A surprise this week - after a message from Cleaner Nathan, I found that my cleaning turn was to be a third man turn and it would also be my first turn on the newly-released Fowler 7F. Two years ago, doing my first cleaning turn I prepared this loco for service and apart from disposing it before it went into the workshop for 18 months, had not touched it since.
Now released from the workshop with extensive work done on the springs, it is back in traffic and performing very well.
It’s got the typical Fowler pattern smoke box with six toggles & nuts retaining the door, and a between the frames grate, steeply sloped, with a dropping section and one damper. It lights up quite easily.
Her paint is in lovely condition and she really responds to the oil & paraffin treatment:
Here’s the view of the office:
This week, I was on the footplate with Driver John, who I know and Fireman Paul, who I didn’t. I handed over the steam raising to Paul until it was time to ash out, and Paul took us down to Sheringham for breakfast.
Paul fired the first and second trips, which were accompanied by a footplate visitor Terry, who looks after the Permanent Way on the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway. The trips were interesting - the loco is very coal hungry and the first trip resulted in an unexpected stop on Dead Man’s Hill when the vacuum suddenly disappeared pulling the train brakes on. I was spattered with water, and we put the experience down to water carrying over into the brake ejector steam feed.
I took over at Holt on the second trip down. We’d got some tips from new Driver Paul, who has a wealth of firing experience and has taught me many things in the last couple of years and so I knew that I had to build up the back, the middle and to avoid letting the front get too thin. My first up trip worked well enough, but it was a bit light and I resolved to ladle on more coal on the second trip. I also discovered that the firehole door, used to control the secondary air, would close itself as you rattled along.
Back in Sheringham, I had the loco ready to go controlling the pressure on the injectors - 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off and was ready to go. Fireman Paul had a look at the fire and said to fill the back up more; I planned to do that as we moved off. As usual, I followed the experienced man’s guidance and later wished I hadn’t - there is a theme developing here. I shovel a lot of coal into the back of the grate and we moved off, only to blow off as we passed the box.
This time, the effect was horrendous. Opening the regulator to speed up raised the water level further, and the water level was already very high - in the top nut of the gauge glass as I had been keeping the pressure under control on the injectors. Unfortunately, unlike all the other locos at the NNR the brake ejector steam feed is very close to the top of the gauge glass:
The effect of this is to introduce water into the ejector when the level is too high. This doesn’t happen on other locos because the ejector steam feed is taken from a manifold at the very top of the boiler, or at least from the crown itself - or from the steam dome. New Driver Paul says this ejector takes steam directly at a point above the gauge, so as soon as the water level gets too high the brakes will come on.
We were sitting stationary on the level crossing, blowing off, for several minutes. The most embarrassing and infuriating experience of my railway career.
Two things spring to mind here. One, you must not fire this loco with the water level above the top of the glass; secondly, be very wary when people take control of your fire. Whilst the water level was high due to my action, we probably wouldn’t have suffered from it if we hadn’t been blowing off - my plan was to use the water as I normally do on the way up Dead Man’s and to fire as I needed to…
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