Turn 123 - Firing the 4MT: Norfolk Lights Express

 This had all the promise of a good turn - an easy start with no prep, recent experience of the loco, and decent weather. It wasn't exactly a fine day, but there was no rain forecast and it wasn't predicted to be too cold as Driver Keith and I waited for the BR Standard 4MT to come up from Sheringham.

Relieving the lunch train crew we had a tender full of water and about half-full of bituminous coal - a promising start. The boiler was half full, with the fire just going over so I filled in the back and sides to go up with RO Josh to start the generators.

As the sun set, not that we could see it, we started all the generators between myself, Josh & Keith - fortunately, unlike the last time, all the light displays were working and we were on time as we drew into Sheringham to tie on to our train.

This bituminous coal lights up very easily, and provides some heat pretty quickly but it burns through equally quickly. Since I'd started the steam carriage warming system I'd expected to have to look after the fire & boiler water level through the hour we had to wait until our departure time of 17:00.

I'd made my mind up to try and get my usual over-firing under better control and as I built the fire in the last 15 minutes before the 'right away' Driver Keith warned my to leave myself some water space.

I tried to keep that water space all night, and to fire a bit lighter but in the event I went up on the first trip with the back end too light, and by the time I got to Dead Man's I decided to fill the back up to ensure I could use the injectors when I needed them.

We got up and back perfectly OK and the second trip was OK all the way. Starting out from Holt, we couldn't raise vacuum beyond 13" - I hastily checked the vacuum bag couplings I had made up when I hooked on, to no avail. A walk down the train revealed the answer though - one of the Pas-Com valves on the third coach was half open and audibly passing air. Closing that fixed the problem immediately.

We ran around again at Sheringham pretty quickly, took on water and headed up on a cooling fire to switch off the generators: this was where the evening started to go astray. I hadn't pulled enough good coal forward - the bottom of the tender was mostly dust and I was struggling to make heat. I had the boiler full on the way down, but it was still too cold and I forgot to account for the level pit, so when we arrived I had half a glass and the fire was way too low with 160 on the gauge.

Schoolboy error. How many times have I said that you can always get rid of a big fire on disposal but it's an uphill struggle to warm a cool one?

So, that was the first time I had made up a fire on disposal. Fortunately the 4MT will come around pretty quickly but it's still not so good to cock up when we wanted to go home. Another lesson learned the hard way!