Turn 44 - Cleaning the WD, shovelling and a burst tube

Wednesday arrives with a 05:15 alarm and a bright sky. I'm off to the railway for a cleaning turn on the WD. Today we have cleaner Nick, and Nathan who is taking the Third Man role today with Fireman Joshua and Driver Josh. 

The WD was out yesterday, so is pretty clean. I climb in the smokebox after I've done the safety checks and shovel out half a barrow of ash - there's not much in there and there's no damage. I uncoil the filthy yard hose to top up the tender, and sort out a couple of discs from the lamp store. 

Nick and Nathan sort out the firebox with a bit of assistance from me on the ash pan handle. They light up and I set about the boiler barrel with some rags and paraffin. 

It's all quite routine, though fitter Bob has a bit of hassle getting the blow down valve moving. I clear the pit while they take coal, and clean the buffer beams while we wait to blow down. 

Horace the mobile crane is in the yard at the moment being overhauled. It's parked on Road 5 and blocks access to the ash dump - except for wheelbarrows. This means we have to barrow the ash from the heap by the ash pit to the dump - and there must be 5m3 of it... 

By the time we've finished that, the first train has brought us our breakfast. 

Fitter Bob has a spanner job for me on the 9F. During steam test, the locomotive has shown what turns out to be two leaks in a single pipe. It comes from this tee:

The pipe goes down to a point just above the running board, where there is a union - the union leaks. The pipe then goes below the running board and forward through two pipe clamps to another tee under the smokebox - the pipe changes from 3/4" to 3/8", goes into a union, across under the smokebox and joins to a valve near the lubricator. It then goes into the lubricator and becomes the steam heat supply for the lubricator. Apparently there had been a further leak coming from beneath the smokebox. 

It was easy to disconnect the first vertical length of pipe and the cause of the first leak was very apparent - the nipple in the first union appeared to have been cross threaded at some point and was very poor.

Removing the horizontal pipe, running forward, was a lot more difficult as it snaked around the large exhaust stem pipe to the fireman's side injector. With a bit of help from fitter Alan, and the removal of another pipe clamp we got it out.

The cross pipe was a different matter. Though I could get to both ends and undo both unions, and despite waiting while fitter Bob removed the rear cylinder cover from the fireman's side it was very difficult to remove the pipe:

The pipe in question was retained on both sides with two brackets attached to a frame stretcher, none of which were accessible with the boiler in place. We considered replacing the pipe and leaving the old one in situ but we really wanted to find the leak.

In the end, I took a tube cutter and removed the middle section of the tube at both ends - we could see where the leak was, by lifting the tube and observing trapped water dripping out. Once I had cut it out the hole was obvious:

I think Bob, Alan and CME Keith were happy to find such a conclusive answer to the steam emanating from under the smokebox. By the time I had this out, it was time to call it a day as I had to be in Holt for signal box training. Maybe I will get to replace this pipe next week.