Turn 153 - Firing the Y14

With the mornings darkening and cooling, and no Cleaner rostered I signed in at 06:00 to light up the Y14 once again. She was warm from the previous day, but not so warm that I couldn't dive in the firebox to clean her out from the inside. Someone had clearly got a new pair of safety boots as the skeletal remains of the old ones came out with the ash:

On fossil coal, the Y14 lights up easily I must, must, must remember to keep the smoke under control - two reprimands today, one from CME Keith who saw it from the village. I opened the firehole door in a hurry.

We went off shed on time with a tender full of fossil coal. The Y14 got a dry wipe all over the boiler to get the oily smuts off:

The rain started after breakfast and didn't let up. I did a couple of trips which were a bit marginal, not maintaining steam very well with the pressure doing the yoyo throughout the trip.

I drove the third, with Driver Dave on the shovel. Dave's got a lot of experience on the railway and soon made me see how I mess up firing this loco. He fired much more often, on both hills, and had a lot more in the back.

It was still raining. We put the cab tarpaulin up for the fourth, and I made sure I had more coal in the back corners - my Lucas shovel is quite long (I can reach deep into the tender) and quite flat, which means you have to concentrate on getting coal into the back corners. Cover the grate! 

We went up at 150 psi the whole way.

The jury is out on the shovel - I used the Lucas, but recalling Third Man Michael on this a couple of weeks ago a more bent shovel might be better.

Next stop - more DMU training!