Saturday 15th Aug 2009

Attendance: 1

There was actually two group members up this weekend however Chris Baily had to go and stand in on a driving turn on the ELR so it was Jason who was there on his own, but as he was he decided to get one with his main task and that is the painting of the engine, over the last number of working weekends there has always been other task that have taken precedence and the job of painting the power unit is taking longer than anticipated, but now with no distraction he was clear to get one with it, now previously he had managed to make a start on painting the power unit but as its a rather large and complex thing to paint he's doing it in small sections, the front L/H corner of the engine had been drelled and primer painted months before so he set about applying the second coat, using the grey undercoat it took him most of the morning to finish this section as the myriad of pipes and casting on the front of the engine make for a very fiddly complex shape to paint, but the task was completed by lunch time.

After lunch Jason set up to continue with another part of the engine that he'd tackled before, that being the L/H/R outer Generator bed plate frame, most of this area had been needle gunned by Jason but he didn't quite finish the job last time round, so after setting up the air compressor and the needle gun he set about finishing off the bits he'd missed, these were mostly the box sections inside the frame itself, that done, he got out the drelling gear and went over the area again smoothing off the bare metal ready for painting, it was mid afternoon by this time so there was just enough to get a coat of the green primer applied before he had to pack everything away, the plan would be to further the painting of the both the areas he'd done the following day however things didn't quite turn out as planned...

Sunday 16th Aug 2009

Attendance: 5

A great turnout of five was available for work on the Sunday, Chris B had plane to clear out the cubical space at the No2 end of D8233 of all the pipes & conduits that had been stuffed in there from the stripping out of the cab, but there is other stuff stored in there from before and that too needed removing, sorting out and then taken down to the store house, so early on the tarp was pulled back over the No2 end and the cab, and all the cab pipes were off loaded by Chris & Adam, Jason then joined in and all the stuff from the cubical was removed and sorted into piles in the floor, Jason & Chris bought around their cars and loaded then up with stuff to take down to storage, This of course exposed the horrors of the corrosion in the No2 end, this end of the loco seemed to suffer from rust a lot more than the other parts of the class 15, the floor in the L/H/R of the cubical space is especially thin & perforated by numerous rust holes, on looking up inside the roof section we noticed some lighting conduit still intact, so Adam set about removing it while Jason & Chris went down the store house to drop off their loads.

Rob mason had other plans, he got set up with the needle gunning gear and moved to the R/H area in front of the cab, and began gunning the edge of the roof section, and this task would take him most of the morning to complete, after which he applied the obligatory coat of green primer to the section of roof he'd just done, Dave G had found a job for himself and that was cleaning up in the cab, even though most of the cab is now stripped out there is still all the crud and powdered rust that's fallen between the floor board support, so using the vacuum cleaner he had a right good tidy up, by this time Chris & Jason had returned and now the emphasis turned to unbolting the body section that make up the No2 end starting with the nose end roof cap, Chris & Adam set about removing the bolts that screw the frame to the cab bulkhead however with all the nuts being captive they all sheared off one after another.

Jason decided to go down below into the compressor compartment below, this area has been little disturbed since 2006 some dismantling has been done and the bits removed were just left in the compartment, but as this stuff needed clearing out Jason emptied out all the stuff he could but soon.

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