Sunday 30th October

Attendance 2:

Today Jason and Adam were going to start re-fitting the electrical conduits into the engine and generator compartment of the 15. The conduits had been stripped and repainted a few years back and had been sitting in storage on some shelving waiting to be re-fitted. The plan was to get all of the conduits down from the shelving and sort through them grouping them together as there were various sizes. However before this happened it was decided to have a bit of a tidy up in the workshop. The work bench was tidied down with a few tools that were there were put back into the tools room. 3 internal doors from the CoBo that have been painted were removed and placed into Paddy (The Northern Ireland Railways thumper unit) for further storage until they are re-fitted. Also removed from the workshop and placed into Paddy was one half of the Generator bulkhead from the CoBo.

With that completed and following a sweep up Jason and Adam started to lift down the conduits from the top shelf of the storage shelving. As they were brought down they were sorted through and placed into distinct piles depending on the conduit diameter and the location of where they fitted within the loco. Once the sorting process was completed the main conduits that run the length of the engine room and generator room were taken round to the loco.

At the loco the Jason and Adam sorted the conduits and placed them on to the correct side of the loco as the conduits run down either side. With the conduits laid out it was time to start the jigsaw, some of the conduits were marked up as to which hole they started from within the main floor conduit that came from under the cab. The conduits were laid out into their positions and following some swapping around the conduits were placed into the relevant places, one or two of the tags seemed to have ended up on the wrong pipes.

Next part of the job was to start fitting the pipes loosely into place and connecting them up. It was discovered that some of the collars on the conduits had been painted and so were now stuck so all of the affected conduits were taken back to the workshop. Here they were freed off and the threads were drelled to clean them up of oil and paint. With the cleanup completed it was decided to break for lunch…

Following lunch it was decided that a trip to the secure lockup was required. The reason being was that there were a couple of collars missing that connected the conduits together and that the generator bulkhead needed to be retrieved as the conduits go through the lower part of the bulkhead. The required items were dug out and loaded into the back of a car and returned to Baron Street.

Once back Jason and Adam continued on with the conduits. Adam continued working on one side. As there had been an oil leak Adam started by mopping up the floor clearing up the oil. Then he moved onto wiping down some cables that are being threaded through the conduits to assist with pulling cables through at a later date. With that completed he started position the conduits in place and selecting the correct clamps that will be treated at the next working weekend.

Jason in the meantime was working on the other side of the loco and had positioned the conduits and had selected the relevant clamps, again these will be treated at the next working weekend. With the conduits in place Jason and Adam tidied away the tools and returned to the workshop. One last job before finishing, Jason had sourced some bolts to fix down the flywheel cover. However the bolts were to long so Jason cut them all to length and then ran the bolts through a die so that the threads would be ok. With that finished the last of the tools were tidied away and then Jason and Adam left for home. That brought another good weekend to a close…..

If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton