Thursday 1st of March, Carriage & Wagon Works and test running

Attendance: 5

Alan Lee arrived early and was intent on giving D9531 another test run up the line, so first thing he started up the loco and moved it outside. Pioneer production Deltic loco D9000/55022 'Royal Scots Grey' had been shunted up to the front door of the shed so that a brake fault could be attended to, Alan had been asked to look into it and shunted the class 14 across on top of the Deltic and connected up the main reservoir and train air brake pipes so as to use the class 14's compressor to pump up the air system on the Deltic. Ernest soon had the Deltic's tanks blown up and so Alan investigated.

Meanwhile, Jason had been off shopping, he went down to the local Halfords and bought some heat resistant paint, upon return he spray painted the heater mesh guards that he had drelled the day before. A number of coats were applied with and some new bolts sourced to attach the guards once dry. Next job was fixing a cover plate on the B end cab bulkhead just above the central console to cover up the pipework running to the duplex air pressure gauge. Another item on the 'To Do' list was to fit a missing pulley to the fire pull system and fabricate a cover. Jason swapped the pulley from the cab to the B end and then made a new cover out of some aluminium sheet using a hole saw. The pulley and new cover were then fitted to the fire pull connector in the cab.

Alan had finished looking at the Deltic so the air pipes were disconnected and Alan ran D9531 down to Baron street yard to collect 37109, 4 blue & grey MkII coaches and 20087 on the back. The consist was successfully hauled back up to the foot bridge over the line north of Buckley Wells shed where Alan made some further adjustments to the engine governor.

After lunch Ernest was moved to one side allowing the train it had pulled up to proceed into the station behind the 37. The Harsco Rail Grinder, which has been stabled at Bury while carrying out a rail grinding contract on the Metrolink, was due to depart the ELR for its next assignment and Alan arranged for the class 14 to escort it up to Heywood as an additional test run. So at 14:50, D9531 went up to the south end of Platform 4 on Bury Bolton St station where it was soon joined by the rail grinder and just after 3pm the two departed for Heywood with D9531 giving the Grinder a spirited shove up Broadfield bank with close attention was paid to the engine temperature during the ascent.

At 15:20 the Rail Grinder departed for the main line connection and, whilst Malc Kirkwood looked after the departure, various checks were made on the loco. All seemed well but it has been noticed that the engine temperature was a bit high when under load on the journey up. Malc returned from Hopwood ground frame and took the "driving seat" so to speak (as the seats had yet to be refitted).

Unfortunately, on the descent of Broadfield the engine suddenly cut out and the loco had to coast down the remainder of the bank finally coming to a halt at the distant signal before the 'ski jump'. Alan went under the bonnet to find out what had happened and many start-up attempts were made but the engine would not idle smoothly without cutting out. Malc was in contact with Bury South Box explaining the predicument and after 25 mins or so of tinkering it was decided that the governor had failed. In order to get the loco back to Bury, Alan rode on the fuel tank, operating the engine throttle linkage by hand to stop the engine from dying. D9531 limped back to shed for about 16:40.

Alan asked Jason to drain down the coolant and check the filter trap gauze that we had installed in top of the engine oil cooler. Carl was now onsite and assisted with the investigations and, sure enough, the gauze was found to be clogged up again with large chunks of rust, the filter was cleaned out and the coolant system refilled from the bottom up using the electric barrel pump connected onto the drain pipe.

Around this time Gilbert arrived to do some more painting, starting with the other shunt step hand rails he was unable to finish the day before, then he black glossed the buffer shafts on the B end. Jason went up on some steps and lightly drelled the bonnet hand rails around the cooler group then, using the alloy cleaner and some wire wool, managed to buff them up till they too shone like the rest.

Gilbert was now setting up to carefully paint the cab door handrails so Jason used the gloss black to paint the buffer shafts at the A end then went back to the C15PS support coach and brought a small tin of gloss red to paint the Train Air brake pipe cock at the B end and the new cover on the cab fire pull connector he had fitted earlier. Finally Jason painted the handle on the emergency brake application valve, also in bright red.

Gilbert had just finished painting the rest of the hand rails in white undercoat and so we called time on another full days work on Ernest, just one full day remaining until the gala.