Spring Gala - Loco Cleaning Day

 It must be Spring, as we are all on shed on a Thursday cleaning locos. Tomorrow is the start of the three day Spring Steam Gala, where there will be five steam locos operating over the whole day - the first train is off shed at 07:46 and the last is back on shed at 23:14, as there is a Murder Mystery train in the evening, and they all need to be prepared and warmed up.

There's maybe 12-15 of us here, and we have six engines to clean as one, the WD, will be the reserve loco. There's a lot of shunting going on as well as the shed staff shuffle the engines around to get them in the right position to take their first turn in the morning. 

I take the Standard 4MT with Fireman Richard and Cleaner Nick, and we spend the whole day on it, cleaning stuff that doesn't usually get any attention on a normal service day. She looks very smart when we are done; this shot was taken during a move and you can see we hadn't touched the chassis or the motion at that point:

The visiting Ivatt 2MT 41241 wears a maroon livery to commemorate the 50th anniversary of it's release from BR to the KWVR; when it arrived at the KWVR in 1968, BR would not permit it to wear a BR livery, though it has been in lined BR black for most of it's life. It makes a change to have a different livery, but I'm not sure I like it...

Here's Driver Dave and Fitter Tom on the footplate of the Ivatt, building the warming fire. Driver Dave lit all the warming fires during the day, and they would be tended overnight by the shed staff and by some early-start cleaners:

There's actually a fair bit of space to swing a shovel in there, but I bet there will be coal on the floor for most of the day when it's in service:

One of the things I rarely get to do is make a decent job of the characteristic injector pipework on a normal service day - there just isn't time before they get too hot. Today however is different. this is the 'before' picture:

And this is after an hour or so. The trick is to attack the injector bodies with paraffin and a wire brush, and then use emery and Scotchbrite, followed by Brasso, on the pipes. It's OK, but I could have done a lot more. There's a lot of scale on the pipes where water from the slacker pipe drain drops onto the hot steam supply pipe. This is quite capable of blunting emery tape and takes a lot of removing.

And after a day in the wind, getting mucky and covered in paraffin? Pub o'clock.

Picture unashamedly nicked from Inspector Joe. I'm sure he won't mind.