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.
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