Well, I must admit I was a bit nervous about this one. The Silver Driver Experience is an evening service offering two round trips to two paying visitors. The idea is you have one visitor driving and one firing on the first round trip, and then you swap over for the second. It's all light engine and there is nothing else in service, so there is no hooking on or running around, and the boxes are open at Sheringham and Weybourne so your firing visitor can do the token exchanges as well.
We picked up the 7F from the day crew on their 4th down - the fire had been raked through which was a bonus but not so good was that the tender was full of ovoids.
We trundled down to Sheringham, putting a bit on the back to keep the heat going and hooked off.
I spent the whole evening helping our two guests, John and Howard, fire the loco and very good they were too. Howard was more cautious with the regulator than John, with the result that we had a lot of heat on the second trip and a bit of blowing off. The workshop had reset the safety valves after the last washout, and they now reset within 5 psi of blowing off, which is ace. They used to need about 20 psi difference to reset.
Challenges? With four people on the footplate you can't easily see around box, and you have to rely on others to place coal. This is tricky - you end up with holes that you can't see and you have to ask your visitor to get out of the way while you fix the problem. This is a good lesson - I can remember people doing this to my fires earlier in my railway life.
The other problem of course is that footplate visitors distract from your fireman's duties - whilst coaching the visitor on the second down Driver Christian came over to my side to retrieve the token I had forgotten!
At the first stop, we took on water and asked our visitors to light the lamps. Day Driver Joe had thoughtfully left us a gauge lamp, which for once was very good until someone knocked it off.
Back in Sheringham, it was time to say goodbye to our visitors and do a bit of shunting to prepare for the morning, moving Set B from the loop into platform 2.
Driver Christian and Guard Seb handled the shunting using radios, so I had a few minutes to build a decent fire for the trip up. My boiler was already pretty full but I wanted to make sure I had plenty of heat to dispose the loco, and so it turned out. We were full on the pit, but I used the ashpan sprinkler to wet it all down while Driver Christian did his inspection. As usual, I stayed to clear the pit out while Christian stabled the loco. It builds good biceps.
So that was a highly enjoyable turn - another new experience on the railway. I'll be quite happy to do more of these and to look after Third Men - which I haven't done yet.
Next turn? Another yellow service next Wednesday with Driver Graeme.
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