Well, it's warmed up again and there has been very little rain - or there hadn't until the railway made the decision to suspend steam services again. Today, as we arrive on-shed The Fates in their infinite wisdom, exerted their influence on our lives by pelting us with gobbets of water as we were preparing the loco. We were soaked through in minutes.
At least we weren't on the Y14.
By the time I arrived, half an hour early, Driver and owner Alistair had checked over the Class 37 which was nice and warm, having been preheated for four hours prior to us arriving - it has a diesel-fuelled preheater wired to a central heating controller. I went down to the oil store to get a pint of compressor oil, which was the only thing needing attention, apart from a windscreen wiper.
Duty Fitter Bob found us a wiper, which we trimmed to fit. Driver Alistair replaced it through the nose hatch:
We'd noticed during prep that one of the doors on the Second Man's side persistently caught on the rubber floor matting. Fitter Bob found me some 5 minute Epoxy which fixed that in a few minutes with the help of a lump of concrete to hold it down.
We fuelled up, and when the Class 20, which was on the A service, had gone off shed we were allowed into the platform - since I have now accumulated an hour or so on three diesel-electric locos, Alistair was happy to let me drive Light Engine down to Sheringham. It was pouring with rain, so we agreed that I would stop at the West Box and Alistair would put the loco on the train - to make sure we didn't lose grip and touch on too heavily. Observer Kevin joined us - he would do most of the hooking on.
We were soaking wet, so the cab heaters stayed on for a while.
The first trip was straightforward, and when we returned to Sheringham and had run around Alistair announced that we would swap sides for the second trip.
In the driver's seat, I followed his instructions explicitly, when to put power on and how much, when to brake and where to put the lever, when to slow for crossings. This would be the first time I had driven a diesel-electric on a train, but I was feeling pretty confident under Alistair's guidance and it went very well.
I returned to the Second Man's seat for the third trip
It was my turn again for the fourth trip. The trip up was OK; I took this picture showing the 37 in her new green paint as we waited at Weybourne for the Class 20 to come down:
The run around at Holt was OK, but the down trip wasn't so good. We had a stop at Kelling and I wasn't so successful in following my Driver's instruction and took several attempts to get the train in the right place in the short platform each time stopping too early through allowing the vacuum to drop too much.
We were relieved on fifth down by the Fish & Chip crew so there was no light engine trip or disposal, but by the end I had completed 2 1/4 hours in the driving seat.
I'm well happy with that.
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