Saturday 9th May

Attendance: 4

Today it was the turn of D5705 to be worked on, though as with the last Co-bo weekend, there would be people working on D8233 as well. Jim & Dave G had set about refitting the L/H nose end door on D8233 and they soon found that the rust jacking on the inner frame had caused it to warp outwards so they had to spent the majority of the day cutting the frame off the back of the door and preparing it for welding back on.

Meanwhile a new volunteer had arrived for a try out; his name was Adam Booth and he hails from Durham , he has an interest in unique locos such as the ones we look after and wanted to get involved. He especially likes the ‘Object' and for the majority of the morning it was Jason's task to give him the grand tour of both locos and the support coach and fill him in on all the work done thus far and potted history of both locos after which Jason set him to work in painting the white undercoat around the support frame for the cooling fan motor. Jason got out the cover grille for the top of the cooling fan and took it onto the work bench outside and started drelling it down which was tough work as it turned out to be galvanised - these jobs tied them both over until early after noon.

After some lunch it was back into the bowels of the Co-bo to make a start on sorting out all the grimy pipe work on the engine room floor. Using a de-greasing spray and a lot of rags Jason & Adam worked their way through cleaning off all the blue water pipes starting with the small ones and eventually ending up with the large ones. After this was done they were piled up in the corner of the engine room ready for when a start can be made on drelling them down ready for repainting.

Over the preceeding months the engine room floor had been drelled & painted but the large engine mount in the middle had been worked around and not actually treated mainly as its a complex & awkward shape to drell and as it was so mucky so Jason and Adam decided to give this area a clean down as best they could. Using screwdrivers they scraped off as much of the crud as possible and them de-greased the rest and the end result was not exactly completely clean but an improvement none the less. This ended the days efforts, Dave & Jim had separated the door skin from its frame and ground away the rust and painted on the weld though primer so it was all set for the frame to be welded back on the next time Jim was up, so all in all not a hugely productive day but progress none the less.

Sunday 10th May

Attendance: 2

After the previous days turn out, today would not be so well attended but the work goes on; to start off a bit of undercoating in the Co-bo cooler group had to be finished up first. Although the lower section had been done the day before, the upper section inside the fan cowl itself had been missed so that was to be painted with the white under coat for starters, however its only the upper half of the fan cowl that had been done the lower half is still un treated and original paint. After that was done it was time to move down a little bit and gloss the fan motor support frame, this was tricky to get the paint into the many corners of the framework but it looked smart after completion.

The next task was to paint the inside of the cab door with the white undercoat, this cast aluminium door had been painted with acid etcher paint a while back so it was all dry and ready for a 2 nd coat of paint, the etcher is grey so painting the white primer on would be easy.

This task was also completed quickly but it was past lunch time so work stopped for a lunch break, after which it was outside and little side job. The nearby metal work bench that the group have adopted had quite a rusty metal worktop to it, so in order to tidy it up a little bit and prevent it from going rusty again, the angle grinder was got out and the worktop was drelled off, after brushing down a coat of the black floor paint was applied and this dried quickly to leave the bench looking a lot smarter, time was getting on by now so all the tools & paint in the loco and outside were cleared away and one final job to finish off the weekend was to primer paint the Co-bo's cooling fan mesh guard and that was that - the weekend drew to a close and many minor jobs were performed.

The next working weekend is on 6/7 May. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton