Under-Assistant Scribe Colin reporting this week.
We assembled on a chilly morning, each of us muffled up in extra layers of fleeces and thermals in case we were needed out in the yard. It came as a relief that Frank had a list of jobs that could be done inside – which turned out to be only slightly less cold.
We drank our tea and listened to Franks job list which went something like “Tornado, Tornado, Tornado, and Tornado”. Dave-the-blog was missing – the reason to be revealed later.
So we divided up into teams and set off to the Wheeldrop shed where Tornado is undergoing winter maintenance. There were a few who found alternative employment on Swanage and Thomas, and Welsh Dave went off to the Machine Shop to install a lubricator regulator for the milling machine.
Alex1 and Steve H were making the crinolines for Thomas’s boiler, which is now in its frames. He has to be ready for Easter!
Jim, Pat, Colin2 and John sawed up the last few of the scrap superheater flues from Swanage, then set about removing more of the small tubes and despatching them.
The troglodyte team (Welsh Pete, Petersfield Pete and George) descended into the pit of darkness under Tornado – their task was to re-install the cast steel bracket that supports the brake weighshaft (which may not be its correct name). The A1 Trust’s web site has an excellent photo and some further information about this – you can find it here .
This bracket probably weighed more than the combined weight of the team, and required considerable effort and ingenuity to get it into place. The solution was lengths of studding (threaded rods) which could be used to pull it up into place. By the end of the day it was bolted up into place using the big windy spanner, with only a few bolts left to go in.
Dave-the-biscuits, Iain and Graham set about fettling valve spindles and re-assembling the valve and piston covers – with a bit of help from the rest of us for the awkward lifts.
Peter-the-dentist and I joined Alex2 and put up the LH side coupling and connecting rods – a fairly straight-forward job until we found that the leading coupled wheels needed rotating to move the pin about 20 thou. A bit of work with the jack sorted that out and the rods were pushed on, and the speedo drive bracket attached. Then to the coupling rod – the big end went on without trouble, but we had trouble with the massive pin that secures the small end into the cross-head. This pin is lubricated by oil-soaked felts and it took a while to get the pin into place without the felts getting rucked up. We left Frank and Alex wrestling with this problem.
That only leaves two non-events to mention.
Our regular reader will recall the cake-mountain that we consumed last week (6 cakes in all). This led to the appointment of an official cake-rosterer – end result: none of us brought in a cake this week!
The other significant non-event was the absence of Dave-the-blog at morning tea. To avoid embarrassment we won’t mention that he’d set the wrong time on his alarm clock and tried to sneak in unnoticed an hour late. Frank gave him a ticking-off and he was put on the naughty-step (sent to the troglodyte team).
And so ended another enjoyable and productive day at Ropley.
Under-Assistant Scribe, Colin