It's March, just, and that means weekend running with a steam hauled train and a DMU. It's 06:00 and I'm on shed with Fireman Sid, Fitter Alex and new cleaners Brad and John, who are here for their Steam Induction Day. We are rostered to the GER Y14.
It's wet & windy but we are prepared with thick coats, overalls and multiple layers of underwear - there is no way I'm getting cold today! On the running board, Cleaners Brad and John get stuck straight in with a smokebox full of ash from the last run. That's soon sorted, and I demonstrate lighting up - which looks like it has gone well until, despite optimistic popping and fizzing from the boiler the gauge fails to lift.
By this time, Brad and John are polishing the tender and I know something is amiss when one asks "is it OK to polish the cab sides when this overflow is going"...? I look to the injector water valves, which are closed, but it's Fireman Sid who closes the Driver's injector steam valve and it transpires that when I boarded the loco to run through the safety checks with the new cleaners, in my haste to get lit up I didn't complete the routine. The steam heat valve and the small ejector were both open as well, which will all have prevented the boiler pressure rising and the blower working.
But, the steam pressure still wasn't rising - at Sid's prompt I ran the dart though the fire to get some air into it but really the problem was at the back - I had not put enough coal under the door.
Anyhow, we were still off-shed at 08:40, polished up and ready to go though I was feeling a bit of a chocolate fireguard - my contribution was just about limited to cleaning the yellow paint in the cab - Sid had worked his magic on the backhead and brass:
She did look lovely, as she does. She's becoming one of my favourite locos.
Sid fired the first trip, and with a hearty breakfast inside us I did all the hooking on & off, tablet exchange and watering. Since we would have footplate passengers for the third and fourth we couldn't swap roles, so Sid had his only drive of the day on the second trip while I fired.
The second round trip went OK, and I fired more softly than Sid had done - he keeps it at 150 virtually all the time somehow. I started out at 120 with a fair bit of coal on and that had soon recovered by the time we got moving up Dead Man's, and whilst being well under control I blew off leaving Weybourne through being being ready to depart to soon and again coming down, through not having enough water space - leaving the small injector on too long.
The third and fourth trips saw me climbing the steps and going between, when I wasn't trying to avoid the howling gale and rain coming off the sea. Driver Mark likes to use the regulator - we were in second port most of the time and had a particularly spirited light engine run back up to shed. Fireman Sid had the footplate clean on the fourth down, everything tidied away by the time we left the train in Sheringham and we had completed disposal and signed off by 17:20 - a text book example of how to do it.
I haven't mentioned the highlight of the day. In addition to feeding us a fine breakfast with the promise of lunch if we wanted it (Cornish pasties), the buffet team had made some fudge - and very fine it was too.
Next week - another Third Man turn, currently expected to be on the Y14 again, with Driver Paul and Passed Cleaner Pip. Hopefully the weather will be a bit better.
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