot of the Class 11 shunter. This one, one of the last, was built at BR Darlington works in 1952:
And I found this little chap amongst the mess in the bottom. I fished him out and washed him down, and he hopped off into the fields next door.
And here is the beastie herself, loitering in the yard and waiting for the NNR Mixed Traction Gala, starting the next weekend. She had been out of service for a boiler washout, so she was stone cold. The WD is one of the biggest locos in the heritage railway world and takes 8-9 hours to raise steam from cold, and we had to light a warming fire to get her ready for service the following day. Alan and Bob showed me how to build a warming fire, and I built a bed of coal under the firehole door, loading it up with timber. I took this shot while filling a bucket with rags and paraffin:
The B12 and the J15 are both just inside the shed.
It was coming to the end of the shift now, so I spent a few minutes pottering about the yard, emptying the cleaner's bin and tidying up. I collected a few bits of broken firebar for recycling, one of which I had recovered from the WD ash pile. I told Fitter Alan about this, and learned that these things are disposable - he had just replaced one on the WD, so who knows where the other half of it went:
Next, in a few weeks time, we have a Mutual Improvement Class on Loco Preparation and Disposal and I have another cleaning turn a week or so later.
Bring it on.
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