Saturday 25th June

Attendance: 5

This weekend would see Jason back on D8233 again as he endeavoured to complete the outstanding work required on the engine repaint before the loco is shunted into the loco works and Jason (having now booked the week off work 4th to 8th July) would be up again the following full week to renovate and refit the R/H exhaust system, however this weekend is a scheduled Co-bo working weekend and their were also outstanding jobs on the Class 14 which needed to be done before it also gets shunted out to go into the Carriage works at Buckley wells to begin the repaint, fortunately today their was a good turnout and with Jim, Lil’ Kris and Dave G who were all set to get going on D9531, Adam was also here and had offered to assist Jason with the engine repainting but when the others turned up this gave him the opportunity to drop onto D5705 which is what he had wanted to do anyway so Jason was free to continue on the Paxman engine repaint.

As it stood the engine was currently in grey undercoat from the inlet manifold at the top down to the bed frame, the bed frame itself was now in green anti-corrosive primer, so Jason broke out the wood pigeon internal gloss paint and even though there was a new tin of the stuff available he elected to use-up the old tin which was just about down to its last dregs, so after scooping off the thick skin he was ready to start, it was doubtful that the dribble of paint left in the old tin would be enough to gloss the undercoated area, and as such Jason only needed to gloss down as far as the lower coolant pipe to get the engine ready for the exhaust installation but as he continued to paint he decided to do what he could and it just so happens managed to eek out the paint he had left and complete the glossing down to the bed frame, he even had enough left to repaint the rear bed frame section by the flywheel as the previous gloss area there had become dirty and damaged during the start-up weekend last June, with the old gloss paint gone it was time for lunch break.

After lunch Jason had to find the tin of Blue paint that he had used to paint the lower coolant pipe on the opposite side the year before, however there are three small tins of  blue paint that have been used for painting water pipes and the fan drive system on D8233, Jason was not too sure which paint was the correct one so had to get each one in turn and test them on the coolant pipe on the other side to see which one matched, as it happened it was the third tin that he tried that was the right one, anyway he then began to paint the coolant pipe a slightly tricky task given how close its mounted to the now freshly glossed engine block so Jason had to take care especially when painting around the back of the pipe with the angled brush not to get the blue paint onto the wood pigeon, but he soon completed this task with few accidents, after he had taken the blue paint stuff back and cleaned the brushes.

Jason then went down the yard to the old engine block which is sheeted over behind the workshop container, this engine although stripped does still have a few useful spares on it, and Jason needed to recover the block drain pipes, the Paxman 16YHXL has gutters below the cylinder jackets that catch any fluids that might leak out and run down the block, these funnel the run off into thin pipes that run into the rectangular recessed drain sumps that are either side of the engine, some of the pipes on the replacement engine are missing and others have been modified so in order to put the drain pipes back Jason had to get the ones off the old engine, it was a simple task of pulling back the tarp and unbolting the unions and mounting clamps and he managed to get five of the six drain pipes, these he will renovate and refit during the up and coming work week in early July.

The last painting task on the loco was to get the bed frame into undercoat, Jason got the paint and did the deed, as before the box like bed frame is awkward to paint properly as getting the brush inside the box sections is tricky, this time Jason utilised a mirror to look inside and under the top lip of the frame to see where he had missed bits and blather some paint into there, this task he completed by around 4pm, when he was packing away he noticed that the No2 end tarp had got a large water sag in it, now with the body sections missing at this end we had used the frame from the sales stand as a temporary tarpaulin support, however some of the frame bars are just loosely resting onto of the frame and recent high winds had displaced them, that allowed a sag to form and heavy rains had filled it up, Jason and Adam had to push it out and due to its weight it wasn’t easy, but after a lot of effort and getting a little wet from water leaking through the tarp seams they managed to push it out and in order to stop it happening again they got a wooden pallet board from the scrap wood pile round the corner and placed it on top of the frame to better support the top of the tarp.

It was now departure time for the other guys but Jason still had a couple of small tasks that he needed to do, first was to get the cooling knuckle from the removed R/H exhaust section and pull out the ring pipes that were still attached to it, once that was done he set up the needle gunning equipment and gunned the knuckle all over, once that was done he got of the drelling gear and drelled it all over, using a semi-worn fine wire brush wheel he managed to run it inside the bores of the knuckle and cleaned them all out, he also did a quick drell on the two thin coolant pipes that run to of fro from the knuckle, once all the metalwork was clean he got out the green primer and painted over the knuckle and pipes making sure not to paint the bolted flange seats, once done all the bits were hung up in the pain cabin to dry and that completed Jason’s work on D8233 for the day.

Sunday 26th June 2011

Attendance: 3

Today Jason would not get much chance to work on the 15 this was due to a rather difficult outstanding job on the 14 that really needed to be tackled ASAP, so Jason & Adam both agreed to get onto it and it was a task that took up most of the day, but by mid afternoon that job had been done and Jason could get back onto the 15 however it was a little late in the day to go onto the loco and gloss the bad frame so instead he went into the coach and applied the grey undercoat to the Knuckle and the pipes that he had done the evening before, by now it was getting on for home time but Jason had managed to get more than enough of the painting work he needed to do done so that everything is now ready for his work week in early July when the R/H exhaust system will finally be refitted.

The next working weekend is July 9/10. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton