Turn 146 - Firing the Y14

After a few days of rain, it was a pleasure to find a half-decent forecast (warm, dry but not overly sunny) and to be rostered to the delightful GER Y14 with Driver Henry. We had the B service, four round trips, off-shed at 10:00 and back at 17:40 or thereabouts so we signed on around 07:00 to find cleaner Jacob & Fitter Rustle had lit up for us.

A relaxing few hours ensued with tea, polishing and throwing a bit of coal about.

She looked lovely sitting on the Suburban set while we had breakfast.

With a tender full of fossil coal, I fired the first trip, leaving it a bit late at Dead Man's and arrived in Weybourne with half a glass of water and the pressure a bit low. I blame a passenger asking about volunteering five minutes before we we due to depart, and just when I should have been putting another round on... 

The second trip was perfect.

Of course by the time the third trip came around it was all nice and hot (it hadn't been out for a few days) and I was still firing eagerly - it was all a bit much and blew off twice.

I drove the fourth trip - my first drive of this loco for a while, which included the subsequent shunt into the loop and the light engine trip back to the pit. No disasters, but a couple of stops were a bit more abrupt than they might have been and I was short onto the water crane at Holt. The stopping point for the Y14 is the smaller of the black tarmac squares by the cab side.

I learned a few more things that are worth recording for the next time:

• Don't wind the reverser too far into full gear - it gets stuck at the end of the worm
• Don't put tea mugs by the reverser - there's no room for your knees and to wind the handle 
• Don't need to fire to the front 
• Don't forget to open the regulator when shutting off
• You can hold the train on the hill on the vacuum brake and still get moving quite quickly, by holding it at 18" Hg. The vacuum brake takes a while to come off.

The air brake is an interesting thing. It's controlled by a governor, pictured here in the LNER Black Book:

The picture in the BR Black Book must be a later version as it's slightly different. The governor fitted to the loco looks more like the one in the LNER book than the one in the BR book:

There's a displacement lubricator downstream of the governor, which is now fitted with a needle valve to control the flow of oil into the steam flow. Apparently you have to fill that every two trips, and there is a pump isolation valve in the cab between the two injector steam valves.

And the last top tip from Driver Henry? Watch the brake pressure gauge and let the pressure drop to zero before you try to move off.

Next? Another week, another Wednesday, and another Fireman 2 turn.