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.
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