Saturday 14th February

Attendance: 4

St Valentine's day it may have been but the work on D5705 continues, the turn out for today was 4 Jason L & Jim G arrived early and were joined a while later by Dave G & Kris M, the focus of the work today would be split between both locos with Dave, Jim & Chris on D8233 sorting out the mounting of the traction motor blower and Jason working along on D5705 but doing some small yet important tasks that would set things up for the planned lifting out of the Cooling fan & motor unit the following week, of course in-between all of this it was planned for the group members present to hold our monthly committee meeting.

Jason's task was to remove the 2 nd set of bellows from the other side of the cooler group, during the last Co-bo weekend the bellows set on the R/H of the cooling group had been taken out and it was the turn of the opposite side this time, removing these bellows re requires as they are perished & turn so need to come out so that they can be renovated also it allows better access to the bolts that secured to cooling fan motor to its mounting brackets, most of the bolts on one side had already been removed but to get access to the ones at the back the access panel on the roof had to be removed, after unzipping a section of the sheet and setting up the ladder, Jason found that the small bolts could not be removed without them snapping so the remainder of the bolt heads were chiselled off, with the access panel removed it was a simple task of cleaning the bolts and undoing them with a socket & spanner, a pry bar was needed to prize loos the bellow frame and they were carefully pulled out through a gap in the frame.

Meanwhile Jason had turned his attention to the bolts that hold in the Cooling fan motor on D5705, the motor itself has 4 bolts on each side that attach it to triangular angle brackets, these are in turn bolted down to the main longitudinal support members that make up the cooler group frame, there are 5 bolts in each of these two brackets, on inspection it was found that 4 of the 8 motor bolts were missing, the others Jason removed & cleaned up one at a time and re fitted them to the lower mounting holes that you can access through the gap left by the removal of the bellows, after this all the bolts from one of the side brackets were also removed & cleaned, two bolts were put back in loose and the bolts removed on the opposite bracket and two put back loose again, it was now possible to lift the cooling fan unit off its mounting just a little bit by using a pry bar, this proves that the unit is now ready to be craned out, a couple of bolts have been put back in on each side only hand tight just to hold it in place until the lift, after all the tools were tidied away this completed to work on the Co-bo for the day.

Sunday 15 th February

Attendance: 5

Today would be a Co-bo only day with Jason & Rob both with specific jobs to do on the object, For Jason this meant a quick sweep up and them slap some black floor paint onto the L/H cooling shoot sump that he had drelled and painted last time also a small section behind the TMB stand that had previously been missed was also similarly treated, Rob on the other had broke out the while undercoat and after removing the L/H cab door painted over the green primer around the door frame and side panel of the cooling shoot, when this was completed he removed the can door outside and stropped off the door handles & locking mechanism, it was around this time that Andy Ling showed his face again proving that he had not had enough from last time and was keen to continue volunteering for us which is great, he has also applied to join the group which officially makes him one of us now ;) fortunately Jason had a little job in mind for him, the air cooling pipes that had been cut off the TMB mounting box needed to de degreased & drelled so Andy took these into the support coach workshop and got to work, meanwhile Jason & Ron went out to do a little shopping and to do the fast becoming regular Sunday breakfast run to the Burger van outside B&Q, upon return Rob get out the needle gun and started to gun the cab door, Jason on the other hand was acting upon a request given by Steve Moreton in the pub the night before to remove both wiper motors from the No1 end cab as they are getting in the way of peg boarding progress, so the end of the tarp was lifted out the way exposing the cab end and the 2 nd man side motor was removed with incident.

It was around this time that Steve Moreton turned up to carry on with his job of doing the peg boarding in the cab, Chris Guntripp arrived soon after and decided to go into the No2 end Cab and make a start on doing the battening in there, Jason meanwhile had moved on to the driver side wiper motor and this was proving more of a challenge, firstly the wiper arms were still attached and the main arm was secured by means of a tapered brass collar, and it required a modification to the air chisel to make a power drift in order to hammer it off, then it was the turn of the outer pivot cover to play stubborn, this had a brass sleeve that had seized on the rusty shaft & it took assistance of Rob, Andy, Steve, a blow torch, air power drift and a plastic mallet it get it to shift, in the end the collar split and the shaft with motor could be pulled through back into the cab, that job done the tools & equipment were tidied away and the sheet pulled back over.

Rob had gunned all of the inside of the door & most of the outside, Andy had a try with the Needle gun as well but it was very noisy work and after a while it was decided to leave the rest of the door to be done another day, the remaining surface was drelled and then door was painted but not with ordinary paint… as the door is made from cast aluminium just slapping on normal paint won't adhere to the surface properly and after time it will flake off, so you first have to paint it with an special acid etch paint, Rob had bought two cans on the shopping trip earlier and now he used it paint the door with, Andy had completed his assigned task of de-greasing & drelling the air cooler pipes and as time was getting on he had to depart, Rob was soon to follow leaving Steve & Chris to finish off their peg boarding work in the cabs and Jason to refit the cab door after the paint had dried, when all was finished Jason disconnected all the power & water supply from the support coach and made it fit for shunting that then concluded this weekend effort on D5705

The next working weekend is on 28 February/1 March. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton