Saturday 1st Aug 2009

Attendance: 5

With a healthy turnout of five for this Co-bo weekend as has been the way of late workers would be split between both locos, Jason, Jim & Dave G, with the weather not too great the decision had been made to re-attach the handrails to the nose end of D8233, Jason made a early start in making sure that the handrails were ready for welding, the L/H front handrail would be bolted on in position prior to being welded, but first the handrail mounts had to be drilled and tapped out, so Jason used the bench drill to drill out the holes and then with assistance from Jim the holes were tapped out, the handrail was then bolted onto the loco and then it was time to get the welder and equipment out ready to do the job.

The tarp had been opened up at the front of the loco and as it was raining lightly the edge of the tarp was tried up to the fence to made a kind of tent and provide a little protection from the elements, Jim set up the welder and started off by welding up the L/H/F handrail that had been bolted into position, Dave assisted Jim in holding up the other handrails when they were welded up, after both handrails on the L/H side had been secured, they moved the welding equipment through to the other side and welded on the R/H/R handrail (The R/H/F handrail was never removed and is still in position) the weather by this time had started to deteriorate and it was raining a bit heavier, but the job was soon completed, before putting the welding stuff away there was another small job to do and that was weld up one of the stays for the locking rods on one of the engine room doors on the L/H side than had been cut open so that the rod could be removed and straightened because it was bent.

After this the welding stuff was cleared away and the tarp re-secured, Jason then went into the cab to check on the work that Matt Lindley had been doing in stripping the cab during his midweek working sessions, what was found the R/H cab door had been removed, the tread plate under it lifted out and nearly all the remaining conduit and air piping lifted out, there is little left to strip in the cab now and all the stuff that has been stripped has been stacked into the cubical space through the apertures in the cab bulkhead, that done the tarp was secured and time was called on the days activities.

Sunday 2nd Aug 2009

Attendance: 3

On the Sunday the main focus of the work for Jason & Chris was getting the new racking in the

store house set up, some new racking had been delivered and using Chris's car it was tripped down to the store house, with the help of Jason & Adam the rack was quickly assembled on the R/H side and filled up with the stuff that had been piled on the floor on the R/H side, that complete we returned to the support coach.

The next task was to have a massive tidy up in the workshop area which had become quite cluttered with parts & equipment from both locos, its was getting to the point were you could not find the space to put any new bits you wanted to work on, so with the store house now available the decision was made to pullout half the racking in the workshop and move it down to the store house, all the boxes of electrical kit that were stored under the racking were also pulled out and taken down to the store, all the stuff taken off the far rack were moved onto the workbench and the rack was gradually dismantled, the remaining rack was cleared and re-stacked with equipment from the locos, the top shelf was loaded with stuff from D8233 and the middle shelf with stuff from D5705, as the place was cleared out the stuff was taken outside and loaded into cars, Chris had the other racking loaded into his car and that too was taken down the store.

When there were tried to assemble the old racking but we encountered difficulties as the corner frames were asymmetrical in design and would only fit in one way, but the new racking on the other side came with the end frame already assembled and had gone together a piece of cake, the old rack was really awkward and it took a couple of attempts before we realised where we were going wrong and managed to get the rack set up, that done it was a simple matter of doing many short car trips to bring the stuff down from the coach to stick on the racking.

When all this was done the resulting space created in the coach was quite amazing, with half the racking gone it freed up a huge space down the end of the workshop, the area in the cab end of the coach most of the restored conduit in this area has now been moved onto the "D8233" shelf and the air tank frame has been move into the workshop space now that there is room to put it, after the days efforts we had a much clearer workshop space and more organised shelves, so that objective accomplished then.

The next working weekend is on 12/13 September. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton