Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th of February, Carriage & Wagon Works

Monday 27th February 2012, Carriage & Wagon Works
Attendance: 2

Jason was onsite early and spent the most of the morning doing some maintenance work in the Co-bo tent after which he returned to the C15PS support coach and gave the replacement screw coupling acquired for the loco a quick drelling down to remove any rust and got some thick oil to lubricate the threads.

After assessing the snag list and crossing off completed items, Jason selected a few remaining jobs to get on with. The first of which was washing down the bufferbeams so a bucket of warm soapy water was sourced and after scrubbing and swilling off with a cloth the A end bufferbeam looked a lot better minus the accumulated grime. Jason went around the other end and gave the B end beam the same treatment.

Meanwhile, Carl Holt had arrived and the pair had a brew before heading back to the loco. Jason took the screw coupling with him and attached it to the draw hook on the B end of the loco. Carl had some welding to do, attaching some curved angle iron frame to the door recess step wells of the cab. Carl had already pre-curved angle for this so, with some assistance from one of the C&W staff, the large 3 phase arc welding rig was wheeled around into position and angle installed.

Jason sourced a section of thick angle and cut a couple of short sections to be the welded onto the back of the left hand B-End bufferbeam corner as a replacement for some side plate mounting brackets that were missing. After this Jason modified one of the air pipes to the A end horn box, replacing the plastic pipe with copper as it was a bit too close to the exhaust.

With the curved angles for the right hand cab step frame welded into place, Carl was busy cutting and welding some additional support pieces below to give the frame extra strength. Jason had relocated to the Class 15 coach where he began cleaning up the bonnet handrails. The middle rear handrail was given a light drelling with a soft wire wheel, sprayed with alloy wheel cleaner fluid, then allowed to rest while the fluid worked on the surfaces. Finally, using a nail brush, the fluid was worked into the metal before washing it off with water, the end result was a bright aluminium finish that gleamed in the light.

Jason took the handrail through to the loco and attached it to the B end bonnet then returned to the support coach with the two long A-End handrails where the process began again, drelling, alloy cleaner and nailbrush. One of the two was finished and taken back to the loco, but time was getting on so this will be refitted another day. Carl had completed the welding and fabrication on the right hand cab step and the pair called it a day.

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Tuesday 28th February 2012, Carriage & Wagon Works
Attendance: 6

Jason began by drelling up the cap for the Transmission breather pipe, after which he set about cleaning up the 2nd long bonnet hand rail from the A end. Once drelled and treated with the alloy cleaner he took the handrail through to the loco in Buckley Wells where D9531 had been shunted out of the shed and moved across onto another road to allow a coach onto the the pit road. Next Jason sprayed some etch primer onto the freshly drelled breather cap and fitted a thin threaded bar to the top of the breather pipe for the caps bayonet hooks to clip onto.

Once Ernest had been shunted back into the shed, Carl set up his welding station and began to fabricate the various pieces of angle required for the door recess step well angle and strengthening pieces on the left hand side of the cab. Rob Mason was also on site and assisted Jason in re-fitting the long handrails to A-end bonnet before making a start on fitting the cab flooring to the door recess and step on the right hand side which Carl had welded yesterday.

Whilst working around the bufferbeams Jason also applied some gloss black onto the newly welded angle iron sections for the left hand B-End side plates. Colin from the painting team arrived and began to gloss paint the marker lamps he had prepared at weekend and by this time Carl was ready for welding the pieces into the cab recess. Jason assisted with this, holding the pieces in position while Carl tacked them into place ready for the final welds.

Jason went around the loco removing all the masking tape from the window frames and Colin turned his attention to painting the backs of the bufferbeam side plates (which were neatly laid out on the floor) with some gloss black paint. Gilbert came across from Baron Street to do some gloss painting and masking up the black nose end wasp stripes.

Next up Carl drilled out the few broken studs in the two B-End bonnet handrails. Jason had brought these through to the works for attention. Once drilled out, Carl tapped new threads into the mounting holes and then passed them on to Jason for drelling and cleaning with alloy fluid.

Back in Carriage and Wagon, Gilbert was joined by Graham Thornton and together they painted the black wasp stripes on the B end nose doors. The internal lights on the loco had been on for most of the day so the batteries were put on charge. Meanwhile, Gilbert & Graham had masked up and painted the black wasp stripes on the A end and after a while went back to peel the masking tape off at the B end. The tape didn't come off cleanly and a few minor touch ups were required, later on the tape was pulled off the A end wasps, leaving the nose ends looking very nice.

The battery charger was taken off and that was the end of another full days work with more items from the snag list completed, but still plenty more to do.

Three more full days until the gala!