Turn 25 - A lot of cleaning and a couple of safety valves

Now that it's August, the railway is running two trains every day, with three round trips each. It's a lot more fun for crews who really need more than two trips to get their hand in each day.

Today, 76084 is due off shed at 09:18, with 92203 heading out around an hour later. I'm there at 5:45 with Fitter Bob, who lights up the 9F while I light up the 4MT. After cleaning the grate, I shovel a layer of coal all over with a bit more at the front, and put a burning rag in one of the back corners. Then, I take a length of timber and wrap a rag around it, lighting the rag inside the firebox from the one I placed in there. I throw the timber towards the front, and repeat until the whole of the grate is covered with burning timber.

The coal catches quickly with the dampers open a little and I shut the firehole door to avoid the worst of the thick smoke.

Next I'm up on the running plates with rags, paraffin & oil, wiping down the paintwork.  This little loco, affectionately called the Pocket Rocket, is small and quickly cleaned and I move onto the tender.

Fitter Bob has lit up the 9F, so when I am done with the 4MT I am straight onto the 9F paintwork - paraffin & oil again, but a much bigger beast.

The paint, particularly on the landward side is in an awful state. CME Kieth tells me that they would probably need £15,000 to get this loco repainted.

After a lot of work, we roll her back to the pit for oiling, blowdown & ashing out.

Blow down leaves a whole glass of boiling water in the pit. It's done every day to discharge scale from the boiler - the blowdown valve is at the front of the firebox just above the foundation ring where all the muck accumulates:

Off she goes, leaving me to clear up the pit and tidy the yard.

Before I get cleaned up, I have to empty the smokebox on the 7F. She's in the shop to have her springs balanced up:

Next, it's strip and service the tamperproof Ross Pop-Type safety valves from the Y14, which has the boiler inspector coming next week. Here they are:

And here is where they have come from:

First we remove the nut and top cap, marking it with paint so we can be sure how it was set. Then we measure the length of the protruding stud, down to the nut, so that we can reassemble the valve and have the setting somewhere near correct.

We mark the dimension on the body of the valve.

Next job is to clean everything using the wire wheel and emery cloth. The valves live inside an enclosure so that from the outside they look much like the Ramsbottom type valve that was originally fitted to these locos when they were first built. They persisted for many years in service and ours is a very late version of an old design - hence the more modern Ross type safety valves.

When they are clean, I mix up some grinding paste to recut the valve seats. After moving the valve against the seat for a while, we soon have an even band of ground metal all the way around - I repeat the process with some 400 grit paste to improve the seat.

More next week!