Turn 51 was a day I had been looking forward to for a while, since I was rostered Third Man with Inspector Mike and Fireman Paul - and I knew that Fireman Paul had put in for his driving test. Gossip around the railway suggested that this Wednesday might be the day, especially since Fireman Paul had an assessment turn with Inspector Nick the previous day.
To get to that level, Paul would have spent 60 turns as rostered fireman since becoming a Passed Cleaner; there would have been a verbal interview and five test papers for him to become eligible for assessment to drive, so it was a pretty important day.
For me, this was likely to mean that I would get the whole day on the shovel, and when Inspector Mike turned up at 07:00 he gathered us together to tell us that he would do nothing but watch and see how we got on. Later, he told me that the plan had been to roster a driver on test with an unqualified cleaner who was well advanced in his training to Passed Cleaner, to see how the driver coped.
Fireman Paul got a bit more of a test than he had bargained for, but - and here's a spoiler alert - he was cheerful when he went home having been promoted to 'Passed Fireman' - that is, a qualified Fireman who has passed his Driver's exams and his driving test, but lacks experience of driving.
The day started pretty normally; we were assigned the Y14, which is easy to prepare. Since there has been a new guide to lighting up published which encourages the use of fire irons to clean the grate (rather than getting in the firebox yourself) I decided to use that approach - which works reasonably well and certainly keeps you cleaner and probably safer.
Every day is a school day.
The usual challenge with the Y14 is stopping it making steam too fast, but since it's easy to fire (small firebox, and easy to reach all around it) you can keep it under control if you fire little and often. We tested the brakes, ashed out, and took on coal with no drama, and I tested the injectors in the platform before we went down to Sheringham, while chatting with one of the gardeners (who I happen to know went to the same secondary school as I did, a couple of years ahead of me) about slugs and moles in the station vegetable plot.
The little and often principle seemed to go out the window when I was building the fire for the first trip up. I was firing too heavily - putting too much coal on a cool fire at once, which leads to black smoke and complaints from the neighbours, and cools your fire further. Of course it also cools your boiler, which means you can't feed it with water, the brakes won't release, and your uphill performance is poor...
It's all about planning. You know that a round of coal will take a few minutes to ignite and maybe ten minutes to create any heat, so you put a little bit on, close the box, let it come around and then do it again. Maybe you fire the front first and then the back, and leave the middle if you want to keep the temperature down - you can fill that in when you want instant heat, because you can block up a hole and stop the cold air coming in; if you have overdone it you can shut the damper.
The second and third trips were much better, firing little and often around the box. This was my first experience of a full day on the shovel - I was doing all the firing, pulling coal down, watering, hooking on and off, doing the tablet exchanges and providing the driver's eyes on his blind side. The weather was lovely, a sunny day with a breeze off the sea, but I went through three litres of water, three cups of coffee and two teas in a 12 hour shift. Hot work.
The priming was new experience. Suddenly and without warning the cab windows were spattered with sooty water - the engine was pulling water through with the steam. Priming can be caused by an overfull boiler, but not on this occasion - the elements & salts in the water can cause the water to foam in the boiler, and this lighter foam gets drawn into the regulator and the water condenses out all over the shiny paint and your nice clean windows. We added an anti-foaming agent with every other stop for water and once this started to get through we didn't have another incident.
Paul had a look at my fire at one point - he spotted that I was firing heavily in the left front corner and reminded me in his doleful way that that would lead to clinker later and that I would have a problem sorting it out. This was the beginning of the less fun part of the day...
The fourth trip started well as we rolled out of Sheringham, and I was pleased to have the boiler full and ready for the 1 in 80 hill up Kelling Bank. The up train has a six minute layover at Weybourne while it waits for the down train, and you don't want to over fire which might lead to blowing off while you wait so you fire with a few minutes to go and when you have the 'right away' from the guard you fire again, so the coal is burning as you approach the hill.
One of the things that the fireman must do is to be on top of his game all the time. It's not just about throwing a few shovelfuls of coal on a fire - it's full on activity for 12 hours with only a few minutes break periodically, during which time you can stuff a sandwich in your mouth while you plan the next action.
Unfortunately, it was at this point that I dropped the ball, failing to add enough coal to take us up the hill. As we climbed, the pressure dropped and as we climbed further I didn't open the door to fix problem until we were at the top of the hill - I was worried about making it worse by opening the door. Speaking about it later during debriefing, Paul said that since it's already sucking cold air through the holes you are not going to make it any worse, so just fix the problem as quickly as possible.
He wasn't happy on the way up at all and was really quite exasperated when he was telling me that I must be more proactive in attacking problems like this. I take this criticism on the chin - I signed on to learn how to be a Fireman and I don't have time for people to let me believe I have done the right thing when I haven't!
One of the main indicators you have is what's coming out of the chimney - and where it is coming from. Essentially, if the smoke has gone it's time to fire again but this has to be married to the fact that you don't want to arrive somewhere for a twenty minute stop with a raging fire.
The fourth down trip is all about preparing the engine for disposal, so you must ensure the boiler is full and that you have enough fire to get back to Weybourne and stable the locomotive. I don't usually have much of a problem with this, but today I had really lost the plot and was concentrating on keeping the pressure up at 150 psi and failing to realise that I was building too big a store of energy in the fire that I couldn't get rid of - because I had already filled the boiler and didn't need the steam. Running around the last train she blew off in the headshunt and deafened everyone - the damper was already shut, the boiler was full so I couldn't add cold water to get it under control, and indeed it was so full that it was blowing off water. The loco was blowing off from the Sheringham East headshunt to Dead Man's Hill, probably about a mile, and only recovered because Paul was running in full forward gear to use as much steam as possible.
Anyway, we managed to arrive back on shed for disposal full of water with the fire in reasonable shape. Paul worked fire with the slice and showed me how to break up clinker that I'd caused by overlaying new coal on top of partially burnt coal. He was pretty frank at the debrief, telling me how I'd taken my eye off the ball and that he'd no idea what I'd done at Sheringham. He said that as it's a small loco with a small boiler and a small firebox; it's much more challenging than a big one - no room to make mistakes.
So, did I get what I expected out of the day? I went in hoping to get 4 trips and to do everything, and for Paul to pass his test. I did achieve that and more - Inspector Mike behaved as if he wasn't there and Paul passed his test. At the beginning of the day, Inspector Mike suggested that he would sign off a Full Day on the Shovel (part of my firing test assessment) if things went well. They didn't, and he didn't sign anything off, and that is OK. A full day on the shovel is a great way to find out what being a fireman is all about, and it showed me that being one of two people on the footplate is a lot more fun than just assisting the fireman or maybe firing two trips - and that physically it is perfectly within my capability. I'm definitely getting stronger each time I do this. It teaches you that to do everything, you need to make the jobs fit together - put a round on before you go between to unhook, for example, so the coal is coming around when you are back on the footplate, and in hot weather drinking water is an essential activity - tea is not enough.
And a slightly dodgy turn has reminded me that blogging is highly cathartic!
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