Saturday 9th July

Attendance: 2

This weekend was a scheduled working weekend on D8233, now that the Class 14 has gone away for painting and much of the outstanding work required on it is “Clever Person” work things can get back to normal and working parties on the C15PS’s other two locos can resume, Today two volunteers would be present, Graham Mortimore and Jason Lovell who had actually been on site at Bury since Friday 1st July making this his 9th day on the trot, this had been so that he could refit the R/H exhaust system to the engine, a job that had taken him a full week when he did the L/H exhaust last year, but this time around he had got the job finished early and now it was a question of what to do next?

Graham was enquiring as to the jobs on offer and Jason mentioned that he had made a start on the engine block drain pipes and that job needed continuing, also associated with this was the cover plates for the drain sumps (one of which is on each side of the engine compartment) these had not been touched since first removal back in Aug 2007, since then they have been sat under the shelving on the workshop area of the support coach and nowt has been done to them until now, Graham agreed to assist Jason with the renovation of the drain sump plates so they dragged out the concave plates with the cylindrical drain hole in the middle and Graham set about the task of de-gunging them before drelling them both down ready for a coat of green primer paint, Jason mean while was applying black floor paint to some drain pipes that he had drelled and re-bent into the correct profile during the previous work week, after this he had two small coolant pipes that belonged to the R/H exhaust cooling knuckle this he took around to the loco (now in Baron St works) and refitted them to the engine, Graham had by now completed primer painting the sump plates and hung them up in the paint cabin to dry.

The next job was to go around to the loco and clean up the engine room floor section either side of the engine and apply an additional coat of floor paint to smarten up the floor which had become speckled with drips of paint dropped when the engine above was repainted, the R/H side of the loco was treated first Jason & Graham both taking a brush and starting at opposite ends, meeting up in the middle to paint in the drain sump, after the R/H side had been done, they went around to the L/H side, now this side was a little more messing, due mainly to the proximity of the hand operated Fuel lift pump, which had been taken apart many times and rebuilt during the build up to the start-up event last year, this had spilt diesel all over the floor, this in turn attracted dirt, and the floor on this side of the engine needed a lot more elbow grease to get it wiped down before it could be painted again, also on this side the body side door are fitted and even though they can be opened it still restricts access between the door bays when they are opened fully at right angles and overlap the edge of the sole bar, anyway Graham agreed to get inside and used the vacuum cleaner firstly to suck up as much of the accumulated crud that he could then he went around with old rags and de-greasing cleaner to mop up the residue from the past diesel spills, he then applied the fresh coat of  black floor paint and then it was time for lunch break.

After lunch Jason remembered another task he could do, the majority of the R/H side of the engine had been painted except the inside face of the inlet manifold and the rocker boxes, so he went around and removed all eight of the R/H side rocker boxes carefully, after which he loaded them into a borrowed wheel barrow and after covering up the exposed rocker gear with a cover sheet took the rocker boxes back to the coach, Graham had made a start drelling up a couple of spare Rocker boxes that were in the coach, Jason realised that he did not have a full set with the “Paxman” logo on so he made a trip down to the store house to collect a couple of the spare rocker covers off the old engine, on return he assisted Graham in the task of drelling up the rocker boxes, Graham was in the coach workshop using the angle grinder with wire wheel attachment while Jason set up on the outside bench and used the needle gunning kit to remove the old paint from the rocker boxes, it was quite an time consuming task, but eventually they were done, next step was to begin painting them.

As the Rocker boxes are made of cast aluminium they will need to be sprayed with Acid Etcher primer first, as to simply paint on normal paint first would not stick properly and eventually flake off, so using up the remainder of the Acid Etch primer spray can Jason sprayed up around six of the nine covers before the paint ran out, as it was too bothersome to go out and buy some more at that time of the day, Jason decided to try using the welding primer which was a similar type of washy paint to the Acid Etch so he used it brush paint the remaining three covers, laid on the outside bench in the warm afternoon sun, the primer paint dried real quick so Jason and Graham were soon able to apply the next coat, under coat, now they would normally used the thick dark grey undercoat for this task, but as the rockers are to be painted a light colour and they have the tricky primer on Jason suggested that the use the B&Q undercoat that they bought for use on the Co-bo, it’s a much easier going paint and has a smoother finish so Jason and Graham used it to undercoat the rockers with it, by then it was getting on for late afternoon and Graham had to leave so after he had said his good byes and Jason as usual Thanked him for coming, Jason left the rockers out until they were dry enough to bring inside the coach, a quick tidy up and that bought today’s efforts to a close.     

Sunday 10th July

Attendance: 1

Today was the last day of Jason’s marathon 10 day session up at Bury, and as the Hymek was out on the booked diesel turn this weekend and Jason really wanted to have another trip behind D7076, so with this in mind he got up extra early so that he could get ahead on all the little jobs that he had on the go at the time, these were mainly painting jobs and in order to further them the next coat had to be applied to a number of different parts, first up was the Sump drain plates and pipes that needed painting into black using the floor paint, this job was quickly dispatched and the parts hung up in the paint cabin to dry, next it was the rocker boxes, freshly undercoated from the previous afternoon they were all ready for glossing, all Nine of them, so Jason broke out the Wood Pigeon paint and carefully glossed all the rocker boxes and set up one of the small alloy stages in the workshop so that he could place the rocker boxes on them to dry, when that was done he went into paddy and applied another coat of paint to the Exhaust stack cowling, once this was all done he cleaned himself up then departed for the Station to catch the 09:50 Bury to Ramsbottom service with D7076 on the front…   Cue the Noise and Clag J

Upon return from his full round trip of Maybach Music, Jason Had is lunch, afterwards he set about drelling up the brass wing nuts from the rocket boxes using the a combination of the bench grinder and a fine wire wheel equipped angle grinder, this took up much of the afternoon, when he was done he checked on the sump drain components that he had painted first thing in the morning and they were now dry, so Jason took them around to the loco and fitted them, he put in the sump drain plates first using some new tapered allen key bolts to fit them with, after that he attached both of the drain pipes to the R/H side of the engine, some small adjustments were needed but they were soon back in place, then he went around to the L/H side and fitted the rear drain pipe, due to the additional pipes and conduits on this side of the engine blocks its more cluttered and less room to fit the pipe but with a little persuasion it was finally threaded into place, by this time Jason was ready for the off, so after clearing up all the tools he departed for home, it had been another good weekends work, but the when you take account everything that had happened to D8233 over the last 9 days then its come another considerable step closer to running again.     

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