A fairly brief report this week as I forgot to charge camera battery.... It's an age thing I guess, though, I see from another part of the website that Trevor is 100 this year; my God, Trevor, you're wearing well, you don't look a day over 50; what's the secret??
Talking of camera's I though I'd include one shot of Thomas in Ropley Station that I took, framed with the "Ropley" on the signal-box as part of shot... (you see, I don't just throw all this together...) Unfortunately, I omitted to notice the brick chimney and the topiary growing from the top of Thomas cab.. Could have used paintbox to air brush it out, I guess, but I think it funnier as it is; Thomas days are FUN days after all??
Anyway, to work. Last week I was involved in helping get the rocking grate bits out from the U-boat for replacement with new items. Naively I thought that job would have been completed by this Wednesday, but there it was, waiting for us to complete.
There was a problem though; with half the new bits in (the front half of the grate) the rocking grate wouldn't; wouldn't rock, that is. It seemed to be fouling something that was not clear to us from outside the firebox. Joe, our slim young Ranger who had done a stirling job last week, quickly assessed the situation and scarpered, leaving us old gits to decide who was slim and bendy enough to "volunteer" to go in and sort it.
We have a new Wednesday man, Peter, who said he was sure he could get in and he did! After a couple of hours working flippin' hard in there I bet he wish he'd kept shtoom but at least once in, he could see that the new rocking grate fingers were fouling the new cross member which separates the back and front halves of the whole assembly.
After much discussion with Spud from boiler shop (who built the new cross-member) and Frank, with a few helpful suggestions from the rest of us, it was decided to remove the cross-member from the firebox and modify it slightly.
Much easier said than done; it's made from cast Iron and is a very tight fit.. Peter from inside and a few of us from outside proffered bits of bar to use as levers and many bits of timber to raise the thing enough to slide it back to the firebox door to eventually get it out.
Believe it or not, that took us the best part of a whole day... Hopefully the ever helpful Thursday gang will have got on the case and put it all back together thus maintaining their usual tradition of "sorting out the mess the Wednesday Gang have left us..." (Their words)...
Until next week from your Ropley scribe.
Dave.