Saturday 28 th

Attendance: 2

As things are winding down as Christmas approaches. today saw two volunteers arrive to do work on the ‘Object'. Adam had a new plan to get access to the voids above the cooler group radiator ducts which previously have not been painted since the day the loco was made, the accessibility of these areas for painting had been a source of consternation but now using mini paint rollers attached to the end of garden canes we could get them into the tight spaces and apply the paint as required this then would be the focus of today's efforts but first Adam had to needle gun a section of the body side over the L/H cab door than had been left out where all the panels around it had been freshly re-painted.

Jason's main plan for the day was to take down the bulkhead panels that were recently retrieved from store up at Castlecroft shed and fitted back up in-between the Engine & Clean air compartment, this was swiftly done, then he turned his attention to the body side panels just inside the engine room. He removed the overflow pipes for the fuel & boiler water tanks then wiped the panels down some white spirits on a rag and then lightly sanded them ready for a fresh coat of hemp paint, the problem is the original hemp paint was almost gone and there was not enough to paint these panels, so until some replacement paint is found this job had to be postponed.

After gunning that side panel over the cab door Adam turned his attention to gunning the cab L/H rear cab bulkhead that faces the inside of the cooler group, this was a job that he completed quite quickly, then he turned his attention to drelling the inside of the R/H void, a task that was very tricky in two ways. Firstly the access was limited having to squeeze his arms through the bellows gap at the top of the radiator duct and secondly the thick cloud of dust that came up as soon as he started drelling with the angle grinder so that soon it became impossible to see what he was doing and only so much of the area was drelled. Jason attempted to assist by holding the lead lamp up for Adam but the dust was just too thick!

By now Jason had moved onto the job of drelling & painting the blower air intake grille next to the cooler group on the R/H side of the body. This had been treated with rust killing gel previously. Jason had to wash the grille slats down individually before he could get to work with the drelling. Adam by now was using the vacuum cleaner to suck up all the drelling dust in the R/H void after he had allowed it chance to settle and then he made a start on painting the impossible area by attaching a mini roller to the end of a cane stick he could slip it up the back of the coolant header tank between the frames and the fan cowl and apply a coat of green primer to the back of the tank a place that totally inaccessible to normal hand painting. After this he turned to painting the inside of the L/H void starting on the fan cowl and working his way down.

Jason by this time had finished drelling the blower grille and had started primer painting the grille slats and again he had to paint each one individually. Adam on the other had was finding the void painting a doddle with the new mini-roller on a stick technique and he had soon done as much as he could in the L/H void so he turned his attention to primer painting the rear of the cab bulkhead - the bit you could see was easy but the narrow gap between the radiator duct and the bulkhead had been out of reach even with the electrical conduit pipes all up the wall, but the mini roller was just small enough to get in even behind here and after Jason had finished painting his grill Jason was amazed at the progress, there were a few missed spots that had to be touched up but overall it was a massive improvement over the dark rusty hole it once was.

After this they retired to the support coach, Adam had also been working away on the cab door trying to remove the rubber seal around the edge but it had been glued in with some form of tarry substance that was proving to be nearly impossible to shift , scratching away with a large flat blade screwdriver only had limited success so he gave up on that and instead cleaned up a couple of pipe brackets that he had removed from the loco while painting the back of the cab bulkhead, that then drew the days activities to a close.

Sunday 29 th

Attendance: 6

The Sunday turned out to be better attended though the weather tried its best to dampen spirits, Jim had arrived and was ready to get the welding jobs in the cooler group finished off, Chris Baily was also present but he had set himself the specify task of fitting helicoils to one of the other radiator tanks to fix the threads for the elements studs that had rusted out, Adam on the other hand had set up the compressor and needle gun in the boiler compartment of the loco and had made a start on gunning the old paint off one of the bulkhead plates that Jason had removed the day before. Jason provided assistance to Jim in getting the welder out and helping him set up. The cooler group welding areas are all in the R/H side; there is a small hole in the fan cowling to repair, the loose block that forms one of the foot mountings for the lower radiator tank needed welding back into place and the angle frame around the inspection plate aperture had some serious rust jacking that needed seeing to and this job was tackled first, Dave Garnett has also arrived by this time and set about is usual task of making and fitting the batons and peg boarding to the cab ceilings.

Using two hammers to beat the twisted frame into shape, Jim then used an angle grinder fitted with a thin cutting disc to grind out the rust that had built up behind the frame, as it was raining outside Jason undone the tarp around the cooler group and pulled out so it could me tied up to the fence to form a makeshift tent under which the welding could be performed, by this time Jim was ready to weld so he set about tack welding the frame back into place and fitting up the gap with weld once it had been secured. Adam had only managed to get a small section of the bulkhead plate done before he was asked to apply white undercoat to the back of the blower grille and by this time Chris Tatton had arrived ready to do some work, Adam suggested he continue with the painting of the voids and started off by doing some more up the back of the L/H cab bulkhead area, Adam had moved onto painting the bodyside panel above the L/H cab door with the white undercoat.

Things were now in full swing with various people working away on different tasks inside the loco, Jason was in the boiler comp gunning & drelling off the divider beam from the central bulkhead, Adam had made a start on needle gunning the lower bulkhead section on the L/H engine side, Chris T had made a start on primer painting inside the void over the R/H radiator duct, Jim was still welding away at the inside the L/H Radiator duct and Dave G was working away on the interior cab roof.

Suddenly the power went out and everything went dark & quiet (apart from Jim who was using the welder on an extension lead from the Class 15 power point) but he too had to stop as he lost the light he was working by… there was a certain amount of surprise & confusion at first but soon things turned to finding out what had gone wrong, the Co-bo has its own power supply from the works and this appeared to have tripped out, the reason for the trip was soon found to a short in the cable reel extension lead that was being used in the Co-bo at the time, however when we traced back the power lead to the RCD unit that feeds the supply it too seemed to be dead.

Chris T took the thing apart and checked it and at first the it seems that the contact pivots were broken but Jason pointed out that with the power feed to the coil that operates the contacts deactivates when there is no power and the switch could not be closed because of this so he wired it up on a short test lead and plugged it into a socket in the support coach and it worked OK, so the RCD unit was wired back in and the feed wire that comes from the works was traced back to the trip box inside that was still switched on, at the time we could not fathom out what had happened to interrupt power between the box & the RCD we had tested all the other inline connections and they appeared to be good so to get things going again in the Co-bo we had to borrow a power supply from the Class 15 socket box but all this fault finding had taken valuable time and it was starting to get dark by then.

Adam decided to retreat into the support coach and began applying the white undercoat to the cab door that had previously been removed, Jim was finishing off few welds on the lower panelling of the L/H rad duct, there was a short piece of the angle frame missing but that would have to finished off another time, but now he applied some tack welds to the metal floor block rest before he called time and started to pack his welding stuff away, Dave finished up the jobs he was doing in the cab and Jason had the leave the drelling job he had been doing for finishing off another time, the last job of the day was done by Adam who applied some green primer to the radiator tank that was on the workbench in the coach that Chris B had put the Helicoils in earlier, so that was the end of yet another eventful working weekend.

The next working weekend is 30/31 January. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton

Above : Chris T assists with further void painting up the back of the L/H cab bulkhead. © C15PS