Shed Turn - More gunge: Cleaning the Standard 4MT

It takes more than a day to clean the season's accumulated crap off a steam engine. Here I am again, back under the 4MT getting on with cleaning the pony truck.

This week I've armed myself with a bucket of paraffin and a couple of wheel brushes, so I can scrub up the bits I scraped down last week to reveal the shiny red paint underneath. 

Though it feels like I'm not achieving very much it is starting to look a bit brighter under there. I've no idea when it was last clean - it might be 6 months or 6 years. 

Something you don't often look at - the blast pipe, branching out into (from?) the four exhaust ports:

Moving backwards from the pony truck, it all gets a bit easier. Here, I'm still between the cylinders but there is less equipment to thread yourself through and more red paint to shine up providing a bit of motivation. I've started to realise that if I can crack in a couple more days it might start looking quite good. 

After lunch I take my usual walk up to the footbridge to record this week's progress on the crossover replacement project - and what a change there has been. All the track is down and ballast laying has started! 

Back under the loco, I've moved to the big open space between the front and middle driving axles. There's a lot of red paint here, mostly just dusty but with a lot of gunge on the tie beams between the axle boxes. This area should be an easy win. 

The junction box is for the wiring from the limit switch, also visible, which detects the position of the die blocks and thus allows the TPWS to know if loco is in reverse gear. You can just see the little cam on the weighshaft. 

This is the horn guide on the middle axle, fireman's side with the various feeds from external grease nipples and the mechanical lubricator. 

This stuff scrapes off easily, drops to the floor and gets stuck in the soles of your boots. You'll later find it on the freshly mopped floor of the wash room. 

Outside, Foreman Alan and Fitter Alex have been tapping away with chisels removing burnt oil from the WD's piston valves. It's clear they are having a very jolly time or perhaps they are just delirious. 

It's starting to look a little better under there. Next week I'll get some clean paraffin on that to get rid of the remains of the gunge. 

Over the next few weeks there are a few more railway activities coming up - two MICs, a recruitment meeting, the annual Volunteer Forum which this year will be at the Little Theatre in Sheringham, a third man turn and another FoBP meeting. 

Hopefully I shall be under here again next week! 

Shed turn - Pot holing and scraping off gunge

It's Wednesday, and I'm back at Weybourne for another day of winter loco maintenance. We're all parked in the station car park today as Trackwork have taken over the yard, and I'm in the car as it's several degrees below zero today. 

The WD is coming apart - the guys have removed the cylinder and valve covers and have removed the driver's side piston. 

I made some tea, and stood around in front of the heater listening to the banter and waiting to find out what my task for the day was to be, increasingly sceptical as I learned that as the smallest there, I was to go into the tender tanks of the 4MT and the WD and clean out all the scale. Eventually I realised that Foreman Alan was not, for once, winding me up and that everyone else was standing on tip toes...

Ah well, I'm always up for a new job and as I don't have any fear of small spaces I climbed up onto the top of the WD tender with a bucket, a small shovel and a scraper. Fitter Alex gave me some tips about working my way through the labyrinthine passages and told me that the water was less deep towards the front. 

I dived in.

It's like this all the way through - bracing stays and panels to stop the water sloshing about and the roof gets lower as you crawl towards the front, scraping off loose scale as you go. At the front, there is the single strainer for the two injectors.

I took two full buckets of rusty sludge out of the WD, lowering my bucket to the ground on a rope.

The 4MT tender is much easier to get through and has less sludge in it, though it's more of a stretch to get in and out. The string shows the way out.

At the front of this one, there is the ball float and the mechanism that operates the level gauge:

There's a strainer on each side above the water valves leading to the injectors:

You can see them here, between the two tender wheels:

There are also two mysterious pipes:

These are for the external filling points, one each side, to allow the loco to be filled from a water tanker when on main line duty. Stations don't have water tanks and cranes these days!

I dumped the sludge in the holes around the yard:

With those done, I transferred my energies to scraping gunge off the 4MT. Driver Dave had been in the day before and done most of the brake gear, leaving the weighshafts for the two brake cylinders for me, along with the axles and the brake hangers.

Fitter Tom was underneath as well, cleaning out the axle box underkeeps:

At lunch, I went outside to take a picture of the ongoing track work. As you can see, the track is up and the old ballast is being removed:

After lunch, It's back to the 4MT and the never ending gunge. I spent most of the afternoon cleaning up the leading pony truck, which was very oily & greasy.

I must figure out how these horizontal springs work.

Same time, same place next week?

Shed turn - Stripping the WD

 Well here we are, the start of the winter off-season proper. New Year is over, Christmas is but a distant memory of indigestion, headache and loosening the belt, and we are done with footplate turns. With a week off to recover, it’s time to go and throw some spanners around Weybourne shed.

The Weybourne ‘Trackworks’ Lockdown is less than a week away and all the locos are inside, bar the B12 and Ring Haw’s chassis which are awaiting transport offsite for overhaul. Their boilers are still in the yard alongside ‘Sidmouth’ whose new firebox is ready for fitting.

The Y14 is having her suspension rubbers replaced, the 4MT is part way through washout, the 9F is waiting in the queue and the WD is sitting here. Foreman Alan (aka Fitter Alan and sometimes Fireman Alan) suggested I might like to start taking it to bits.

Something like 50 years ago, well maybe not that much but it’s a nice round number, I sat in my bedroom taking a fishing reel to bits - a multiplier, with line spooling and braking mechanisms - quite complicated as fishing reels go. Much swearing and gnashing of teeth were a feature of life at home for the next few days as I tried to get it back together, succeeding eventually and buoyed up by my success I carried on taking stuff to bits; even after dozens of vehicle projects & a 30 year career in engineering I haven’t stopped yet…

Today it’s the WD’s turn for some attention. Aside from a washout it is having a valve and piston exam this winter, so getting access for that is the first job. This is where we start, the fireman’s side cylinder:

Or maybe here, the driver’s side cylinder! Valves and pistons come out forwards so we will start by removing the covers:

There we go, a few bolts and the sheet metal covers are removed revealing the cylinder and valve covers - these are the pressure retaining covers, not the cosmetic sheet metal covers we just removed! At the top, we can see the valve spindle cover and below, at the bottom of the cylinder cover we can see the cylinder relief valve, provided to prevent damage from excess pressure in the cylinder caused by water ingress from carry-over or priming.

First though we are going to look at the other end and remove the piston glands. We start by taking off the copper oil pipes and the felt oilers around the piston rods: I spent an afternoon replacing these felts a couple of years ago and I was surprised to find the felts were completely missing on one side and very hard, black and shrunken on the other. Apparently once the gland starts passing they are soon blown out.

On to the glands; these come out when we have removed those six nuts. The driver’s side popped out with the force of the spring - the second one needed a special hook making to hoik it out:

Here’s the gland pack: two pairs of machined bronze ‘U’s held together with a spring. They are flat and bear on the back of the retaining ring which seals to the cylinder block casting.

This is the view from the rear:

Getting ready to pull the heavy covers off, I removed the front relief valves:

The cover nuts came off very easily with a battery impact wrench. These are 1” BSW:

The last three on each side had to be removed with the wrench, as the pony truck wheels would not let the rattle gun get access:

After tea, we all trooped off to the conference room for a meeting where we learnt that over the next few weeks, this scene will become a hive of activity as the crossover is replaced, which will include the entrance trackwork to the yard. The work is being carried out by Trackwork, and they will take over the whole Weybourne site with the exception of the station, platforms and the shed itself. We will have to use the station car park and enter the shed using the steps by the Sidmouth boiler.

I'll take another picture next week and we'll see what has changed.

Meanwhile onto my next job - unboxing the WD ready for washout. This is a washout plug:

These are used to provide access to the interior of the boiler for inspection and washing out. This is what they look like when you take them out - there are various sizes, all with similar square heads but with various size taper threads:

They are all numbered individually, and are located according to the washout map:

There are nineteen on the backhead alone. This is #7 on the map:

There are 21 on the boiler barrel and firebox wrapper, some of which are quite hard to reach and all of which can only be accessed from the running boards:

There are also four in the smokebox. These are in the smokebox tubeplate under the superheated tubes and behind the blast pipe - it helps if you are quite small when you get to these:

In truth a couple of the plugs in the boiler firebox wrapper are accessed from the ground. They are in the lowest part of the boiler above the foundation ring, near the throatplate - one of these had been used to drain the boiler before I arrived; the other drained a bit more sludge over my feet:

By the time I had cleaned that lot up it was 4 o’clock, time for a tidy up and to count the plugs into a tray ready for cleaning. With all that put away I turned to the last job on Alan’s list, stripping the water gauges.

First job is to remove the guards, then the gland nuts and the top plug. There’s a loose plug in there which seals the gauge against boiler pressure if the glass breaks on the road. With that out, you can try and push the glass up and out. This worked (with a bit of scraping) on the fireman’s side, but the driver’s side wasn’t having any of it and having sought advice from Fitter Alan, we attempted to twist it with a pair of pliers and of course it broke in the process. 

Once that was out, I could clean up the broken glass and box up everything for cleaning. I rodded out the steam and water ports with a bit of round bar.

By the end of the day, I was a bit filthy - like I haven’t been for ages since I do mostly firing turns these days and don’t often clean out fireboxes from the inside!

Same time next week?