D9531 Maintenance Report
30th of July 2012, Chris Baily

Most of the recent news on the Ernest front has been about running days, but there's always something needing attention and as you will have noted, D9531 has managed to keep us busy and had to be withdrawn from service on a couple of occasions. The following notes bring the Ernest story up to date with problems encountered during the first few months running.

Early July 2012

After appearing at the March Diesel Event and offical running launch in May it was decided to change all six fuel injectors for the fully overhauled ones we had 'on the shelf' in readiness for the next rostered turns in July. The work was carried out on the Tuesday before the July Diesel Gala and opportunity was taken to drain the coolant system and clean out the heat exchanger gauze. Ernest then ran at the Gala both days, however not without problems. The radiator fan wasn't getting up to full speed, so working it hard for long periods meant high temperatures.

Following the Gala we were able to get hold of a overhauled hydrostatic fan controller courtesy of David Hartley at the Nene Valley railway, this was fitted on the 15th July and a loaded test run to Heywood made, the fan now screaming away. However, due to differences in set up the fan did not cut out untill the coolant was at a lower temperature. The remedy is to change the power unit termostats from 170F to 150F versions and this will be done on Ernest's first B exam at the end of August.

Saturday 21st July 2012

So the 21st of July arrived and Ernest set off with 5 Mk2 coaches in tow and ran like a trooper up to Rawtenstall, but a check round before returning South revealed an 8mm copper pipe from the power unit to Running Oil Pressure Switch was dripping oil at an alarming rate, closer investigation found a small split in the pipe so it was decided to limp back to Bury and remove the loco so this could be attended to. Class 47, D1501 took over for the trip up to Heywood allowing the problem pipe to be removed and a replacement made, refitted and filled the sump back up, all in time for D1501's return from Heywood. D9531 then went on the head of the 11:50 departure for Rawtenstall, just 20 minutes down!

The next run was faultless to Rawtenstall, back to Bury and up to Heywood, however we noticed the loco was getting lazy achieving full RPM in 2nd stage. On the 14:30 departure from Bury again it ran ok, then out of Irwell Vale it would not rev any higher than 1200rpm in 2nd stage and, with road speed dropping and temperatures rising, we limped into Rawtenstall at around 15mph. We decided to see if it was any different on the return trip before making the decision to come off at Bury or not - the gradients to Heywood wood destroy it in this condition. With it being no different back to Ramsbottom, the call was made and at Bury D9531 was replaced again by D1501. With no time or resources to investigate and repair for the following day's service, it was decided the best and safest option was to use D1501 instead.

Saturday 28th July 2012

Chris & Alan set about investigating the transmission fault. Alan had done some research during the week and come up with two possible causes, the twisting strainer or the 1st to 2nd control valve. So we started with the strainer which was removed and seemed to be in a blocked condition. In the mad rush up to Ernest's debut at the March Gala, the strainer was found to be seized and was removed but, during attempts to free it off, the four mounting posts sheared, so spinning the handle twisted the whole assembly rather than just the filter element which, in normal operation, cleans it. The tight deadlines for March had meant this was put on the 'to do' list but had since been forgotten about and we can safely say its come back to bite us on the bum, resulting in a lost running day.

So the filter was cleaned out and Jim did a weld repair to the posts, the assembly freed off ok and was then refitted to the transmission. We ran Ernest up and took it for a low speed jaunt up and down the Loco Works complex, forcing it to change up and down stages, which it did happily.

For peace of mind we also needed to take D9531 out for a loaded test run to ensure it was ok at speed and with a heavy load. The ELR duty Responsible Officer arranged for us to pilot 33109 on the 13:25 departure for Heywood. The run there and back was textbook, with the transmission changing up and down as it should and with the equivalent of load 8 on the hook, Ernest settled out at 23mph on the 1 in 80, with temperatures all within limits.

So, with barely 400 miles under its belt and just coming up to 200 engine hours, we are still getting teething problems, only to be expected as essentially it is still running in. Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, Ernest will be receiving its first B exam, as well as some minor snags to resolve and commissioning of the sanding system.

Apologies to any of you who were looking forward to a run behind D9531 on the Sunday but we couldn't take any chances.