Turn 96 - Fireman on the Y14

A beautiful sunny Norfolk morning greeted us at 05:00 when Fitter Bob and I turned up to prepare the GER Y14 for a charter train involving an empty coaching stock trip to Holt, a down trip full of young passengers from Gresham's Prep School on a trip to the sea side, a lot of shunting in Sheringham yard and a later round trip to return the children to Holt.

The Y15 had been in service all week and was nice and warm, with a smokebox full of ash and a full boiler. There was no third man, so it was left to me to prepare and clean the loco until Driver Christian turned up. Lighting up went well with little smoke, and I had plenty of time to clean the boiler paintwork and run over the cab glass and paint.

With a bucket full of oil I painted the smokebox to shine it up, while Inspector Nick, who was there to observe my performance, added the bunting and name board: 

She looked pretty grand when we were done. We got off shed on time and in good shape, and went down to Sheringham to pick up the stock. 

The first trip up was scheduled to leave more or less straight away, and I had a good fire and a full boiler. We ran up the hill, with Inspector Nick reminding me that we would be travelling non stop through Weybourne. Normally I fire just as we are about to leave Weybourne, and maybe again over the crossover - but of course on a non stop there is no time for the new coal to catch and I ended up too light after Weybourne, low on water and I had to recover at Holt. Actually I was recovering on the way up, but the experience served to show me that I could have handled the trip more efficiently as the pressure was down to 120 psi before it started to come around. 

Back in Sheringham we had a sit-down breakfast, and I had a chat with Nick who suggested I fire more and earlier, perhaps on the way in to Weybourne to make life easier and give myself less to worry about. 

The middle of the day involved some moves around the yard and a bit of shunting. The fire had burned through substantially during breakfast and I built it up such that it could be held at 100-120 during day. This I later realised was way too low and would have been better at 130-140.

When the children returned from their day on the beach, I built the fire for the second up trip and made sure I had the boiler full. I carefully watched the water level on the way up to Dead Man's, firing on the way down with the injector on and we had plenty of pressure on the first 1 in 80. I ran the injector on as we went into Weybourne and fired again on the curve around Weybourne up home, switching off the injector as we ran into the station. With the fire coming around and the water level high I used injectors to control pressure until 300, and ran up the hill. The injectors went on again approaching Wind Pump. Arrived at top with 3/4 glass and 135 psi, which was a whole lot better than the previous trip. 

Driver Christian commented that it was like having a 'different fireman'. 

We stopped in platform 2, and the kids spilled off the train waving goodbye as they went. I must have given a hundred sooty 'high fives' from my seat. 

We were due to be relieved by the evening crew who were running a Driver Experience so I kept the fire hot and the water high on way down. All day I had tried to allow the loco to blow off rather than over filling and risking damage.

Back in the yard, we cleaned down the ash pan before handing over to Driver Foz and Fireman Ralph for the evening turn.

Turn 95 - Cleaning the 9F, and the YDC on the Y14

The Passed Cleaner - Fireman training schedule that I'm now following requires that I perform four cleaning turns, which is nothing in a training schedule that will last a year or two. I fulfil that requirement by booking a cleaning turn on the third Saturday of the month, which allows me to help with the railway's Youth Development Club as well. 

Today, I'm also in another of my roles, that of Steam Department Minder, and I've collected new cleaner Amey from the volunteers accommodation along with rostered Third Man Henry. 

We've got the 9F today, and Third Man Henry lights her up until Fireman Robert arrives. 

Amey and I assist with prep, collecting more wood and rags and cleaning the paint. 

There's half an hour to kill before breakfast arrives, so we take the tools from the cleaning store and break up some pallets. 

Fitter Alan thoughtfully moves the loader to save us having to barrow the cut wood back to the store. 

For the rest of the day, we will be cleaning the Y14 with the YDC. While the children are getting ready, we shunt the loco over the pit. 

The job today is to divide the kids into groups and get the motion properly clean. Other groups will be working on the LowMac and clearing  the ash pile. We start from the running boards, two people on each side cleaning as much as we can with paraffin and wheel brushes from above while a second group polishes up the boiler, cab and tender.

Next, with a couple of ladders we move into the pit and wipe it all down with rags, getting into the difficult corners with paint brushes. 

It looks great when we are finished and while the kids are tidying away we move the loader and empty the wood into the store. The children are leaving for Sheringham on the third down train, and I go and wave them off while Alan stables the Y14.

A great day out.

Turn 94 - Third Man on the 9F

A fine Wednesday morning appears as I rock up to Weybourne for a Third Man turn on the 9F. I light up and raise steam without smoking out the yard too much, though she is quite cool - there has been a warming fire in yesterday which was last fed at 17:30; we don't need to blow down as she has just been washed out.

Fireman Phil leaves me to attend to the fire and the cab, and I feed the fire as it makes it way slowly backwards toward the door. I'm not sure if this is a good strategy as it seems to carry on smoking for quite a while, not thickly, but Driver Paul has a look and doesn't say anything - it can't be too bad!

By the time we are ready to get changed, I have the boiler in a happy place:

Phil takes over the shovel, and I spend the rest of the day hooking on, watering, handling the tablet, calling signals and going for tea. 

I fire one trip - the third - while Phil drove.

During the day, I made 3 mistakes:

• As there was a lunch train running, sometimes the station (usually Holt) would be blocked by a running around loco as we left Weybourne - this entails going into the section under the Warning arrangement, and one time this happened I forgot to pass the signalman's message to the driver.
• When going between with another train alongside, I went to the drivers side to climb down - not a good idea when the adjacent train is about to move. To be fair to myself, on the previous trip I had waited until the adjacent lunch train left before I climbed down.
• When I fired my one trip, I arrived at Holt with the water too low as I failed to get the injector on properly, and the fire had a hole which meant the pressure was too low as well

I think I shall take up knitting.

Turn 93 - Fireman on the WD

Third firing turn, on a Friday for a change.  Driver Dave and I have the WD, and since I know there is no Third Man I arrive at 06:00 to get the Old Lady lit up - she takes awhile sometimes. Checking the smokebox, I find virtually nothing there which looks a bit odd, but might be the coal we have at the moment; there's half a glass in the boiler which is typical of the WD, whose regulator doesn't always close too well.

So, with a lot of wood I lit up with a big fire at the front, widening it and moving it back as it warmed up. Although she had been in service the day before, I was surprised how quickly the needle lifted off the stop

The smoke wasn't too bad either!

When Driver Dave had finished oiling up we had about 80 psi, so we removed the NTBM board and checked our brakes before going onto the pit to test the injectors and blow down.

A check of the ash pan revealed plenty of space, and I tested the sprinklers whilst refilling the boiler. We moved back for coal - two scoops from the loader, with a fair bit of nutty coal and dust in amongst the fist-sized lumps. I was surprised to find the coaling plate and tender door on the WD doesn't seem to spill coal on the floor like the 9F, and the floor remained clean all day.

I had the boiler in the top quarter by the time we moved off-shed, and having had a few turns to get used to this coal, built a light fire to take us down - it was 09:15 and we were on time. In Sheringham, we had 20 minutes to sit and eat at one of the tables before I had to build the fire to take us up.

Throughout the day, I fired a heavy back end though not up to the door, making sure that I had the front and sides well covered at all times - this grate goes thin on the sides, just back from the front corners when I fire it and I was pleased to see it doing this all day - my firing was quite consistent. We had four great trips, apart from the third up, where I had left the two back corners too thin and it was only just 200 psi by the time we crested Wind Pump - the rest of the day it was sitting at 220 or pushing the red line, and the water very high in the glass.

Why keep the water in the top nut and the boiler pressure on the red line? Because I over-fire and have to use water to keep it under control, basically. All very well on this loco, but can have a disastrous effect on the 7F, where you will stop the ejector working.

Maybe I need to impose a lower water level on myself and let it blow off when it wants to, if I let it get too hot. Maybe that way I will learn not to overdo it.

Anyhow, a couple of other things to mention today - someone told me a while back that the water gauge valve on the tender had been fixed - the water gauge on the WD is basically a vertical pipe with holes in it, bent at the top, with a plug valve at the bottom You turn the bent bit to open the valve and fill the gauge with water, and then the water dribbles out of the holes to show you how full the tender is, like this:

Very simple and cheap, unless the valve fails - then you lose all the water in the tender. Maybe not so clever, but very fitting on an Austerity locomotive.

Another feature of the locomotive footplate is the crew wash room - a bucket of clean water, some coal-tar soap for that authentic '40's smell and a bottle of washing up liquid to clean the floor, or to shift greasy stains from the hands. The water is cold, but you can always warm it up with the slacker pipe if you don't mind washing your hands in tannin.

Back in Sheringham, Driver Dave checks the big ends and coupling rod bearings:

We arrived back on shed for disposal with 200 psi on the clock, to which I added a bit by firing to a couple of holes when we arrived, and a full boiler. The fire was pretty thin and the current batch of coal disposes easily as it doesn't clinker but breaks down into small lumps of ash - good for disposal but not so good if you are trying to avoid lineside fires, but I had kept the sprinkler going for most of the day.

Stabling the loco, we found the usual WD problem - the regulator passes steam, as witnessed by the steam passing through the open drain cocks - which explains why you arrive in the morning to find the boiler half empty. I know that I left it full over the top nut, but apparently when the crew arrived next morning there was 1/4 of a glass left...

In the end though, it was a cracking day out. No disasters, boiler full all the time and boiler pressure on the mark the whole day.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Turn 92 - Fireman on the 7F

Here we are again, a couple of days later and I'm at the railway at 06:00 and the car park is mysteriously full. It turns out there is a lot going on - the 4MT is out on a training day for the Cromer crews, due off shed at 09:00 and Fitters Alan and Alex have been here since 05:00 fixing the ash pan screen on the 7F, which is causing some concern.

There is a tense atmosphere, not least from Driver Paul who is already here; I learn that we will have no Third Man today as Fitter Alan, who was due out with us, will run out of hours since he has been here since 05:00.

The 7F is a loco with which I am not very familiar - I've done 2 third man turns on it, including 5 trips up and 4 trips down reasonably successfully though I know the safety valves will drop 20 psi before re-seating - so blowing off loses a lot of water and coal, and I know that the water level is critical to the operation of the ejectors - get it too high and the brakes will come on. The first time I fired this, I was encouraged to build the back end up really well and this resulted, with the addition of my inexperienced hand in the train grinding to a halt on the AOCL. This will be the first time I have fired the first up trip on this loco which can be a challenge on any loco...

Anyhow, let's get on with it. Fitter Alan has cleaned the smokebox, but Fitter Alex is still in the four foot laying in the mud under the loco fitting the ash pan screen. When he comes out, I go and light up with a lot of wood and rags on top of a little coal, under the rear edge of the arch more or less in the middle of the length of the grate.

Wrong. For the first time today, I have incurred the wrath of Driver Paul - whilst it's alight and not making much smoke, it's better to light it right at the front and work the fire backwards - you get the heat into the arch and minimise the smoke at the door - you can also see what you are doing.

Having lit up, I sort out the irons, trim the coal and tidy up the footplate, getting ready to do a bit of cleaning when Fitter Alan asks me to light up the Y14, which is on a lunch service today - so I have two fires to tend, though Driver Fozzy arrives very early to take over the Y14.

Steam raising goes very well on the 7F and we are soon ready to go down to the pit. Driver Paul has a look underneath while I test the injectors - and soon he is ready for me to go and rake out the pan. There will be no blow down today. I take the opportunity to fetch a lamp and a couple of discs, as we are near the lamp store.

We take a bucket of coal; Driver Paul asks me if I am happy with one bucket in a way which means that 'yes' would be the wrong answer, but I'm thinking of the last time I put two in the 9F and ended up clearing it up off the footplate for the first two trips. We take another half from Fitter Bob on the loader, and I climb up to trim it for safety. 

True to form, I didn't get the footplate clear until the third trip but then I didn't spend much time raking either!

Since we are second off-shed we go back up the yard for the 4MT to come on the pit. We are ready 50 minutes early, but spend too much time chatting in changing room such that by the time I am back on the loco the back of the fire needs more wood to get going again. Fortunately, I have made sure I am first back so I can recover before anyone notices!

Down in Sheringham we collect our train and our breakfast and I build the fire. Responsible Officer Peter comes down for a briefing, telling us that we are to pay utmost attention to prevent lineside fires - minimum regulator, don't work it hard, and don't fire it in vulnerable areas - Kelling Bank, for example.

And that's where it all goes a bit pear shaped. 

The first two trips were difficult. Too much fire, too much steam, too many hands on the shovel, too much water. I've lost count of the number of times we blew off, blasting soot off bridges 305 and 302. The worst bit was on the way down on the second trip, where I was topping up on that usually peaceful journey down to Bridge 303 and up to Dead Man's and managed to forget I had the injector on. As we climbed the hill, I was looking at the gauge and wondering why, when we had hardly used any steam, the gauge was dropping to 140 psi and the train was slowing more than it should at that point - the vacuum was falling off.

I switched the injector off, but it was too late - we ground to a halt. The pressure started to recover but there was way too much water in the boiler - I thought that I could lose some water by getting it to blow off, and as I reached for the shovel Driver Paul, who had been complaining about how difficult I was making his job, told me to stoke it up and get it to blow off. 

At least I was thinking along the right lines. In the end, after a couple of minutes the vacuum had recovered sufficiently for us to move without me adding much to the fire at all - which was actually the last thing I needed since I had no water space.

Back in Sheringham, the NNR bush telegraph had been working and everyone seemed to know why we were late. Ironically, we'd been a little late out of Holt as the train handbrake had been left on and we couldn't pull the vacuum - that cost a couple of minutes but was nothing compared to my FUBAR on the hill.

The relationships on the footplate were a little icy after that.

From my perspective, the rest of the day was OK. We'd been joined by Driver Steve, ostensibly to help out with the ashpan which was dropping hot embers - you could smell wood & weeds burning whenever the loco was stopped for a while. Driver's Steve and Paul washed the pan down at Holt for the last two trips before we watered and perhaps this diverted attention to other things; I was able to get on with firing the loco as I wanted; OK, I left the injector on a bit long on the third up trip and arrived at 299 a bit lower than I wanted, but soon recovered and the fourth trip was fine, preparing for disposal with plenty of water and sufficient fire to dispose - in fact, the water was almost over the gauge steam valves as we stabled the loco.

The ash pan was absolutely rammed though.

In the end, a couple of days later, this was one of those painful days where stuff goes wrong but you learn something; you take the criticism, however harsh, on the chin and try not to do it again. I had a full day on the shovel, no help, and I had two good trips out of it, disposed well, it was off shed on time and only pride was hurt!

Turn 91 - Fireman on the 9F

 So here it is - my first turn as a Passed Cleaner, first turn as rostered fireman and first turn with a third man to look after. We have the 9F, a loco with which I am very familiar (I've done 17 third man turns on it, including 38 trips up and 42 trips down) though I'm a little apprehensive as the coal we have currently produces lots of heat but burns fast and creates a lot of ash.

Due to the rules around a Passed Cleaner's first turns, I will be doing all the firing today but at least Third Man Brad can get his hands on the shovel and light up. I fetch a pile more wood and rags for him and he builds a roaring fire which goes well.

I raise steam ready for going off shed and blow down, which is all quite straightforward. We blow down half a glass and there is plenty of time to refill and get changed.

I had a full day on the 9F a couple of turns ago, and didn't really get it hot enough - I'm determined that we will not be short of steam or water on this first trip so I build a big fire and run up with both dampers open.

Having got up to Holt and back successfully, I'm very happy with the day so far. I've agreed with Brad that he will hook on and off, water and do the token exchange - I want our roles and responsibilities to be crystal clear from the beginning of the day and it is working out well.

Having romped up the hill with both dampers open, I realise I don't need so much heat, so I cut back a bit for the second trip - too much, and we arrive with 160 on the clock. I've opened the dampers on the way up, and later Driver Paul reminds me that nothing happened at the chimney - so the extra air didn't have any coal to burn - so I should have fired again. Good advice!

I build a bigger fire again for the third, close to blowing off, but I manage it using the dampers and the door and we don't have any unplanned blowing off.

The fourth trip is good as well, with slightly lower pressure, and I prep for disposal on the way back keeping my water well up and maintaining the fire and pressure in the boiler.

When we arrive at Sheringham, and are ready to go up when word comes from the RO that the 7F has failed. It turns out that it's not actually failed but that the ashpan is getting very hot and there have been a few sleeper fires - we've not had rain for weeks and the trackside is tinder-dry. We are to go up to Weybourne Light Engine, swap our loco to Train 2 and the 7F crew will complete their service with the 9F - of course we are all running out of hours.

Disposing the 7F, the ash pan is red hot - it has no sprinkler and the coal is dropping through still alight.

We dispose the 7F and stable it behind the Quads. I get a bit of shunting experience as Driver Paul brings the 7F down under my instruction.

Articulated Quad set

The next bit of shunting for me, when the 9F comes in, is to bring it down to the shed and drag out the Y14. The Y14 will take the Loco B slot tomorrow in place of the 7F, so when it is out I build a warming fire under the brick arch.

No one went home on time that night!