Turn 53 - Third Man on the B12 - and lunch

 This month, I have been mostly collecting Steam Inspectors. To complete the set, I volunteered to roster with Inspector Ben, who was down to drive a lunch train on Sunday.

Lunch trains are a bit unusual. The timetable goes something like this:

• You go off-shed about 10:30, an hour after the service train - so potentially you don't have to arrive until 07:00
• You go down to Sheringham and hook on to the dining set in platform 3, which you have to heat in the winter
• At 11:30 or so, you shunt the set into platform 1 to pick up the passengers - you had better not have overdone the fire on the way down, and you hopefully will have left some water space because it is now an hour since you left shed. No-one will thank you for sitting there blowing off at that time on a Sunday morning.
• You leave at 12:00 for a gentle non-stop trip up to Holt, where you wait for 25 minutes for the previous service train to depart and another to arrive
• You go down to Sheringham, repeat the 25 minute wait, and then you go up to Holt again for another 25 minute wait.
• You take the passengers, who have had their dinner by now, back to Sheringham keeping the fire low and the water up while you try and eat your dinner at the same time
• You arrive at Sheringham and sit in platform 1, keeping the fire going and the water topped up for 30 minutes while another two service trains come in and out
• You head up to Weybourne, light engine, via the water crane and dispose the locomotive

So, a lunch train timetable is a good lesson in controlling your firing and boiler water levels, anticipating waiting around for long periods. There are only two trips so it is a gentle day out but you must keep you enthusiasm under control and your shovel light.

The next thing is, the lunch train is unlikely to be hauled by a loco that has been in service recently. We were assigned the B12 - here she is:

She had just been in the shop for a water change and Fitter Alan had prepared her the previous day - she was brimful of coal and water, the smokebox was spotless and the firebox had the remains of a small warming fire in it.

I didn't have much to do, so I lit her up as normal. Wrong!

I turned up about 06:45, to make sure I had time to light her up myself - I wish I had got there a bit earlier. I laid a reasonably thick fire with a lot of wood which caught, as it usually does, quite successfully - but as it was a cold loco, there was no natural draft at all and the fire was belching black acrid smoke into the cab. Another time, I think I will start earlier with a thinner fire near the front and let that catch before I add to it.

Having said that, laying that fire did prove that my new, smaller shovel with the 42" handle is perfect for this loco.

Anyway, as I always say, every day is a school day. With the fire under way, and the 9F lit up next door - she was the service engine that day, I went to make a round of tea. This involved getting back in the car and heading back to Sheringham to buy some milk.

On the way, I took this picture - it's the data recorder from the 4MT, which is the only loco certified for the mainline. The data recorder is out as the tender needs some welding repairs - these delicate electronics are always removed prior to any welding work.

Next job, tea.

I spent the next couple of hours cleaning and polishing with Fireman Robert, until it was time to get changed and go down to Sheringham. We'd agreed that he would fire the first trip and me the second, and that whoever was firing would call the signals etc., so the first trip was pretty relaxing for me.

Taking over the fireman's role as we arrived in Sheringham, with 25 minutes to go I had a look around and could see holes forming, so I repaired them with the odd shovelful here and there to keep the fire warm. Once the service train had gone, we ran around and I put another round on; then another as we neared departure time.

Firing up on the second trip, the boiler was sitting gently making steam at 150-160 psi. On the B12, this is a sure sign of a hole. As we left Sheringham we had a little over half a glass and of course I wanted the gauge in the top quarter before we attempted the hill. I put the injector on as we crested Dead Man's, but Driver Ben encouraged me to leave it off until the fire had recovered a bit more - the injectors will work more efficiently with higher pressures.

By the time we got to Weybourne we were heading towards 180 psi and I had my three-quarters glass, so the trip up the hill was pretty relaxing, I even sat down for a bit! However, she wasn't making steam very quickly and she was obviously breathing cold air - three shovels across the front fixed that and we went off up Kelling Bank quite happily.

We took a couple of young guests on a footplate ride as we ran around at Holt, so I had to leave the fire alone. When Fireman Robert reappeared, he brought three roast pork lunches with him from the kitchen, a rare treat! I shovelled that down while building the fire for the trip down - a new challenge.

Firing down was no problem, just a question of keeping it topped up while making sure that we would be ready for disposal - but this time, we would have a half-hour wait at Sheringham before the line would be clear to go back up to Weybourne, so I would not be adding too much fire or water on the way down - I would need water space for the wait in Sheringham. 

When we arrived, she was just about making steam and I had over half a glass in, so I could sort out the fire when I was ready - we also had to take on water, so I would need to accommodate that time as I built the fire up.

Back on shed, driven up by Fireman Robert, I riddled through the fire with the bent dart, finding a few saucer sized bits of clinker in the back corners - probably why it had been slow to light up just there. We used the rake to go over the rest of the bars and it was pretty clean. 

While filling the boiler, I learned a new tip from Driver Ben - that if I filled past the top nut while we were still on the pit he had no way of knowing where the water level was. If it was high enough to allow the engine to prime (getting water in the main steam pipe to the cylinders), that could easily lead to an accident since the loco would be difficult or impossible to stop - and the shed doors were only 100 yards away. It's much safer to fill high in the glass and leave the last fill until the loco is in it's stabling position.

At the end, Driver Ben's comment was that I could fire to a 'reasonable standard' - it was my first turn with him, and I take that as a compliment. He said the next level was to become a lazy fireman - similar to Driver Josh's comments a few days ago, which means to get more efficient, don't fire on the run so much, fire consistently without having to adjust the dampers or adjust the feedwater reactively - and sit down occasionally.

Bring it on I say.