Another Tuesday, another firing turn, and another chance to enjoy the S&DJR Class 7F, 53809. Third Man Ben, cycling in with a lot of time to spare had spent his morning with buckets of oil and paraffin and the engine was gleaming; the weather was a bit overcast and the picture doesn't do it justice.
We have plenty of time to get ready on this turn which makes a relaxed start to the day and we loped down to Sheringham with 140 on the clock - we have an hour to wait.
In contrast to last week, we had a tender full of fossil coal - this is excellent on this loco which is quite hungry, but steams really well if you feed it in the right places.
I took the first trip up, over firing as it turned out. As usual, I had the boiler full and the fire raging as we left Sheringham, watered on the way over Dead Man's & fired in the cutting. We had a nail biting six minutes at Weybourne waiting for the down service. Driver Mark was taking it easy - we didn't use much water as its a powerful loco and we had the Quad-Arts on the back, so I still had very high water while we waited. I resolved to ease back on the second up, and made use of the slacker and the ash pan sprinkler.
Firing again in Weybourne, we sailed up the hill easily and I was on the injectors again in the cutting, arriving in Holt with plenty of water and a fire which needed managing for a few minutes but settled to around 180 while we ran around.
The second up was a repeat performance, but I left the shovel alone at Dead Man's and arrived in Weybourne a little more relaxed.
Ben took over at Holt and fired the next two very happily; I took over for the fourth down & disposal, keeping the water high and feeding it gently. A little bit too gently as it turned out - I fed it a lot more at Dead Man's and again, with dust and small bits of fossil coal as we went into the yard. The boiler was already full, but I wanted something in reserve so we could top it up after cleaning the fire. That few shovels of dust gave me 20 psi.
On disposal, I cleaned the pan twice - once to get rid of a lot of ash, and again after we had cleaned the fire. I thought there would be a lot of ash, since the pan had been quite full after prep, but I'm sure I didn't need to go to that effort.
Same time next week?
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