Saturday 11th

The day started early with a shunt at Castlecroft to position the Co bogie over the pit. With it in position a start was made on unbolting the axle covers, the spider stops (metal bars that stop the spider lifting off the bogie), and the gear casing for the first Traction Motor to be removed. Once the stops were removed the spider was chained up and lifted out and put to one side ready to be worked on the near future.

The gear casing for the first Traction motor was split and removed. The Traction Motor was chained up ready to be removed just leaving the bearing caps to be removed. However these proved to be troublesome in splitting from the Traction Motor. Various different methods were tried but there was no movement. A decision was made to start lifting the motor up from the back and in the end this helped apply a little additional pressure so that the bearing caps split from the Traction motors and could be removed. The motor was removed and is ready to be picked up for overhaul.

Unfortunately time was moving on and there was a project meeting so it was decided to call it a day, the other two motors will be removed in a couple of week's time. A shunt to put everything away brought the proceedings to a close.

Sunday 12th

Attendance 4:

Gary Hardwick and Steve Lucas first job was to drop the hangers that supported the spider. This was a case of removing a locking plate then removing a pin through each of the 8 hangers and one by one these were removed. Simon German arrived and he set about removing two air pipes that ran the length of the bogie as the brackets holding the pipes had been hidden by the spider prior to it being removed.

Steve removed the dirt guards that are situated between the traction motor (opposite end from the gear cases), this will help reduce the time it'll take to remove the final two motors. Simon removed half of the bolts from the bearing caps and gear cases so it's less to remove on the next lift day. The rest of the day for Steve and Simon was spent working their way around the bogie removing anything that could be removed like the sander brackets and traction motor linkages.

Gary spent the afternoon scraping the worst of the muck of the spider hangers and marking the location on them from where they had come. He then moved onto drelling an area of the bogie frame that had been needle gunned previously and once completed he applied the first area of primer to the frame. It is planned that by the end of the month the other two motors will be lifted out and then the whole of the inside of the bogie frame can be needle gunned and drelled which in turn will mean that the painting of the frame can really start......

If you wish to lend a hand please contact Adam Booth