Well, I'd been looking forward to a nice easy day out with Driver Graeme on one of the three steam locos that are in service at the moment - the 7F, the Y14 or the WD. Keeping my eyes open the day before revealed that the tool of choice was to be the Y14, so we were in for a fun day out: nothing unusual, just prep, four round trips and dispose.
First surprise was finding cleaner Jacob in the car park - it's great to have some help, as I probably wouldn't have done so much cleaning without him. He started on the smokebox while I got myself ready to light up. There was a lot of clinker in the box, so with a return to traditional methods I dived in and cleaned it out, pulling a couple of firebars and brushing it all into the pan.
Lighting up involved a lot of wood as has become the norm, and in deference to Driver Alex' comments last week I left the scoop out until I had 30 psi on the clock, which as the loco had been out the day before was pretty quickly.
It wasn't entirely smoke free, but that's mostly paraffin burning off...
A couple of hours later, Jacob and I had got it nice and clean and the boiler pressure was coming up well.
Jacob's looking proud of his handiwork!
The Wednesday S&T team admired our shiny engine:
Today we were hitched to Set A, with four Mk1s and the RBR - five full size coaches in all. Until last week, when I was driving the WD with four on the back and had started thinking about stopping distances, I hadn't paid much attention to what we were hauling about the countryside. More of that later.
The day started pretty well, full boiler and a good fire starting out but a bit light on water and steam on arrival - not atypical for the first trip but had I fired it on all three hills it could have been better - a good tip for the weekend, when I have it again.
Adding coal on the way up the various hills and using the chuffs to get the new coal burning, I managed to over fire on the second trip, blowing off but I didn't have any water level problems; this trip was mostly bituminous coal, and the heat was coming around much more quickly. I cut back a bit on the third, paying more attention to my instinct, and the fire, water levels and boiler pressure were fine. I'd spoken to yesterday's crew about cleaning the fire part way through the day, and they had had the irons out twice even on a mixture of bituminous coal and ovoids. Talking about this with Driver Graeme we decided that we didn't see the need - she was steaming well. We didn't have a huge amount of coal but it was so hot that I wasn't worried.
The fourth up was fine as far as Weybourne - I mean, we had seen the rain clouds forming on the way down and we were congratulating ourselves that we would be heading into it protected by the cab, and hoping that it would pass by the time we had to come back, but the rain start to tip down. It was very wet by the time we came to leave Weybourne, and although I had built a good fire and we were full of water ready to leave we could not get past the crossover for slipping.
Having tried to get going several times, we gave up and had to come up with a new plan. With the help of Signalman Phil, we backed down into the station and had another go.
I built the fire up again, because all that slipping and full forward gear action had taken heat out of the fire and water out of the boiler - slipping causes the blast to increase dramatically. We still couldn't get past the crossover: we had the railway's smallest engine on the largest set of coaches - and wet rails.
I've been through the Y14's toolbox many times, checking flags, gauge glasses and stuff - and the lightbulb went on. Under the driver's bag, under the rags and under the canvas tarp lies a bag of sand. Leaving Driver Graeme in the cab, I walked off up the line pouring sand over my feet and over the rails, as far as the crossover.
There weren't going to be too many more chances - people had been talking about cancelling the remains of the trip - but we had two coach parties on board and the train was full. So, with one last chance I built the fire up again, 150 psi and close to blowing off but full of water. I'd used about half a bag of sand.
We crawled gently out of Weybourne, very slowly but without slipping, and we got through the crossover and beyond the section I had sanded and we finally started to climb the hill.
All was not well however. The trip up the hill was taking a lot out of the boiler and the fire was not keeping up despite further investigation. As we went up, pressure quickly dropped and we were getting short of water. We stopped to recover after Aviaries curve. We were now very short of coal, we had only ovoids left and it was all soaking wet.
We arrived in Holt to a row of cheering, clapping passengers who must have been warned that we were struggling.
We stopped and cleaned the fire. It was a mass of clinker all over the grate, with fire on top and no air getting through at all. We'd had the dampers fully open on the way up, which had no effect - this is always a sign of a problem.
By the time I had cleaned the fire and built it up again, there was very little coal left:
Earlier in the day, we'd been asked if we would shunt the Quads and the Vintage Set from the loop to Platform 2 at Sheringham, but there was no way that was going to happen - we just didn't have the coal. If we hadn't made three attempts at the hill, we wouldn't have used so much. The RO decided to mobilise the Class 31 to relieve us of our train - so all we had to do was get back to Weybourne.
Lessons learned? Well, I won't be going anywhere without two scoops of coal in the tender. And second? In three years I've never had to put the irons in the fire before the end of the day, but now? I think I might do it every time.
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