8th May:

This weekend we continued finishing off and prep work in readiness for starting the power unit.

One of the 1 st jobs that needed to be completed was the gloss painting internally of the last 3 sections of the main roof. Once done this would allow the fuel pipes to be refitted the following day. Jason duly obliged for this task.

Chris B then set about reaming out the holes between generator and bedplate by hand, which was slow going, so once a suitable set up of extensions and sockets had been gathered, he then utilised a drill for the job and gently reamed through, then knocked home each of the dowls.

He then fitted the missing middle mounting bolts for the top landing on the generator and torque marked all 6 so we can tell in future if they come loose.

Meanwhile in the tent, Jim and Kris Mason busied themselves with welding on new ½ inch whit captive nuts to the cab, as the welder was playing up it took some time to achieve.

Once Jason and Chris B had finished their 1 st tasks attention then turned to the coolant system. Jason refitted the cooler group bleed pipes that werte removed to allow the roof section to be lifted off, Then the Turbo coolant pipes had the fittings cleaned up and refitted. Once done a hose pipe was run out from the loco works and put in the top of D8233's header tank and filled with water.

After a while the loco was duly full of coolant, with only a few minor drips from pipes that been removed, these were nipped up and the system left overnight to settle.

The last Job of the day which involved everyone (including Dave Garnett who had spent most of the day in D5705's cab fitting batons ) was to move all the Class 14 parts out of the main saloon in the ex irish thumper, and into its ex engine compartment. This took some time as there was a lot of items, the main saloon was then given a brush out. This will become our electrical workshop for the locos in the next few months.

With time nearing Pub time, we decided to call it a day. More good progress made on the Class 15 and eaking ever closer to starting it up.

Sunday 9th May

Chris would play little part in the days proceedings as he had been at a Stag do the night before until the early hours and needed a lie in after which he departed early for home, this left Jason to soldier on with the work from the day previous, and as the internal roof section painting had now been completed it was finally time to put back the fuel system, most of the pipes were still in the engine compartment but disconnected and tied up out of the way, some of the others however had been completely removed and taken to the support coach for temporary storage, these had to be dug from the upper parts shelf in the workshop and carried down to the loco along with the hand priming pump that Dave G had rebuilt the day previous and all the necessary tools for the job.

Jason began by fixing back up the front half of the fuel system, this meant reconnected pipes, digging out the pipe clamps and bolting them up to the pipes and connecting the flexible hoses to the engine, this done he moved to the back section and had to re-fit the stand pipes that come from the unions on the floor up to the main pipes at cantrail height, as the pipes run some close together it was a little awkward to get them in the right order to run parallel, but eventually Jason got the stand pipes connected to the top pipes, running them down the side frame supports and bolting on the pipe clamps was a little tricky especially when they had to connect to the fixed connections coming through the floor, the front stand pipe that is the main feed for the mechanical pump on top of the engine was particularly stubborn as it has the gauge flow filter on the top which hooks around and doubles back on it self, Jason had fitted this pipe early on but to the wrong side of the side frame upright, and it fouled the door hinges when he tried to close it, so the pipe had to be ripped out again and repositioned before it would fit without fouling.

Next it was onto the fuel priming pump, fitting this unit was quite easy, it has a welded bracket on the floor that it bolts to with a flange joint onto the floor pipe, from there it goes up a little way and then across (through a one way valve) to bolt to the stand pipe that comes down, the problem came when trying to prime the fuel system using this pump, we have had problems before with it not being capable to lift the fuel from the tank on its own before it will pump, the unit has been dismantled and checked and seems ok if a little worn inside, but after fitting Jason tried to pump it and found again that it would not self prime, so he disconnected the top pipe and using a large mechanics syringe he drew the fuel up to the pump, once full of fuel the pump worked just fine so Jason reconnected the pipe and pumped away, he could hear the fuel surging and gurgling around the system until eventually it started spewing out the top of the Pressure relief vessel, Jason had to stop pumping to see what the problem was and found a bleed screw that was missing, he found it in a plastic tub in the engine frames so refitted it, however when he returned to the hand pump it had drained back to the tank and now would not prime again, knowing that to do so would spill fuel everywhere he decided to leave it at that, a quick check did prove that there was fuel in the main pump rail on top of the engine so its safe to say that the system was semi-bled.

This had taken until the early afternoon to get the fuel system sorted out so Jason had a late lunch after which he had to travel down to the secure store to dig out the turbo fittings, the inlet snails and the Exhaust stacks, the inlet snails were relatively accessible at the back of the R/H middle shelf, the exhaust stacks however were well buried, right on the floor under the L/H middle shelf and with all the Co-Bo radiator elements in the way, so Jason had to carefully move out around half of the elements in order to gain access to the stacks before he had to put it all back again, on return to the loco he decided first to apply some grey undercoat to the remaining area of the L/H engine bed frame as this is where one of the removed engine needs to be refitted, but first it needs to be painted behind, once that was done Jason set about refitting the Turbo inlet snails, as not all the original bolts came with the snails he had to refit them with just three bolts each but as they were a tight fit this didn't matter too much, Jason had to squeeze each one on and once home, twist them around until the holes lined up then insert the bolts and tighten.

the Exhaust stacks were next, this meant climbing unto the generator to get access to the top of the engine, as these stacks had been fitted ones before they were quite clean and had all they bolts and gaskets with them, however the gaskets had received minor damage and with no time to make some more they were reused but aligning the flange while holding up the heavy stack wasn't easy, eventually they were up and to turbos were now fully connected, Jason had checked on the coolant level from the day before and it had hardly dropped at all so that was good, The final task was to free off the sticking pump linkages on the fuel control rack, out of the 16 pumps about 5 were not working right, so Jason used WD40 on the links and worked them back and forth until each one had freed off sufficiently, this completed the days work.

The next working weekend is 3/4 July. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton

Above : The cooling system was refilled by sticking the hose pipe up inside the tarp. © C15PS